Obama’s remarks on the Crusades and ISIS: some addenda.

homas L. McDon­ald, writ­ing at Catholic World Report, has a very good arti­cle in response to those who have defend­ed Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s words at the Prayer Break­fast on the ground that what he said was, strict­ly speak­ing, true:

[D]eploying the Cru­sades or the Inqui­si­tion in mod­ern rhetoric cre­ates a very spe­cif­ic, con­sis­tent image in almost all lis­ten­ers, and that dom­i­nant image is always his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate. Worse, it’s freight­ed with mean­ing whol­ly unre­lat­ed to the his­to­ry from which it seeks to draw a les­son. … Part of the Islam­ic cul­ture of griev­ance has to do with a myth of the Cru­sades they’ve cre­at­ed. It’s flat-out irre­spon­si­ble for a West­ern leader to per­pet­u­ate and legit­i­ma­tize it.

… There is the sense on the left that West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is not suf­fi­cient­ly schooled in the evils of our past racism and reli­gious extrem­ism, and that we need to be con­tin­u­al­ly edu­cat­ed by our bet­ters lest some new explo­sion of vio­lence against minori­ties erupts. That this erup­tion is always pre­dict­ed in the wake of anti-West­ern vio­lence, yet nev­er occurs, doesn’t seem to mat­ter. In their eyes, we’re chil­dren who need to be told that racism is bad and we shouldn’t feel so good about our own his­to­ry. This was a chas­tise­ment, and a typ­i­cal­ly tone-deaf one at that.

In the course of nor­mal affairs, a teacher or par­ent or even a leader urg­ing us to come to terms with our own past would not be par­tic­u­lar­ly notable. …

The President’s prob­lem is his fail­ure to grasp that this is not the course of nor­mal affairs. An Islam­ic-suprema­cist army is burn­ing peo­ple alive in cages. Not­ing that racist whites also burned men alive in the days of Jim Crow is not mere­ly use­less: it’s dan­ger­ous. There’s no risk in Amer­i­ca of a return to Jim Crow, and Europe is not at risk of new Cru­sades or Inqui­si­tions. Even in the face of real and con­tin­ued issues with race in our coun­try, there is lit­er­al­ly no chance what­so­ev­er that our coun­try would tol­er­ate a return to lynch­ings.

Read more here. The whole arti­cle is spot-on.

Some, on blogs and in social media, have been urg­ing that the out­rage is a right-wing fic­tion. It’s noth­ing but “noise.” Oba­ma, they say, did not com­pare the Cru­sades and ISIS, and Chris­tians have done vio­lence in the name of Christ. Why, John Paul II even apol­o­gized for evil acts done dur­ing the Cru­sades!

Which he did. And yet all this miss­es the mark. For one, the pope nev­er apol­o­gized for the Cru­sades them­selves, where­as the whole pur­pose of ISIS is noth­ing but bar­barous mur­der and unpro­voked aggres­sion.

Nor does any­one deny that evil has been done in the name of Christ. I have not read the per­son who says oth­er­wise. In fact, all the posts I’ve read have been at pains to admit it. I did so myself.

But that is not the only thing Mr. Oba­ma said. His larg­er point was that peo­ple should not “get on their high horse” and think that “this is unique.” Well, by “this,” he was refer­ring to ISIS. Right there is the com­par­i­son between ISIS and the Cru­sades that some are deny­ing Oba­ma made. It is that that is false, and it is that to which many object.

Not one to make such fine dis­tinc­tions, the Dai­ly Kos post­ed this arti­cle, wag­ging the fin­ger to tell us that, after all, you know, white peo­ple did burn black peo­ple alive dur­ing Jim Crow.

Yes. They did. And no one denies it. That is why Mr. McDon­ald’s point is so well tak­en: There is no chance, none, that Amer­i­ca will, at any time, ever, return to Jim Crow. None. Nor are any of those who say we need to put all our might into wip­ing ISIS off the earth say­ing that Jim Crow was a good thing. Not one. So where’s this “high horse” that Mr. Oba­ma is so wor­ried about?

At Vox, Max Fish­er tells us, with much show of grav­i­ty, that the only rea­son any­one is object­ing to Mr. Oba­ma’s words is because peo­ple just want to go on hat­ing Mus­lims. That does not mer­it a seri­ous response, except to say that it fails to engage even one argu­ment. Mr. Fish­er cites a few peo­ple, to be sure—as though for the sake of appearances—but rather than engage what they say, he moves at once into the charge of racism.

That just will not do. What rea­son does Mr. Fish­er have for think­ing that? He does not give any. If Mr. Oba­ma’s words were tru­ly as “banal” as they are said to be, then one would think that some­one could engage an actu­al argu­ment, instead of just throw­ing around blithe accu­sa­tions of racism. Can no one engage an actu­al argu­ment any­more? or are we just to be told, with a high rhetor­i­cal ham­mer, that this is no more than some sort of invent­ed rage to suit a right-wing Fif­teen Min­utes of Hate?

I have grown tired of those who can not, or will not, engage a real argu­ment, who pre­fer instead to resort to rhetor­i­cal blus­ter as a sub­sti­tute. It is past time we start to lis­ten to what oth­ers have in fact said, rather than make up names and box­es to fit them into. That’s the high horse I wor­ry about.