Jun 29th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Sowell: Obama Will Lead to Sharia
Via Tyler Cowen, Thomas Sowell argues that “Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.”
And, yes, that was in National Review the flagship publication of the American right.
50 Responses to “Sowell: Obama Will Lead to Sharia”
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June 29th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
This is ironic coming from the people who let Osama bin Laden get away.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year…
Wow, that *is* impressive. If Obama is going to spend $30 trillion this year, I had better damned well get that pony.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
People at National Review have always been crazy. It’s not like it was a respectable publication that has lost its way.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
When did Sowell turn into such a dumbass? Sure, two nukes helped bring the Japanese to unconditional surrender – [em]after[/em] their military and navy had been almost crushed, large parts of the home islands had been bombed (including most cities), and virtually all supplies of outside resources were cut-off by blockade and US air strikes. Aside from the fact that Iran doesn’t even have a delivery platform to hit the US with nukes, two nukes is more likely to get the US to turn Iran into fused silica with its response.
Seriously, that’s quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard from Sowell – even stupider than Dinesh D’Souza’s usual nonsense. I’m actually surprised, because I’ve read some of his earlier stuff, and it was fairly intelligent and well-written.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
The John Birch Society has been reborn with many, too many hysterics vying for the mantle of most paranoid. It is hard to imagine how someone’s mind can believe something as irrational as this. Simply unbelievable.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Being on the losing side electorally hasn’t been good for these guys. They are just getting crazier and crazier.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
He’s pretty damn out of touch if he thinks that the Republicans have anything like a liberal wing of their party.
He’s also pretty damn stupid if he hasn’t noticed that these tussles aren’t determining who gets to determine policy, they’re about who gets to stay in the party.
June 29th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Re Sowell’s statement “might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.”
———–
Fuck me –is Rev John Hagee running for office?
June 29th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Idiots.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
“Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.”
Well, they wouldn’t be able to get an abortion, they wouldn’t be able to be in a lesbian relationship, they wouldn’t be paid the same as men, or have a host of civil/legal protections — so basically, about the same as that it would mean for them to live under Republican law.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Mr. Sowell is no spring-chicken, and NRO is not exactly pro-science and technology, but surely they can provide links to things like this Gallup poll from “last week” that apparently shows an “overwhelming majority” of people who identify themselves as Conservative.
I went to http://gallup.com , and could not find this poll from last week that he mentions. Am I the only one?
June 29th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
@Why Oh Why – I think there may have been a few years where they wanted to have an honest and serious discussion instead of stoking the idea that Democrats plan to bring a mix of Stalinism and 8th century Islamic practice to our national government.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Ahhh, maybe he meant an overwhelming majority of non-hispanic white people. http://www.gallup.com/poll/118937/Republican-Base-Heavily-White-Conservative-Religious.aspx
June 29th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx
…found it.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
When did Sowell turn into such a dumbass?
He always was a dumbass. He simply provides his readers with the feeling that they have read something intelligent without actually informing them. And thus his fans don’t realize that he’s always been such a dumbass. But I’m going to point to this latest stupidity of his next time one of his fanbois praises him to the high heavens.
June 29th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
We are in Hell and don’t know it.®
June 29th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Overwhelming majority = 40%?
No wonder they thought Bush had a mandate.
June 29th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
[...] Are Stupid…Yes, They’re Still At It Via Yglesias “Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Bob Dole was a “kinder and gentler” Republican?
I’m not sure Sowell literally meant Sharia law coming to the US because of military defeat of the US by Islamists leading to military occupation of the US by some Islamist nation. Maybe he did, which is really really really stupid, but the usual story is that we just get so demoralized under Obama and friends that we just sort of let them do whatever they want. Or something like that.
I think I know how this story goes. It goes something like — local mullahs set up Sharia-based arbitration services to resolve local contract disputes and family matters. The Muslims want their arbitration services to be binding, so that if Ahmed says Mohammed owes him $2,000 based on some contract, and the Sharia arbitration service agrees, Mohammed can’t just say “screw that. I don’t owe you anything. If you want to pursue this, you’ll have to take me to a regular court.” The Democrats, in the grip of multi-cultural relativistic hipsterism, agree, making Sharia binding for civil disputes among Muslims.
Then, the Muslims want Sharia law to apply as criminal code too, at least for intra-Muslim criminal cases. Inspired by Obama’s wimpiness, the Federal government and all states agree to this. Then Sharia becomes binding on Muslims who commit crimes against non-Muslims, and eventually on non-Muslims who commit crimes against Muslims. Eventually, secular law is so riddled with holes that it effectively no longer has jurisdiction over anything, and Sharia becomes the basis of all law.
Lack of “toughness” on Iran, then, is not a harbinger of defeat of the US on American soil by Iran and military occupation of the US by Iran, but of apathy and ideological insecurity that leads Muslims to restructure our society from within without us really caring enough stop them.
Either story is really stupid, of course, but I think that the US-under-Iranian-military-occupation story is so stupid that even the wingnut mind usually rebels against it (nukes or not), I think.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
You mischaracterize what Sowell says. He doesn’t claim that Obama will lead to Sharia Law. He simply asks those who support him to consider what life is like under that kind of social structure.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
I believe he was asking people to have “empathy” for those who live under Sharia law.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
He doesn’t claim that Obama will lead to Sharia Law. He simply asks those who support him to consider what life is like under that kind of social structure.
Wrong, unless Sowell is addressing only those senior citizens who currently have grandchildren. He’s asking Obama supporters to imagine a future in which the readers’ granddaughters in America are living under Shari’a law because of their support for Obama.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
And this nonsense was reprinted on the editorial page of my local newspaper. Obama Derangement Syndrome?
June 29th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I’m gonna come down on the side of Sowell having written some fairly intelligent stuff a long long long time ago.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
godoggo:
Can you offer proof that Sowell ever wrote anything intelligent?
June 29th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
[...] (Hat tip: Matt) [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Oh, I find myself citing Ethnic America probably more often than I ought to …it’s far from b.s. free (e.g. the stuff about minimum wage), but I still thought it was an interesting book. His writings on the subject can be pretty useful for arguing with racists.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I smell contest! Yes, let’s have an open call for the best entries that follow the logical structure of Sowell’s quote.
My entry follows:
“Perhaps people who are busy transplanting day-lillies today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their automobiles to run on 100% pure flogiston.”
June 29th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
To be fair, a run-over squirrel could have beaten Republican candidates in the last two elections.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I think that, genetically speaking, Sowell is a smart guy. However, as he watches the entire world he’s built for himself crumble around him, he’s getting crazier and crazier.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Just overt BIGOTRY coming from an African American who is also a Reich Wing Nut job and dumb ass.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:48 am
So does anyone know what Sharia is, anyway? I’m being serious. Do you really know what it is? It varies so much in the world that the Muslims obviously don’t know either. Well, except that they do. Sharia allows for local custom, which is where the more offensive concepts to be claimed as Sharia come from. But anywhere where it is enforced, it’s a wide variety of laws that don’t fit into our liberal vs conservative framework. And some of the laws are pretty cool. If a man steals food because he is hungry, he is released if he really has no money. Because it is decreed that all Muslims must give food to a man who is starving. Now, I obviously have many problems with Sharia, most pointedly that laws should not be based on religious texts. And while the Quran was way ahead of its day on women’s rights, we’ve come way beyond the Seventh Century. Granted, it took us to the 1960’s to do it, but now we can be self-righteous about it.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Ladies and gentlemen, “Our greatest contemporary philosopher,” thus quoth David Mamet.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:05 am
Shit like this makes me want to hurl.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:09 am
#20 – absolute nonsense. He starts out by talking about a nuclear armed Iran, then notes that two nukes made Japan surrended in WW2, and then says: “It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender — especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago.
Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.”
In other words, exactly what Matt says.
June 30th, 2009 at 6:27 am
The law right now allows this–the only reason it isn’t more widespread is that there aren’t all that many Muslims in this country. But Christian “binding arbitration” takes place all the time.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:21 am
Al Qaeda is now the vanguard of the world’s progressive forces. Only in the sense that Obama is oblivious to this can one say that his leadership will result in Sharia law in the US. But certainly in the realm of the definition of marriage we are likely to have allowances for Sharia marriages within a decade.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:12 am
The “overwhelming majority” stuff has been removed from the article. At the bottom it says: “EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece has been amended since its initial posting.” Unfortunately for them the ex post facto to publication editing left the Sharia Law drivel intact.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Re: If a man steals food because he is hungry, he is released if he really has no money.
That isn’t unique to Shariah, Fostert. Aquinas said the same thing. Please see this from his Summa Theologica:
“I answer that, Things which are of human right cannot derogate from natural right or Divine right. Now according to the natural order established by Divine Providence, inferior things are ordained for the purpose of succoring man’s needs by their means. Wherefore the division and appropriation of things which are based on human law, do not preclude the fact that man’s needs have to be remedied by means of these very things…….[If] the need be so manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be remedied by whatever means be at hand (for instance when a person is in some imminent danger, and there is no other possible remedy), then it is lawful for a man to succor his own need by means of another’s property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery.”
June 30th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Can you offer proof that Sowell ever wrote anything intelligent?
His book Migrations and Cultures: A World View is an excellent work on the positive contributions of immigrants to their new homelands. Sowell is one of those people whose brain broke on 9/11 and has never recovered.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:24 am
It’s not exactly surprising that Aquinas accords with Sharia – Aquinas quotes the great Islamic medieval philosophers all the time, and headed up the University of Paris’ research group that translated Arabic texts of ancient philosophy.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:12 am
You mischaracterize what Sowell says. He doesn’t claim that Obama will lead to Sharia Law. He simply asks those who support him to consider what life is like under that kind of social structure.
But why would Soweill want us to “consider” that if not for the implicit claim that Obama will lead us to Sharia law? If that’s not what he’s talking about, Sowell could just as well have asked us to consider sunsets or kittens.
June 30th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
You mischaracterize what Sowell says. He doesn’t claim that Obama will lead to Sharia Law. He simply asks those who support him to consider what life is like under that kind of social structure.
Would it be easier to ask folks in Iraq what it means” for their granddaughters to live under sharia law” since Bush invaded their country?
June 30th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias: And, yes, that was in National Review the flagship publication of the American right. [...]
June 30th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Burritoboy,
While it’s possible that Aquinas’ position on this matter accords with the Shariah, it’s unlikely that was the source for his reason. Aquinas was much more sympathetic to private property than early church fathers like Ambrose, and his discourse on theft in case of need quotes liberally from early church fathers (Ambrose I think, but I’m not sure).
In other words: the Christian church was skeptical of absolute rights to private propetrty long before Muhammed was ever born.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
A number of posters beat me to the following point . . . a Presidential victory by the party of morality-legislating wiretapping torturers, rather than our current Superpragmatist-in-chief and the spineless Democratic congressional delegation, would most resemble “sharia.”
War is peace . . . freedom is ignorance . . .
June 30th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I wonder: what are those Sharia edicts that Sowell is afraid of?
Pork and alcohol will be outlawed (although Sharia allows Christians to consume both)?
Or, misleading “abstinence only” sex ed will be de-funded, and sex ed with accurate information, promoted?
Or, gasp, federal government will fund reproductive advise that includes the possibility of abortion?
Or, horror! abortion will be among federally funded medical services covered by Medicare and Medicaid?
Or, gays and lesbians will be recognized as non-criminal entities for the purposes of military service?
What are the Sharia horrors that he expects from Obama?
June 30th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
This use to be a pretty good economic blog. I can see that lately it has been taken over by liberals that do not do critical thinking. If you have done the least amount of keeping current with world news in the last year, you would be aware that Sharia Law has already been forced onto the French and the British. This is fact as reported by the AP and New York Times. It is even happening now in Canada. So to think that it could not happen in the US would be arrogant.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:09 am
Has it really, Bill? Hmm, let’s see; I live in Britain, I got roaring drunk last night, I can walk into town and see women not wearing veils, I can buy a bacon roll, I cannot have more than one wife, the gay bars in town remain open, the death penalty has not been reinstated… so what are the characteristics of this Sharia law that has been forced onto us poor Britons?
I realise that Republican columnists have created their own parallel Europe which is completely run by Muslims, but if you’re going to rant about other people not applying critical thinking and not paying attention to the facts, you should make sure your comments apply to planet Earth.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:37 am
Bill W, you have been lied to.