To Give a Defense
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Thomas L. McDonald, writing at Catholic World Report, has a very good article in response to those who have defended President Obama’s words at the Prayer Breakfast on the ground that what he said was, strictly speaking, true.
[D]eploying the Crusades or the Inquisition in modern rhetoric creates a very specific, consistent image in almost all listeners, and that dominant image is always historically inaccurate. Worse, it’s freighted with meaning wholly unrelated to the history from which it seeks to draw a lesson. … Part of the Islamic culture of grievance has to do with a myth of the Crusades they’ve created. It’s flat-out irresponsible for a Western leader to perpetuate and legitimatize it.
… There is the sense on the left that Western civilization is not sufficiently schooled in the evils of our past racism and religious extremism, and that we need to be continually educated by our betters lest some new explosion of violence against minorities erupts. That this eruption is always predicted in the wake of anti-Western violence, yet never occurs, doesn’t seem to matter. In their eyes, we’re children who need to be told that racism is bad and we shouldn’t feel so good about our own history. This was a chastisement, and a typically tone-deaf one at that.
In the course of normal affairs, a teacher or parent or even a leader urging us to come to terms with our own past would not be particularly notable. …
The President’s problem is his failure to grasp that this is not the course of normal affairs. An Islamic-supremacist army is burning people alive in cages. Noting that racist whites also burned men alive in the days of Jim Crow is not merely useless: it’s dangerous. There’s no risk in America of a return to Jim Crow, and Europe is not at risk of new Crusades or Inquisitions. Even in the face of real and continued issues with race in our country, there is literally no chance whatsoever that our country would tolerate a return to lynchings.
Read more here. The whole article is spot-on.
Some, on blogs and in social media, have been urging that the outrage has somehow been made up by the right wing. It’s nothing but “noise.” Obama, they say, did not compare the Crusades and ISIS; and violence has been done in the name of Christ. Why, John Paul II even apologized for evil acts done during the Crusades!
Which he did. And yet all this misses the mark. For one, the pope never apologized for the Crusades themselves; whereas the whole purpose of ISIS is nothing but barbarous murder and unprovoked aggression.
Nor does anyone deny that evil has been done in the name of Christ. I have not read the person who says otherwise. In fact, all the posts I’ve read have been at pains to admit it. I did so myself.
But that is not the only thing Mr. Obama said. His larger point was that people should not “get on their high horse” and think that “this is unique.” Well, by “this,” he was referring to ISIS. Right there is the comparison between ISIS and the Crusades that some are denying Obama made. It is that that is false, and it is that to which many object.
Not one to make such fine distinctions, the Daily Kos posted this article. It wagged its finger and told us that, after all, you know, white people did burn black people alive during Jim Crow.
Yes. They did. And no one denies it. That is why Mr. McDonald’s point is so well taken: There is no chance, none, that America will, at any time, ever, return to Jim Crow. None. Nor are any of those who say we need to put all our might into wiping ISIS off the earth saying that Jim Crow was a good thing. Not one. So where’s this “high horse” that Mr. Obama is so worried about?
At Vox, Max Fisher tells us, with much show of gravity, that the only reason anyone is objecting to Mr. Obama’s words is because people just want to go on hating Muslims. That does not merit a serious response, except to say that it fails to engage even one argument. Mr. Fisher cites a few people, to be sure—as though for the sake of appearances—but rather than engage what they say, he moves at once into the charge of racism.
That just will not do. What reason does Mr. Fisher have for thinking that? He does not give any. If Mr. Obama’s words were truly as “banal” as they are said to be, then one would think that someone could engage an actual argument. But they don’t. Instead they throw around blithe accusations of racism. Can no one engage an actual argument anymore? or are we just to be told, with a high rhetorical hammer, that this is no more than some sort of invented rage to suit a right-wing Fifteen Minutes of Hate?
I have grown tired of those who can not, or will not, engage a real argument; who prefer instead to resort to rhetorical bluster as a substitute. It is past time we start to listen to what others have in fact said, rather than make up names and boxes to fit them into. That’s the high horse I worry about.
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