There is no doubt that one of the advantages Americans have over Europeans in the struggle against Islamic expansion is our tradition of expansive free speech, and the suspicion of central authority that is virtually hard-wired into our culture. Thanks to the first of these, we have no laws like those in Canada, Great Britain, and other once-free countries, that restrict our right to point out truthfully the totalitarian aspirations of orthodox Muslims. Thanks to the second attribute, our engrained suspicion of state power, we retain a somewhat higher portion of our incomes than citizens of more socialized societies; we also have deep constitutional barriers against the establishment of monstrosities like sharia law, and a firm defense against attempts to impose one-sided, double-standard “blasphemy” laws. The spread of Islamic power is all the more threatening in a country that claims broad rights to “socialize” one’s children as it sees fit–viz. Germany’s still extant (Hitler-vintage) laws forbidding the home-schooling of children. What happens in such a country when all the schools begin to adopt aggressively pro-Islamic curricula? I fear for my fellow freedom-lovers in parts of Europe who enjoy none of the protections we do over here. They deserve our support and prayers.

That said, there is a shadow cast by the American hunger for liberty, and it is libertarianism. By this I do not mean the localist, anti-regulation, socially conservative world-view shared by most members of the Tea Party movement. The majority of what I’ve seen from people like that is hardly distinguishable from the old conservatism of Ronald Reagan. It takes for granted that the purpose of restricting central, federal power is to make room for local governments to respond to the preferences of ordinary citizens, and the reason for cutting taxes is to allow citizens real freedom; when 50% or 70% of one’s labor gets taxed away and dumped in the hands of the State, so it may dispense whatever “benefits” it sees fit, there is very little wealth or time left over to construct civic order the old-fashioned way–through voluntary efforts, private organizations, churches, or private schools. Pardon me if I sound provincial here, but talking to friends from Europe who share our views on Islam and multiculturalism, I’ve been shocked at few private schools exist on the Continent or even in England, how many obstacles exist to starting them, and how little philanthropic cash is left after taxes to support them. Just as it was easier for Hitler to control the Germany economy after coming to power because there were so many monopolies and cartels, so it is simpler for anti-Westerners who gain power in such countries to shove their views down citizens’ throats. That only increases my respect for those who still resist.

No, the libertarianism that sickens me is of a different kind, exemplified by Reason magazine, which is far more concerned about the rights of drug-users, would-be self-cloners, and pornographers than it is about the claims of parents and families. In a recent online column Reason‘s Nick Gillespie heaps adolescent scorn on the conservatives who object to the hijacking of CPAC, a major conservative activist event, by cultural forces incompatible with the beliefs of most conservatives. In the cutesy, undergraduate rhetoric characteristic of Reason, he entitles his piece “Will CPAC Enact Sharia Law at Its Annual Conference?” With exactly the sense of civility I have come to expect from such libertarians, Gillespie reports:

Muslims For America supported the building of the “Ground Zero mosque” on the hallowed grounds of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory (remember, kids, it’s not just coats: It’s also burkas, hijabs, and phony designer-label items) and has managed to hoodwink none other than Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist, once a widely hailed leader of the vaunted “Leave Us Alone Coalition,” and now just another tool of Osama bin Laden’s mincing, curly-cue-toed slipper-wearing operatives.

Left out of Gillespie’s smug account are facts like these: In June 2001, Muslims for America leader Suhail Khan “personally accepted an award from the now-notorious Abdurahman Alamoudi, then head of the American Muslim Council,” according to Creeping Sharia. This is the same Alamoudi who (as the New York Post reported in 1998) told a Hamas meeting in Chicago “If we are outside this country, we can say, ‘Oh Allah, destroy America.'”
Here are just a few more choice tidbits, reported by the New York Post, which Jihadwatch picked up when they hit the press:

In September 2001, four days before the 9/11 attacks, Khan spoke at the Islamic Society of North America’s convention. Introducing him was Jamal Barzinji, whose offices and home were raided by federal agents after 9/11. “Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], but also with Hamas,” according to the search-warrant affidavit. (A lawyer for Barzinji, who has not been charged, says he is the victim of a government “witch hunt.”)At the event, Khan shared his experiences from “inside” the White House, and praised his late father, Mahboob Khan, for helping found ISNA — which the government now says is a front for the radical Muslim Brotherhood and has raised money for jihad. The founding documents of the Brotherhood’s operation in America (recently seized by the FBI) reveal that it is in this country to “destroy” the Constitution and replace it with Islamic law.

But you really should watch the damning video that goes in greater depth into the stealth jihad activites of Khan:

Gillespie approvingly quotes Muslim apologist (and probable convert) Grover Norquist who warns Republicans not to alienate the “millions of Arab American and Muslim American voters who believe, as we do, in the principles of our party – individual liberty, traditional values and the rule of law.” Remember those millions of Muslim-Americans who marched recently in opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws? Those are the people Norquist must be talking about.

Gillespie’s scorn of ordinary Americans who have informed themselves of the global threat that Islam poses to individual liberties proves that his advocacy of individual rights is a shallow as his appreciation for the fragility of civic order, or the preciousness of the liberties that were hard-won over centuries in the West. Those liberties he pretends fell from the sky and takes utterly for granted, as if the right of religious liberty (just to pick one precious freedom sharia crushes) were as common as sand in Arabia.

This kind of libertarianism is more concerned with the way airport security guards frisk Americans than why they are being frisked in the first place. It worries more about the rights of terrorists in custody than their thousands of past (and future) victims. It congratulates itself at undermining the civic foundations that make a free society possible, and with both hands squanders the social capital on which our liberties rest. I’m reminded of French aristocrats who feted Jacobins in their salons, tittering over their totalitarian aspirations, indulging the onanistic frisson of what Tom Wolfe called “radical chic.”