Red Scare the Remix

You've heard of the Red Scare: the time period in American history during which we became so afraid of Communists that we became Communists ourselves and started cracking down on the rights and freedoms of Americans who we perceived to be threatening our values. The irony is thick; the best way to protect American freedoms is to take them away. After all the Communists can't destroy our way of life if we do it ourselves, isn't that right Senator McCarthy?

Fortunately for the soiled legacy of Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts, his banner of fear and narrow-mindedness has been jerked from the mud and patched up by Representative Peter King of New York. Pete's got a plan to save America from the Muslims, just like Joe had a plan to save us from the Commies. Neither plan is good, and both are rooted in the kind of backwardness that lights fires under extremists, but it's a plan nonetheless.

On Thursday, Pete - who is head of the House Homeland Security Committee - is opening Red Scare the Remix hearings. Out are the Commies, in are the Muslims. King's hearings are going to focus solely on the threat to America posed by radical Muslims. That's all well and good I suppose, except that this is nothing but a fear-mongering scare tactic. King claims he wants to examine the methods Al-Qaeda uses to radicalize American Muslims. I wonder if it's worth pointing out that having idiots like King drive moderate Muslims the wrong way is one of those methods. I also wonder whether it's worth asking King who he plans to interview on this topic? Has he invited Al-Qaeda recruiters in America? Or maybe he's just pulled Muslims off the street to grill them publicly about why they are such a threat to our society. That wouldn't make them feel isolated at all.

Perhaps the most ironic part of all this is that - according to recent studies - the people MOST LIKELY to assist law enforcement in identifying and disrupting terrorist attacks are...American Muslims. I wonder if they'll appreciate the thanks they're getting from Peter King.

Maybe Congress should spend its time on something that's actually hurting Americans. According to the same study, 33 Americans have been killed during terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. That number is hardly trivial until you compare it to this one, 150,000, that's the number of people who have been murdered in the United States since 9/11. Maybe ole Pete King should be investigating gun violence in America. Sadly, 33 of those people were killed at a shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech University perpetrated by someone of South Korean descent. Where is the hearing on the threat to America posed by South Koreans. I demand answers!

It's not funny, it's sad, but when we fear-monger like this, we trample the principles our nation was founded upon and we make our country less safe.

But then again, according to the report, there were 10 Muslim Americans plotting against the United States in 2010, so maybe Pete's right, maybe we should be dragging Muslims through a campaign of hate to get to the bottom of why 10 Americans would plot against their country. Of course, maybe we should hold a hearing to get to the bottom of how Pete King's bigotry is going to do nothing except perhaps push that number higher.

Repressed people demand freedoms; that's what brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as autocratic governments across the Middle East. We didn't win the cold war with the Red Scare and we didn't win it with our bombs, we won it with our tolerance and our values. The Joe McCarthys and Peter Kings of the world do our country a disservice when they stand up cowardly for intolerance, fear and hatred. If Peter King actually wanted to fight radical Islam, he'd do it by showing Muslims what America really stands for; instead he's chosen to push people the other way.