I’m conservative when it comes to big things like morality and personal integrity. Lesser things too: grammar, punctuality, neatness. I have no use for those who don’t live up to positive societal values, the important ones that help us work together to make life better for everyone. I reject those who want to bring us all down to the level of the lowest common denominator, those who say crap values are equal to good values.<\/p>\n
Lately, in addition to my basic conservatism, I’ve been experiencing some knee-jerk reactionary moments, and I’m a little concerned about it. Is it a natural part of getting older, or the onset of something worse?<\/p>\n
Case in point: Muslim immigration. I mentioned the other day that if Europeans close the door to future Muslim immigration in the wake of repeated terrorist attacks, I would not condemn them. God knows some Muslim immigrants have given Europeans plenty of reason to distrust them. Similarly, I don’t reject Israel for its harsh actions against Palestinian terrorism, and I won’t condemn the Turks for their hostility towards the Kurds. I have not walked in their shoes and don’t know both sides of the story.<\/p>\n
I’m beginning to think putting Muslims who want to come to the USA under the magnifying glass isn’t as wrong-headed as I first thought. This doesn’t mean I’m a Trumpite. If anything, it means I’m a Clintonite, because I suspect that while Hillary publicly says the correct & conventional things about Muslim immigration, as president she and her administration would actually be cautious and conservative about letting large numbers of Muslims … young single men in particular … into the country. Just as President Obama and his administration has been.<\/p>\n
And there you have it, the latest jerk of my conservative knee.<\/p>\n
Speaking of Turks, my pedicurist Semra is one. Somehow this morning we got to talking about terrorism in Europe, and I hinted at my willingness to take a harder look at allowing large numbers of Muslims into the USA. That’s all it took, and she was off: I’m Muslim but I’m a Turk, not an Arab; you can’t trust any Arab; they’ll eat breakfast with you in the morning and kill you in the evening; ask any Turk and they’ll tell you. I’m not fully clear as to whether she was condemning all Arabs or just Muslim Arabs, but it was quite a tirade. Sadly, at the end of her rant she said Trump was the answer. I decided to keep my thoughts about Clinton to myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m conservative when it comes to big things like morality and personal integrity. Lesser things too: grammar, punctuality, neatness. I have no use for those who don’t live up to positive societal values, the important ones that help us work together to make life better for everyone. I reject those who want to bring us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,10,22],"tags":[2079,828,2080],"class_list":["post-18444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-terrorism","tag-arabs","tag-muslims","tag-turks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18444"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18448,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18444\/revisions\/18448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}