“Aren’t all Muslims suspect?”

It’s often assumed here from people who play for Team Red that, despite my claims otherwise, I am a closet liberal. And I certainly see why they might see it that way. After all, despite the fact that I find liberals, libertarians, and conservatives each deficient enough to hold back pledges of fealty, there’s no question I am far more critical of the latter. In fact I’ve held off writing about the sad state of affairs that is the modern Right in America recently because I’ve worried that I must sound like a broken record. A video clip sent to me by a reader this morning, however, has convinced me to dive back in to the mud.

Which brings me to ISIS, internment camps, and racial profiling.

This past Saturday, Fox News had a panel debate discussing the need to begin profiling Muslims in America in order to curb the threat of ISIS. Of course, this is not at all new. As an occasional listener to talk radio, I can attest that any time terrorist organizations have made headlines, talks there about the “common sense wisdom” of profiling Americans Muslims is discussed ad nauseum. There are even people whose job it is to act as regular guests on syndicated talk shows in order to make this very point.

And to be fair, much of what is said in these arguments rings true. In fact, here are a few quick sound bites from that Fox panel, made by Wayne Rogers (yes, that Wayne Rogers), Jonathan Hoeing, and Eric Bolling:

If you were looking for a fugitive who was a white male over 50 years old, you’re going to profile; you’re not going to look for someone who’s 21. I know there’s a delicate balance between liberty and security, but there’s no other way to do it…

We should have been profiling on September 12, 2001… It’s not on skin color, however, it’s on ideology: Muslim Islamic jihadists…

There are people who are going to say that this is crazy talk, but you can’t you can’t profile everybody. You have to focus your attention and your resources on the things that happen most often.

I will confess, I don’t find much that’s objectionable with any of this logic.

After all, if the government believes there to be a credible threat to Americans from, say, a Chechen terrorist group, you would expect them to make the best use of their resources as possible. If there were known radicals travelling back and forth between Washington, DC and Beslan, it would be somewhat silly to treat that with equal weight than, say, my sister booking a flight from Oklahoma City to Portland over Thanksgiving.

The problem, however, is that situations like radicals coming and going from places like Beslan aren’t really what people object to when it comes to profiling. Profiling against a race or religion is a tricky thing, because it’s hard to know where the lines that represent “credible threat” and “bigotry” cross — and they always, always cross.

For example, let’s go back and fill in some of the content I ellipsised out of the Fox Panel:

If you were looking for a fugitive who was a white male over 50 years old, you’re going to profile; you’re not going to look for someone who’s 21. I know there’s a delicate balance between liberty and security, but there’s no other way to do it…

We should have been profiling on September 12, 2001. Let’s take a trip down memory lane here. The last American war we won, we put Japanese Americans in internment camps… so yeah, I think profiling would be at least a good start. It’s not on skin color, however, it’s on ideology: Muslim Islamic jihadists — that’ a good start, but it’s only a start. We need to stop giving Qurans to Gitmo prisoners, we need to stop having Ramadan and Iftar celebrations at the White House.

There are people who are going to say that this is crazy talk, but you can’t you can’t profile everybody. You have to focus your attention and your resources on the things that happen most often. In this case, it’s Muslim males that have killed Americans, why [isn’t it] time to profile Muslim males?

Aren’t all Muslims suspect? Don’t we look at all of them with some suspicion after the threat they’ve put this country in?

Where to even begin?

It’s disconcerting to watch the video in real time, and see how quickly, seamlessly and obliviously everyone involved casually goes from the notion that we should be legitimately worried about radical Muslim terrorists to the notion that all Muslims males are worthy of our collective suspicion. It’s even more disconcerting to see how quickly that is taken one step further, and the definition of “profiling” is expanded to the need to keep Muslim religious celebrations from being held in the White House.^[1]

And the insinuation by one panelist that we need to get back to a place where we are willing to intern ethnic groups we’re a suspicious of is made only more amazing that not one of the five people having the discussion pushes back on him for saying it.

The only substantive pushback at all, actually, comes from one panelist who insists that while all Muslims are certainly worthy of our suspicion we need to be conscious of our recourses and focus only on the worst, and another who insisted we needed to be equally suspicious of all Muslim women.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much where profiling will always take you. To a place where we see the need to stop non-whites on the streets in the hopes of cracking down on illegal substances that we know are statistically used more by whites. Or a place where we disproportionately pull over blacks to search for contraband even though, again, it’s more likely that a white driver will be carrying some. Still, even those places pale on comparison to the bigoted and dangerous place Fox went last Saturday.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I find the right to be so dangerous in a way I don’t find the left. I can actually see someone like Don Lemon or Ed Schultz say something that stupid or offensive on CNN or MSNBC. But I also have no doubt that they would have been quickly excoriated by their peers, and either forced to apologize or fired by their networks. No one on that Fox panel, however, will be criticized at all by their own camp. In fact, the only question that remains to be answered is how many other right-wing blogs, radio hosts, and Fox contributors will double down.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many people who worry about the negative effects of government overreach on things like mandatory seat belts seemingly have little or no problem with stuff like this.

[1] FWIW, the White House has hosted an Iftar during Ramadan dinner every year since 1996, though the first such dinner was actually hosted by Andrew Jackson.

Also FWIW, the White House also hosts dozens of annual religious celebrations honoring holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Hanukah, and Passover. And in 2010, President Obama became the first US President to host a White House Seder.

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