Silly Little Country

The Baby Language of Gobbledegook

Via the excellent Butterflies and Wheels, another very good opinion piece by Nick Cohen .

His theme is broader

I have become so used to hearing leftists defending reactionaries I am no longer shocked. But my '68er surprised me with a form of bad faith I had never seen in the flesh before...At home and abroad he treated Muslims who rejected the religious right with casual condescension.

The last paragraph (it is worth the journey from the first to the last):

Ayaan Hirsi listened to Garton Ash and had two questions. If liberal secularists, like my heckler, didn't have pride and confidence in their principles, why should they expect anyone else to take them seriously? And if, like Garton Ash, they turned away from democrats and insisted on treating European Muslims as children who can only be spoken to in the baby language of gobbledegook, what right did they have to be surprised if European Muslims reacted with childish petulance rather than the broad-mindedness of full adult citizens?

And we have sure seen some childish petulance lately!

(One small point - I htink Cohen is slightly unfair to Tariq Ramadan, but much less unfair than the ever-smooth Ramadan is in arguing his side.)

posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:11 PM