The second most interesting thing in politics for me right now is anti-American terrorism. I'm fascinated by the people who carry it out, the people who are its targets, the way that we talk about it, all of the politics around it. Mostly I'm interested in the way we think and talk (publicly) about the relationship between anti-American terrorism and Islam.
One of the most fascinating elements of the "Who is a terrorist?" conversation is the Right's insistence that we profile Muslims and the Left's rebuttal that we don't profile white men when one of them blows something up (which is true). I think racial profiling is one of those topics like abortion and welfare. To be a good liberal you have to take such an extreme position on it that you completely cede the middle ground to the other side. And the truth (at least politically) is almost always somewhere in the middle.
I often wonder what an honest conversation about modern anti-American terrorism would sound like. Like I wonder what honest conversations about abortion and welfare would sound like. I hope to be a part of one someday. In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal has a very reasonable piece on the attempted Times Square bomber. I dug it.
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