And speaking of Muslims, let me note that this article from the National Review has the following exchange in the comments:
Mike Bennett: It is one thing to be “humanitarian” when those you help are grateful and want to give something back. It is quite another thing to be “humanitarian” to those who hate you, hate your society, think you offend God, and want nothing more than to take whatever you will give, and then kill you or convert you to their (infinitely inferior) way of life.
Angela Merkel, and most of the other “mainstream” political elites in Europe can't seem to tell the difference.
Malte Steinmeier: It’s exactly what most of them are and do. They are grateful and some are starting to give back. That most don’t have the means yet to give back isn’t really surprising, given that they are in a foreign country and have to learn the language and customs.
The people who hate us and what we stand for are the ones we fight against. But you can’t say all Muslims are like that. Not all Catholics are child molesters. Not all Trump voters are pussygrabbers. Not all Americans love weapons. It goes on and on.
Generalization is the worst form of intellectual laziness. The Islamist extremists are like the Catholic crusaders, or the priests who brought “civilization” to tribes in Africa, South America. They resorted to pretty much the same. Torture, slavery, rape, murder all to bring Christianity to the “unenlightened.” [Note: I cleaned up the English of this answer]
These are the ones we fight against? Whom does Malte Steinmeier mean by we? Well, I assume that he is defending the elites (especially Merkel) in their desire to bring Muslims into the West. I assume this simply because it seems unlikely that someone who despises the elites would have given the examples he (she?) gave in the last paragraph. However, the elites have never fought against the ones who hate us and what we stand for. They have always supported them. They have always encouraged them, or at least never discouraged them.
Consider terrorist attacks. Have we ever heard our elites say that they hate the West? Never. We often hear that their motive will never be known, or else we hear that they have legitimate grievances against us. How about the trafficking of teenage girls in Rotherham? The police and social workers knew it was happening, but did nothing to stop it. How about the New Year’s Eve groping in Cologne? We all know that the powers-that-be refused to let the public know about it, until the secret was out due to social media.
Every instance I have heard of a clash between us Westerners and Muslims who hate us seems to have the elites siding with the Muslims rather than us.
I suppose it is possible that what I am hearing are the “man bites dog” stories rather than the many “dog bites man” stories, the reason being that the latter are not newsworthy. Still, it is up to people like Steinmeier to provide the evidence that the elites are in fact generally sticking up for us. The fact that lots of people are now moving to the right, including people who think of themselves as liberal (see here and scroll down to paragraph 6), is not a good sign. It suggests that the elites really are not sticking up for us.
It is also possible that Steinmeier is siding with the counter-jihad, but is warning them to restrict their ire to those Muslims who hate us rather than attacking those who like us. But as I said above, the examples he gives in his last paragraph seems to be the sort that the average liberal or leftist would use rather than what a counter-jihadist would use.
Anyway, this perhaps is the world that many liberals and leftists live in. Somehow, they believe that the bad guys among all the Muslim immigrants are being dealt with, while all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they are being coddled.
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