Juan Williams was fired by NPR (letters stand for No Personal Responsibility) last week for admitting that he felt "nervous" when he boarded airplanes with Muslims in traditional Muslim garb. NPR summarily fired him for that "bigoted" comment.
Mr. Williams is one of my favorite liberal commentators. While I often disagree with him, he takes a reasonable approach to the discussion and has a good sense of humor. He's someone I'd love to have dinner with and have an engaging discussion with. I am outraged by NPR's abrupt termination of him.
First, Mr. Williams was merely vocalizing an emotion, a visceral reaction, not something entirely under one's control. He in no way indicated that his raw emotion would precipitate any change in behavior, and indeed expressed regret that he sometimes harbored this feeling. Truly mature and adult people often have emotions that are not acted upon; in fact, most of us adults spend a great deal of energy in work and at home mastering our basest instincts. It's called being human.
Second, this emotion is not without some rational basis in fact. It is the sympathetic nervous system reacting to a perceived elevated risk or threat. Now, one can argue that this is an overreaction to the probability of harm. The probability of dying or being harmed in a terrorist attack in your lifetime is very small--less than your chances of dying from a lightning strike. But we do know some inconvenient facts. While not all Muslims are terrorists, virtually all terrorist attacks on Westerners over the past quarter century have been Muslim. We also know that airplanes are a weapon of choice for Muslim terrorists. Third, we know (despite Eric Holder's feigned ignorance), that some proportion of Muslims are motivated to engage in such acts by a radical and fundamentalist interpretation of the Qu'ran. Given those facts, it is not bigoted for someone to have a visceral reaction to someone in Muslim garb at the airport. But it is important to note that Mr. Williams DID NOT say that he would refuse to fly on the same plane as someone in Muslim garb nor did he say that because of this nervous feeling, we should subject such individuals to heightened scrutiny (although many commentators believe that this might be warranted). All he did was communicate an emotion. And he was fired for it.
Did he and do we engage in religious bigotry? I think nothing could be farther from the truth. Do you realize that we tolerate a fundamentalist religious sect that demands of its followers that they live as they did a century and a half ago? They dress in strict garb. They observe strict mores and customs and rarely marry outside their own group. They are very devoted to their faith, and they reject modern technology and society. That sect would be the Amish. Yet, if an Amish man showed up at the airport (assuming his religion permitted flight), neither Mr. Williams or even the biggest bigot south of Archie Bunker would be nervous. Why is that? Despite their rigid religious beliefs and their desire to live and dress in ways that are not mainstream, no members of this sect seek to impose themselves on others or seek to impose their religion on others through violent means. As a consequence, despite being out of the mainstream, the Amish are left alone to live their lives quietly and peacefully. Unfortunately some proportion of Muslims has chosen a different path.
The left denies the association. They deny the existence of political Islam. We have an attorney general that cannot even utter the phrase "radical Islam." We have people that walk out of discussions as guests on "The View" did when Bill O'Reilly asserted the fact that Muslims attacked us on 9/11. The unfortunate fact is that there wasn't a Catholic, Hindu, Jew, or Buddhist among the 19 hijackers. The Fort Hood shooter was a Muslim. The Times Square Bomber was a Muslim. The "underpants bomber" was a Muslim. Did Williams comment really reflect irrational bigotry. No. The worst that can be said of him is that he miscalibrated the relative increase in the probability of a threat. But to deny the increase in the threat is to deny reality.
Further, let's take another hypothetical. Let's assume that Juan Williams said, "I'm a devout Catholic and my twelve year old son was asked to go on a religious retreat with about 20 other young boys and 5 or 6 young priests in the White Mountains for a week, and I am feeling uneasy about that." Would NPR similarly have fired him for his bigoted comment? After all, only a small percentage of priests have been found to engage in unseemly conduct. Not a chance. They would have all been nodding their heads in sympathy. There would be no outrage over religious bigotry there. You can bet on it.
NPR should be ashamed of itself for silencing a reasonable, rational and articulate commentator. The threat of radical Islam is real and presents very difficult problems for an open, democratic and tolerant society. It is absolutely essential that we fully and fairly and openly address all aspects of the issues that radical Islam presents, not pretend that it doesn't exist. The P.C. crowd at NPR swung an authoritarian club at free and open discourse.
One could imagine the NPR bunch around about 140 years ago. Imagine a pioneer family seeing a group of 20 or so Native American braves on horseback on the horizon, thundering toward their ranch. Under NPR standards, the pioneers would have been harshly taken to task for their bigotry when they unlocked the gun cabinet.
I doubt I'll be real receptive at pledge time this year.
