A little tired of the crowing from the Muslim advocacy organizations about how there are six-to-twelve million Muslims in the US? That they're the fastest growing American religion? That they're the second largest religion in the U.S.?

Well, don't believe it. These beliefs are undocumented by evidence.

The best study in the US on this topic is done every 10 years by CCNY, in what is known as the ARIS Study, or American Religious Identification Study.

The first problem one deals with in religious demographics is to determine what information really matters. What religion a person is born with? Or,  what they consider themselves? ARIS, quite logically, focuses on the latter, since the former does not take into account conversion from one religion to another, nor does it take into account the fact that people do immigrate in, and emigrate out. . (Obviously, pro-Islamic groups want to use birth religion as the ultimate determinator. It pumps up their numbers.)

http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/aris_index.htm

ARIS 2001 managed to identify no more than 1.4 million Muslims in the US, a far cry from the six to twelve million the Muslims themselves claim. The fastest growing religion in the US is not Muslim but Wicca, but even among the religions who have "critical mass" statistically, Islam was fourth-largest (behind Christianity, Judaism, and "No Religious Affiliation") and was growing at a rate that by today (2007) would put it BEHIND Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which have FAR more robust growth rates.  (To be fair to the Muslims, they are correct that their growth rate, and the shrinkage rate of Judaism, ought to have put them ahead of Judaism by now. So, that puts Islam in the number 5 slot, behind Christianity, NRA, Hinduism, and Buddhism.)

Also, the survey was taken PRIOR to 9/11, which accelerated the emigration of Muslims from the US (both voluntarily and involuntarily) and erected barriers to their future immigration.

But, what's truth when you're politicing?

The leftist media has a very interesting habit when they (occasionally as may be) decide to forgo cynicism, criticism, and hyperbole, and actually tackle (or attempt to tackle) an interesting subject. That habit, simply put, is to ask a bunch of questions which are easy to answer. (The fact that they ask such questions infers that they themselves believe them to be difficult to answer, thus exposing their intellectual vacuousness.

In The Nation today, Eric Alterman wrote an article that did not disappoint. His last paragraph asked a number of questions, easy to answer, but evidently difficult for him and others on the left:

Well, nothing should be beyond the bounds of rational debate, including whether or not Global Warming is scientifically valid or not. However, in this case, the overwhelming consensus (see the parallel to the GW debate, again) is that any country that declares unilateral protectionism will put themselves into an economic disaster zone.

Imagine, if you will, if tomorrow the US decided to tariff garments from overseas. Raise the prices of the garments in question, American business will respond with domestic production, increasing employment, increasing the tax base........what's not to like, eh?

The cost of the garments, that's what. Overseas manufacturers lose their ability to undercut domestic production. However, domestic production, with no need to match price with a lower cost manufacturer, is able to charge whatever they will, up to the point where the foriegn manufacturer finds sufficient profit as to re-enter the market.

Long story short -- see how much you like paying eight dollars apiece for your Jockey shorts. That's eight dollars APIECE, not for a three pack.
Here we have an example of critical myopia. Globalization has lifted tens of millions of people out of abject poverty, doubling, tripling their standards of income, sometimes as much as a factor of ten or more. On the other hand, there have not yet been any deaths of starvation in the U.S. reported as a byproduct of globalization. Globalization has stilled the march of American standards of living forward, for the moment, but statistics don't show much, if anything, in the way of receding standards.

Did Johnny really need that iPod?

The clear point to this section seems to be that politics responds to the rich over and above the ordinary. Hm. And......how is it that Mr. Alterman considers this revelation to be news?

On the heels of my prior post regarding the "logic" of political correctness, we have this little tidbit from James Taranto of the Journal, about a little party that was held at San Francisco State University:

This story starts with an "anti-terrorism rally" held last October on campus by the College Republicans. To emphasize their point, students stomped on Hezbollah and Hamas flags. According to the college paper, the Golden Gate (X)Press, members of Students Against War and the International Socialist Organization showed up to call the Republicans "racists," while the president of the General Union of Palestinian Students accused the Repubs of spreading false information about Muslims.

(So far, everything everyone's done is legal. Not polite, but certainly legal.)

In November, the Associated Students board passed a unanimous resolution, which the (X)Press reported, denounced the California Republicans for "hateful religious intolerance" and criticized those who "pre-meditated the stomping of the flags knowing it would offend some people and possibly incite violence." . . .

I must interject: Yea. Try that argument with a "progressive" vis a vis the U.S. flag. In that case, offending the majority of American's is considered a GOOD thing.........

At any rate, it turns out the word "Allah" is written on both flags in Arabic script, giving a little traction (not much) to the criticism. No matter. The point is that again, from the political correctness movement, social order (under the guise of "not causing offense" is positioned as more important than freedom of speech. Totalitarians all over the world must be smiling.

Taranto continues thusly:

"One obvious question is whether SFSU would act similarly if someone mistreated an Israeli flag, which also incorporates a religious symbol, on campus. That has happened at least in the neighborhood, as the Associated Press reported in April 2002:

In San Francisco, close to 500 pro-Palestine demonstrators took to the streets near San Francisco State University for several hours, yelling chants, burning paper Israeli flags and even grabbing an Israeli flag out of the hands of a passing motorist who lofted it from her sunroof.

And of course we all know that burning the American flag is protected by the First Amendment. Political correctness has become a parody of itself when a public university is enforcing religious sensibilities that treat political symbols of terrorist organizations as holy objects."

And there we have it.

If you're like me, you've spent, oh, weeks of your valuable time trying to figure out how it is that otherwise intelligent people who teach at and run institutions of higher learning come up with restrictions on student expression. Well, I finally found an article that (finally) explained it to me, and I'd like to, well, "share".

There was, once upon a time, a German professor (socialist, of course) named Herbert Marcuse. Turns out that Marcuse, unbeknownst to probably all of us who were still in grade school at the time, was quite a popular fellow amongst 60's radicals.

Marcuse had no problem with double standards. He took the position that certain views (ones we now term liberal, no surprise) are superior to those held by the (capitalist and conservative) status quo. AND, because those liberal views are (ostensibly) suppressed by said status quo (using their money and power), it's only fair that those holding those liberal views are enabled by the powers-that-be to suppress the expression of status quo ideas when they have the opportunity. (The status quo doesn't need that enablement because of their superior wealth and societal standing, you see.)

If that didn't go in well, here's my simplistic interpretation: Freedom of speech may be law, but if you're a rich white male, you don't need all your freedom of speech, because you're rich and powerful. On the other hand, the poor black woman needs all the freedom of speech the law provides, and then some, so she can compete with the rich white guy. In other words, you suppress the rights of the strong in order to give the disenfranchised equal time.

Make sense? Now, since the average person will see right through that racist and classist point of view, it has to be repackaged for public consumption - specifically, speaking in terms of restricting certain types speech on the grounds that it might "cause offense". In other words, what we now know as "political correctness."

Hope that helps. The scary part is that these types would love to see in the US "hate speech" laws as they've been implemented in Canada and some European cities. The specifics of these laws vary from place to place, but suffice to say that they've been used to prosecute Christian pastors for teaching what the Bible teaches on homosexuality, and revered journalists like Oriana Fallaci for writing what they felt and believed about Islam and the Muslim diaspora in Italy.

Here's your takeaway: The only kind of free speech worth having is the kind that offends someone. Even Stalin and Hitler permitted the other kind.

Well, with the much anticipated (by some) publication of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (whew!) the debate may finally shift, possibly, to more sensible ground.

The report apparently proves this this current round of GW is human-caused. Well, good. The assembled multitude of scientific types put the chances of GW being human-caused at over 90%. (This led to some amusing crowing amongst the "winners", with some sounding like they were members of a team that had just won the Super Bowl or World Cup. Well, I suppose that scientists are competitive, also.)

What also should now be put to rest is the notion that the Kyoto agreement is some sort of solution to the problem. Nothing surprising there. The Kyoto-exempt China and India continue to pour increasing amounts of pollutants into the air, and the majority of Kyoto countries have failed to meet their targets. Since, the publication is clear that not much can be done in the short term to prevent GW complications in the 21st century, it by default makes Kyoto out to be a big fat waste of time and money, money that would be better spent on technological advancement in renewable power and climate adaptation.

(Of course, the Kyoto fans won't give up that easily. Kyoto holds considerable hope for becoming a sort of worldwide taxation system with the potential to subjugate national interests to a world governmental agency. Just this morning, I note that Lame Duck President Chirac, who still thinks he is the King of the European Union, has stated that the EU could subject uncooperative nations to some sort of "carbon tax". Right. Not only will Sarkozy be unlikely to support such a measure after he takes office, quashing French support for such a thing will take no more than a small tax per bottle on French wine imported to the US.)

Make no mistake about it: when histories are written, the decade-plus gap between scientific recognition of GW and the development of effective countermeasures will be blamed on the politicians who colluded to create such a flawed, anti-free market treaty like Kyoto. It ought have been clear to a child that such a "solution" would be rejected by the free-market (and heavy polluting) Americans, thus insuring that years would pass before progress on the GW matter would actually be made.

So, where does that leave us? Right where we have been for a decade. The solutions lie in technology and free market countermeasures. People always act in their own economic best interests, and those that act as if that axiom is NOT true are doomed to spawn failed policies again and again.