By Ben Shapiro
Tuesday, September 20, 2016
On Saturday night, a Muslim terrorist stabbed nine people
in a Minnesota shopping mall before being shot dead by an off-duty cop. Around
the same time, another Muslim terrorist’s bomb exploded in Manhattan, wounding
29 people, one critically. That suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, reportedly planted
a second unexploded bomb in the area, as well as a backpack filled with IEDs in
Elizabeth, New Jersey. Earlier in the morning, another bomb he is alleged to
have built exploded along the route of a military charity race in New Jersey.
All in all, Muslim terrorists had a busy Saturday.
Naturally, the media rushed to target the real danger to
Americans: Donald Trump. Half an hour after the Chelsea bombing, Trump stated,
in typically vague militaristic language, that a bomb had gone off in New York
City, and that America needed to get “very tough.” This prompted apoplexy from
members of the media, who deemed it unthinkable that Trump could label the
incident a “bombing” without full confirmation. Hillary Clinton, too, attempted
to scold Trump for his premature articulation: “It’s important to know the
facts about any incidents like this. I think it’s always wiser to wait until
you have information before making conclusions.” Of course, Clinton and her
media allies conveniently ignored the fact that Trump turned out to be right.
And that was only their first line of attack.
Next came the inevitable attempts to paint Trump as the source of the attacks. Clinton led the
way, stating that ISIS “are looking to make this into a war against Islam,
rather than a war against jihadists, violent terrorists. The kinds of rhetoric
and language Mr. Trump has used is giving aid and comfort to our adversaries.”
(The language “aid and comfort,” as Clinton knows, refers to actual treason,
punishable by death.) She also called Trump a “recruiting sergeant” for ISIS,
repeating a line she’s been using since April. The media had no fact-checkers
readily available to determine whether Trump has been filling out the forms at
the local ISIS recruitment center, though they were willing to flood the field
when Trump said that Hillary and Obama had created ISIS.
The Obama White House, meanwhile, declared that the real
threat to America came not from terrorists attempting to maim and kill American
citizens, but from the prospective loss of the “narrative” war. “When it comes
to ISIL, we are in a fight, a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle,”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest explained. “And what ISIL wants to do
is they want to project that they are an organization that is representing
Islam in a fight and a war against the West, and a war against the United
States. . . . We can’t play into this narrative.” He then blamed Trump for
helping ISIS’s cause in this narrative war — although those stabbed in
Minnesota and wounded in New York might argue that they weren’t harmed by a
sharp metal narrative.
What’s the strategy here? The same strategy Democrats
have rolled out since the end of World War II: attempting to demonize
Republicans as the true threat to the republic, a greater threat even than
foreign adversaries. During the Cold War, Democrats routinely pilloried
Republicans as the real risk to American freedoms — LBJ suggested that Barry
Goldwater would usher in an age of nuclear war, and Jimmy Carter argued Ronald Reagan
would do the same. For two generations, the Left argued that militant
conservative anti-Communists were a greater danger to Americans than
Communists. Conservatives, meanwhile, argued that the greatest danger to
America lay in the Soviet Union.
In the post–Cold War era, liberals have continued to
argue that conservatives pose a threat to freedom and peace. Republicans, they
say, are the true enemy: They want to take away your free stuff and your sexual
freedom, reverse the racial progress we’ve made. On foreign policy, the Left’s
true area of political vulnerability, progressives make the same argument with
regard to ISIS they once made with regard to the Soviet Union: We have little
to worry about from ISIS per se — after all, they’re not an “existential”
threat to the United States — but we do
have to worry that right-wing rhetoric will turn the entire Muslim world
against us, provoking World War III. Donald Trump supposedly represents the tip
of that spear. He will lose us the narrative war.
Meanwhile, Trump argues that gormless leftism cripples
the West in its fight against Islamic terrorism, and voters buy it. It’s
difficult for Americans to stomach talk of the dangers of right-wing
Islamophobia when one Muslim terrorist attack after another dominates the news.
Nobody in their right mind fears Donald Trump’s rhetoric generating terrorism
more than ISIS’s setting kettle bombs in trash cans. Trump isn’t as scary as
ISIS, no matter how much effort the media and Hillary Clinton put into
persuading us he is.
That’s why Trump seems to benefit in the court of public
opinion in the wake of terrorist attacks. The Democratic argument that Trump is
the Scariest Man in the World only works in a universe where ISIS isn’t scary.
And that means downplaying the threat ISIS poses, pretending that all is well
when it plainly isn’t.
Given that it isn’t — given that Islamic terrorism is a real threat to American citizens —
the Left is far more dangerous than the Right. Progressives pursue policies
that guarantee an increase in terrorism: unfettered immigration from unvettable
areas, onerous restrictions on legal use of law-enforcement resources to pursue
leads, public shaming rituals against citizens who have the temerity to report
the suspicious activities of Muslims. Without them, ISIS simply could not have
succeeded as it has over the past several years.
Americans know that, too, so the Left’s attack on Trump
is bound to fail in this case. But that won’t stop them from trying. After all,
they only have one play, and they’ll keep running it until the clock runs out.
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