Marty "I was liberal in the Sixties" Peretz questions 1st Amendment rights for U.S. Muslims.

[Ken Burch]

"...frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."


http://www.tnr.com/blog/77475/the-new-york-times-laments-sadly-wary-misunderstanding-muslim-americans-really-it-sadly-w

Another reason everybody who hasn't cancelled their subscription to The New Republic should do so TODAY. Any magazine that prints things like this has now permanently become an organ of the pro-bigotry Right.

(Update...Peretz apologized for the line about denying Muslims freedom of speech...AFTER Nicholas Kristof busted him on it...and after it had sat out there for 24 hours on the TNR website...where the line is STILL part of the blog entry. And he insists that he was right to say that Muslims don't care about loss of human life, including loss of Muslim life.)

[Alameda]

1. What??? This is really getting worse and worse!!!

[QC]

2. Marty Peretz has long been one of the most loathsome people in American public life.

He is, after all, the one who raised Andrew Sullivan from mere boytoy GAP model to Person Whose Opinions Matter.

That alone should get him into one of the lower circles of hell.

[Ken Burch]

6. He was also one of the main promulgators of the "ANY criticism of Israel is 'antisemitism'" meme.

n/t.

[friendly_iconoclast]

3. Where he can exchange notes with Julius Streicher, no doubt

[Stinky The Clown]

4. He is one of many

"I was a liberal in the sixties"

"I was a conservative until I wasn't"

feh

[vixengrl]

5. When he says "Life is cheap" in a smug, privileged way--

for Muslims, I think he's ignoring all the other people for whom it's cheap, because living is dear, because poverty persists, because the death of one might mean life for others. Yeah, it's something that a Palestinian teenager gives it up--for a stipend from Saudi Arabia to his or her family. Yeah, it's something that a boy from Yemen or Somalia or Afghanistan decides to be a Jihadist, because they are identifying with a notion of not just a culture war against the west, but a form of class war.

Now, it's true that Osama, and some of the hijackers of 9/11, and that Christmas -time underpants bomber were all from well-to-do circumstances. But the kind of sacrifice they allegedly are about is significantly based on resentment--an expression of violence against a perceived larger power that controls more resources, with the understanding that the persons so incensed feel somewhat screwed.

Is it valid? Bleagh. No one reasons with a terrorist over whether their feelings are valid unless they are schmucks. But life is cheap for a small-town meth dealer or an inner-city gangbanger in the US, or a narco-kidnapper in Mexico or wherever. It isn't about Islam--it's about life being cheap where people are plentiful and resources aren't.

[gratuitous]

8. We'll teach those bloodthirsty thugs that life isn't cheap

By murdering the whole lot of them, wholesale! Or better yet, slowly, suffocatingly, and wholly deaf to their death rattles. They will know then just how dear life is for the likes of Martin Peretz.

[Blue_Tires]

7. ttt