Once upon a time there was a group called the Ku Klux Klan. They had leaders with interesting titles like Kleagle or Beagle or Grand Wizard or Exalted Cyclops. They wore white sheets and were led, same as they were founded, by Democrats. Some of those Democrats became very famous and very powerful, including the Democrat who was Majority Leader of the United States Senate, a fellow by the name of Robert Byrd.
Pretty much everyone in West Virginia knows Robert Byrd's name, because even though he was the Exalted Megawatt of the KKK (OK, I think he was a Kleagle, which is equally powerful), virtually every public building in the entire State of West Virginia is the Robert Byrd Whatever Building. Lots of highways are the Robert Byrd Highway, and there are probably lots and lots of people and goats named after him there, too.
It's certainly amazing that even though racism ranks high on the list, right up there with rape and murder on the liberals' what-not-to-do-or-be list, they're not out there trying to rename West Virginia highways and government buildings after someone less ... less ... OK, racist. But embarrassing the memory of Democrats is not what liberals do. John Kennedy was running young women in and out of the White House on a daily basis, and there are probably a lot of folks in their, oh, mid-50s running around who look like him, but darned if he isn't still a heroic figure.
At any rate, somehow our view of who white supremacists like Robert Byrd are, these days, has morphed a bit. The media think more of militias in Idaho, and skinheads and the like. And, to be fair, that's probably not off the truth too far, although the biggest white-supremacist crowd, at least in terms of pernicious impact on black America, is made up of those same liberals. Those are the ones who don't think black Americans are capable enough to pull their own weight, to graduate school, learn, get a job, or make it in American society without their help -- and government's.
Still, whoever the white supremacists are out there, we know one thing -- we don't like them. We don't like for one group to declare its genetic superiority over another, whatever may be the facts of the case -- and there are some Asian students suing Harvard over that principle right now. But setting aside actual data, or real genetic studies (whose outcome would be shot down anyway), we know this -- America is not a fan of white supremacists. Stipulated.
So if America indeed is not a fan of white supremacists, let's ask this question -- is it because they are racial supremacists, or simply because that race they tout is the white one. I have a really good reason for asking that question. Because I daresay that if you asked 100 good, politically-correct liberals any variant of that question, their answer would include some flavor of the phrase "No one race is any better than another", possibly modified by "No race or religion is any better" or "No race, religion, planetary origin or gender ...".
You get the idea. They would never say "It's because white people are no better", that would be too specific and liberals try not to be able to be pinned down. Besides, that would sound rrrrrrracist and that would be terrible.
So what if the supremacists weren't white?
I'm not talking about black supremacists (we have those) either. I'm talking about the fact that what is going on in the Middle East and now, as last week's Chattanooga incident has brought home, is nothing less than the practice of Islamic supremacists. Am I wrong? They are total ethnic purists, believing that only their race, their God, their faith and even their interpretation of that faith (vs., say, the Shiites) is so far superior that all others -- i.e., infidels -- must be killed.
Let's compare. There are a few nut cases out there who are sufficiently over the deep end and mentally disturbed to pull off stunts like the horrible shooting in Charleston. However, true white supremacists are no longer out there plotting to murder non-whites. Lynchings are really a thing of the past, and however silly the current crop of skinheads are, and how bad their actions of 100 years ago were, they're really not what 2017 white supremacists do.
Now, your Islamic supremacist, well, you're dealing with a whole different fellow there. Their contempt for those not like them and their belief in their moral, racial and religious superiority is at least as virulent as can be found in Idaho. But worse yet, they are being pushed to act on it, by promoting worldwide followers to commit mass murders, and to blow up places where those unlike them congregate -- including mosques full of Muslims who don't happen to follow their interpretation of Islam identically! Not kidding, folks.
So why, then, are the media and the left not using the same language, the same techniques, the same vile condemnation of these people that we use for skinheads? I mean, the only difference, aside from one set being white and the other fundamentalist radical Islamists, is that the latter kill people as part of their basic, fundamental makeup. They kill the innocent, they get others to kill the innocent, and they celebrate the killing of the innocent, all as a way to say that their way, their religion, their race, is better. The Klan types, by contrast, are pretty tame any more.
We didn't call them Islamic supremacists for the previous eight years, because the then-leader of the free world, our own Barack Obama, chose not even to recognize that Islamic fundamentalist terror even exists! How could he condemn Islamic supremacists, despite their horrific, planned murderous actions in the USA, without calling them out for what they are? And the media, the left (but I repeat myself), Hillary Clinton (I re-repeat myself) and their supporters all followed as if they didn't have the capacity to think a single independent thought. "What? Barack Obama was wrong about something? That cannot be!"
I don't know if Islamic fundamentalist terrorists have a shred of a sense of humor, but if they have the capacity to laugh, they have to be doing so now -- at us. A country faces a huge terror threat that is acted out upon every week, it seems, and it not only does nothing, but its previous "leader" wouldn't even acknowledge its existence.
Mr. Obama swore to uphold the Constitution -- twice, amazingly -- to "faithfully execute the office" to which he was astonishingly elected. Faithful execution of that office included protecting the nation's citizens. He couldn't even allow himself to utter the phrase "Islamic terror" or, as I would say, "Islamic supremacists", then how in God's name could he protect the citizens from them? Thank God he is not leading us now.
White supremacists have nothing on these guys.
Copyright 2017, 2015 by Robert Sutton