An attack on police and civilians at the Mother of Parliaments is producing some predictable reactions—NewsBusters writes NBC Reporter Fears London Terror Will ‘Put Wind in the Sails’ of ‘Right-Wing Movement.’
That's what they really fear—not Muslim terror, but a conservative, patriotic government being elected as a result. This reminds me of something I saw on Twitter a couple of days ago—the WSJ's James Taranto arguing with Peter Beinart over the possible consequences of another major terrorist attack:
Am I crazy for thinking a MAJOR JIHADIST TERRORIST ATTACK against the U.S. is the bigger worry here? https://t.co/vpn2P1Mf7A
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) March 20, 2017
This is from your magazine. https://t.co/AOY2g1DtNq Are the French as bad as FDR and your imaginary Trump? https://t.co/ogC9VNj2Xq
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) March 20, 2017
Well, your earlier tweet didn't say "if there's a major jihadi terrorist attack, Trump may restrict bathing suits." https://t.co/m47LDE0NfM
— James Taranto (@jamestaranto) March 20, 2017
That's the craziness—the Atlantic's Beinart is less worried about the possibility of a major terror attack than he is that a mosque might be closed.
If US hit by major jihadist terrorist attack, real chance Trump closes some mosques. I try to explain why.https://t.co/P0Cp7RQMB2
— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) March 19, 2017
As I wrote in 2005, the Left's response to an attack on America by alien enemies was to immediately form a "Society for the Protection of Enemy Aliens."
"On September 11, the nearest television set at my college was in the video laboratory, and around me there swirled a reassuring bustle of purposeful and competent activity. One faculty colleague worked to hook up the recorder, another crouched and leaned to snap still photos from the television screens. Standing among them, as we watched the World Trade Center topple, I felt a palpable and unanticipated gregariousness, a concord of mood and feeling.That was their first thought; not fighting back, not protecting America, not anything as normal as, say, revenge, but this: protect the enemy aliens."This sense of commonality barely outlasted the towers themselves. One of my younger colleagues, a woman who keeps an apartment in Brooklyn, turned to me, badly shaken, and said, "I have to do something about this in my class. I have to show them the video about the Japanese internment camps."
"So much for collective mood. Why should the murder of thousands of men, women, and children, accomplished in an instant, concern us? Well, it turns out, because it might lead to something really serious, like civil-rights violations. [War comes to Williams, By Michael J. Lewis, Commentary Magazine, November 2001]
The mythology attached to the internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans is more important in high school history classes than anything like the wartime activities of the Empire of Japan, or the heroism of the Navy and Marine Corps in the Pacific.
I myself had never heard the story of the Niihau Island Incident, discussed in Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment, when, as Steve Sailer wrote,
...the first two Japanese American citizens to have their loyalty spontaneously tested by a Japanese incursion ...flunked. A Japanese pilot returning from shooting up Pearl Harbor crash-landed on Niihau, the privately-owned ranching island that serves as a cultural preserve for Native Hawaiians. The two American-born citizens of Japanese descent on Niihau collaborated with the pilot and briefly took over the island, until a wounded Hawaiian killed the aviator with his bare hands. One of the quislings then shot himself. [More]When alien terror strikes, the Left always fears that it will inspire a reaction from the white majority.
