The AWOL Secular Humanists
By Jeffrey Breinholt
Today in Family Security Matters, I have an article on a topic I have been thinking about for some time: the silence of our reliable secular social critics in arguments over the threat of political Islam. There are plenty of commentators today who argue that we should adopt of policy of containment rather than confrontation with Islamists. These commentators have to answer the same critique that was presented against the the advocates of containment during the Cold War: their policy would condemn plenty of people to live under tyranny. What is amazing to me is the relative absence today of feminists and homosexuals on the side of those fighting political Islam. More than most, these interest groups stand to lose the most in places where the Islamists consolidate their power, yet they are strangely silent, no doubt because they also distrust Christian conservatives and agree with much of the Third World critique of American "imperialism" (a strange term, since the closet thing the U.S. has to a colony is Puerto Rico). I wish the secular humanists beyond Caroline Fourest and Bruce Bawer would speak up more, since they come from a tradition of Betty Friedan and Oscar Wilde that we could generally rely on to tell us what is non-negotiable in the Age of Enlightenment. I miss them...
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