Blank Out

In this article from The Washington Times, Diana West writes about the peculiar evasions that western elites must go through to avoid acknowledging that the terrorist jihad we face has anything to do with Islam. The Kabuki dance that they must perform is interesting to watch as a spectacle of amusement, but the reality of Islamic Fascism is a deadly serious business. Unfortunately, just as in the past, the aristocracy have shown that we cannot count on them for much of anything. And insofar as this is a war of ideas, those who value the history, traditions and freedoms of the West will have to take it upon themselves to do the heavy lifting that our more sensitive "intellectuals" are incabable of doing.

With the departure of Tony Blair from 10 Downing Street, we have lost one of the most visible leaders who has both a clear grasp of the nature of the problem as well as the ability to speak in clear and understandable terms about it. His replacement, Gordon Brown, is already demonstrating the jelly spined weakness that has come to dominate the intelligentsia in the West and against which the Loud People will have to fight. Ms. West describes the ways in which Mr. Brown has signaled his unwillingness to even name the problem or even recognize that it exists.

Indeed, the British government, under its new, more politically correct leadership, will be prohibited, as a mater of official policy, from even mentioning the words "terrorism" and "Islamic" in the same sentence, if they are mentioned at all.

The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, has directed ministers to omit "Muslim" when discussing (Muslim) terrorism. And forget the generic "war on terror"; even that pathetic phrase is off limits. (This has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Brown's unctuously stated goal to make Britain "the gateway for Islamic finance.") The new Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith (love that "i" ending) refers to British Muslims as "communities" — maybe a prelude to not mentioning them at all. Both have done the "perversion of a great faith" dance to enlightened applause, taking cues from the unpublished "EU Lexicon," which reportedly nixes such "offensive" phrases as "Islamic terrorism."

British literary lions couldn't agree more. Philosopher John Gray and historian Eric Hobsbawm recently said on British television that even the word "Islamist" was "unfair" because "it implied a strong link to Islam." Never mind the link is doctrinally accurate. Better to accommodate mortal threat without identifying its Islamic roots. Instead of defending their nations — for starters, stopping Islamic immigration and, with it, the progression of Islamic law into Western societies — our elites have decided to pretend Islam isn't there at all.

In the media, the effort is misleading to the point of farce. Joel Mowbray, writing at the Powerline blog, noted that the New York Times has identified Britain's Muslim terrorists as "South Asian people" — which, considering Britain's largest South Asian population is Hindu, is beyond absurd. "Diverse group allegedly in British plot," the Associated Press reported, missing that unifying Islamic thread. "All 8 detainees have ties to health service," wrote the Toronto Star, "but genesis of terror scheme still eludes investigators."

Ayn Rand identified this peculiar habit of the left years ago as the "Blank Out". It is the deliberate intellectual evasion of facts which are clearly available to anyone with eyes to see and a functioning mind. The average person cannot help but notice the obvious here; namely that there is a cause and effect relationship between Islam and terrorism in the world today. Thus we can only conclude that the failure to see or to name it that is typical of our media and government elites is the result of that deliberate refusal to come to terms with the facts. It is a mental "Blank Out"; the conscious decision to not see that which is true in the hope that by refusing to name it, the existence of the problem will somehow go away.