First, a brief note is needed.

A long-time reader left in the comments to my post “Fear and hate” a remark that I had “become such a name caller,” which is interesting because nowhere in the post do I call names. I point out that right-wing weblogs are seeking out reasons to connect the riots in France to Islam, and relate these tendencies to similar, simple-minded linkages, correlations that did not prove causality, that existed in the United States 35 years ago, making the point that just as the violence of that time was connected to things other than the color of the skin of those participating in the unrest, the violence now is not rooted fundamentally in Islam.

Somehow, this is “name calling” to a blogger who refers to liberals and the left-wing without discrimination as “moonbats.”

Read my post, and decide for yourself regarding if I call names or if instead I point out bad behavior on the part of many on the right-wing (noting that nowhere do I paint ALL right-wingers with this brush but instead refer to extremists seeing what they want to see).

Draw your own conclusions, but please take off your partisan glasses first.

Unless, of course, you insist that everyone must think exactly as you do, as some seem to believe despite their protests otherwise.

As I have written often before, moderation and reason is NOT non-partisan, and it is NOT a viewpoint lacking strong, deeply-held beliefs. It is instead an acknowledgement that no one is correct ALL the time, and a willingness to listen to others and their views and a considered weighing of those opinions. I have changed my views on some issues because of the discussions I have had and things I have read.

All too often, I see those who defend their views far beyond the point of rationality even when the falsity is more than obvious to even their fellow-travelers.

For those who continue to insist upon correlation proving causality, when it does not, but are indeed willing to consider viewpoints other than their own, ponder this correlation discovered inside France before the onset of violence:

And it is not easy for even ambitious young people to break out if they come from a district with a bad reputation, as Jean-Francois Amadieu, a university professor who founded the “Discrimination Observatory” discovered in experiments over the past year.

He sent out fictitious applications for sales jobs, allegedly coming from six different sorts of applicant, ranging from a white male to a woman of North African origins, all with the same résumé.

Applicants writing from addresses known to be in “difficult” areas received half as many invitations to an interview as those from less notorious districts. The “North African” male candidate received five times fewer invitations than his white counterpart, says Prof. Amadieu.

At the same time, complains Michèle Lereste, who runs the “Green Light” social-work agency in Villetaneuse, just North of Paris, where the projects are almost entirely inhabited by immigrant-descended families, government funding cuts have closed a number of job-training institutes, “and we are finding it harder and harder to get employers to take apprentices from our district.”

The violence has spread to the town in which I live. I doubtless have met and spoken with some of those now rioting. You see, I spend time in the “ethnic neighborhoods” looking for photos to take.

The origins of the current violence in France are complex, and simplistic linking of the riots to Islamist incitement is not only betraying a partisan agenda that uses the same “logic” as racism, but ultimately is damaging because it creates a distraction from the larger struggle the United States is engaged upon. This wider conflict is not against Islam, but rather against a radical philosophy that uses Islam as a tool to manipulate, just as politicians in the United States use scare and smear tactics as tools to gain votes.

Is this apparently cynical attitude towards US politicians because I hate the US, democracy, and freedom?

No.

It is because I love my country and the ideals upon which it was founded. Ideals I feel many have lost sight of on BOTH the left AND the right, despite how often they say they are fighting for them.

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