Mohammed now second most popular boys' name in Britain

[forester814]

Originally Posted by lackluster

I'm curious as to how you could construe a statement that says "from a liberal perspective", as being any sort of epithet or insult? Listing myself as a moderate liberal in this forum ,and arguing from the standpoint of supporting liberal values against the illiberal, myself, this just doesn't make any sense to me.

It didn't make sense to me either, honestly.
As I said, it appears there was a communication breakdown.
I'm very glad to hear that I was reading your intent incorrectly.
Again, I apologize for my part in this misunderstanding.

Change for change sake is not a good thing when that change is peing pulled away from liberal values rather than towards them.

That is extremely well-put. I hope through this conversation, you can see now that I was never advocating change for change's sake.

As I said previously, of COURSE I support social changes that advance liberal values, and oppose those that would move society in the other direction.

as to some articles, here is a couple:

Thanks! I am off to do some reading.

[lackluster]

Originally Posted by forester814

I apologize for my part in this misunderstanding.



.

No need to apologize, F. It does sound like a misunderstanding.

To try to explain where I am coming from might require volumes, but I find myself very disappointed in the way so much of the left (not all of the left mind you) now approaches the world. Instead of asking "what are my values, and who represents these values", a common group think has developed where people aren't really supporting liberal values but merely enging in politically correct conformity. Im certainly not accusing you of this, but it certainly seems to me that whenever Islam is mentioned, or the actions of Muslims or Islamists discussed, rather than responding from a standpoint where attitudes and actions of those following Islam are taken into account, people just go into knee-jerk defense mode and start defending without really knowing WHAT they are defending or really being precise in their language.

I'm not sure if it's because folks do not want to appear racist and so are loathe to criticize the ideologies of anybody they view as foreign, but it seems to me that folks engage in tremendous amounts of apologia for that which is absolutely antithetical to the values they purport to uphold. Sure, it's a good thing to defend people against bigotry, but let's make sure we really know what we are defending first. If this were 1937 instead of 2007, I feel many people would be defending Nazis or at least failing to criticize them out of fear they were were being bigoted, and just like the Germany of 1937, many of today's Muslims hold such totalitarian beliefs as to be intolerable for any sort of civilized person. Also like the Germany of 1937, there are varying levels of support within the greater population for these totalitarians, and so I think it incumbent on people to take the time to understand the attitudes and level of support actually involved and express themselves in terms of values instead of just defending people. Liberals should be the FIRST to get in line to renounce Islamism, but so many fail to do so, and that's what bothers me.

If you have ever run across Peter Beinart's excellent article "A fighting faith", he details some of the same sentiments I'm trying to get across.

Also, for a good read as to the conflict between feminism and multiculturalism (which is also one of the reasons much of the left fails to criticize Islamism), I'd suggest Susan Moller Olkin. She is right on the mark.