Khan Blows His Cover

Vincent J. Curtis

1 Aug 2016

For well over forty years – that I personally am aware of – the Left has used the tactic of “hurt feelings” as a means of discrediting their opponents.  One reason why progressives today never attack their opponents on the merits of the arguments is that their opponents hurt the feelings of others in what they say and believe, thereby discrediting themselves as worthy of rebuttal on the merits.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that, being a white Anglo male, and being inclined to rational enquiry, my very existence hurt the feelings of others.  Consequently, I grew a thick skin.

The whole progressivist movement is in the course of destroying itself on account of an extreme political correctness that causes the movement to eat its own.  The election of Donald Trump as President may complete that destruction.

The Republican National Convention put up Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, killed in Benghazi, to condemn Hillary Clinton.  Clinton lied to Mrs. Smith’s face over the coffin of her dead son about an internet video being the reason for her son’s death.  Because of the failings of the State Department, of which Hillary was the head, that led to the Benghazi debacle, the grieving Mrs. Smith blamed Hillary personally for her son’s death.

The Democrat National Convention tried to imitate the Smith performance with one of their own.  Donald Trump is famously opposed to more Muslim immigration to the United States, until the experts in Washington can “figure out what’s going on.”  In other words, to find out how to stop terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists in America.  The DNC sought to shame Trump by putting up a Muslim couple whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004 and who would accuse him of hurting their grieving feelings.

They accused Trump of sacrificing “nothing and no one” of behalf of America while the Khans had lost their son in Iraq.  The fact that the same charge of sacrificing “nothing and no one” on behalf of America could be equally leveled against the Clintons on the measure of the Khans has to this point be totally ignored by the media.

The weekend’s news cycle was all about Trump’s response to the accusations of Khizr Khan.  It didn’t matter what Trump said or would say about it, for whatever it was it would be inadequate, shameful, and hurtful.  Trump was going to be shamed by the media either by saying something that would add further hurt the Khan’s grieving feelings, or by saying nothing and implicitly admitting their charge.

There is a difference in situation between Smith accusing Hillary and Khan accusing Trump.  Hillary actually lied to Smith and to other families about Benghazi, and the dead actually worked for the State Department of which Hillary was the head.  Trump, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Khans except for his belief in stopping more of Khan’s co-religionists from entering the United States without extreme scrutiny.  It is Khan’s feeling offended on behalf of Islam that is the basis for his attempt to shame Trump.

Lest there be any doubt about the trick of hurt feelings being pulled here, notice that after Trump responded to Khan in an interview with Clinton partisan George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, the media immediately went to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speak Paul Ryan and invited them to denounce the newly nominated Republican candidate upon the threat of being denounced themselves.  For being socially gauche.

Hurting the feelings of others gratuitously is rightly considered socially gauche.  However, this business has been turned into a political weapon having nothing to do with the social graces.  If somebody is going to stick their feelings out in order to get them stepped on and hurt, I am inclined not just to step but to stomp - so tired am I of this cheap social/political trick.

Khan, however, blew his cover on Sunday.  He exposed himself as the Islamic apologist Trump is fighting against.

In an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta, Khan said the following, “What he cites in the name of Islam, and all that – that is not Islam at all!  I wish he would have, somebody would have put something in his head that these are terrorists, these are criminals, these folks have nothing to do with Islam.”

There it is.  The fundamental disagreement between Khan and Obama and Hillary on the one hand, and Trump on the other.  Trump believes that Islam does have something to do with acts of radical Islamic terrorism, and Khan and Obama and Hillary do not.  Khan used the death of his son as a means of shaming Trump over what Trump believes on the basis of empirical evidence and not prejudice.  Khan wants to put down to prejudice the lines drawn through all the points in evidence that connect terrorism with Islam.

Khan is not an Islamic scholar, and so his opinion about what Islam is and says mean nothing to another Muslim.  That Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ISIS slaughter and gruesomely murder and call for terrorists acts in Europe and America in the name of Islam gives empirical evidence that even if Khan is right in theory, many of his co-religionists disagree in fact.  And that is what matters.  That is what Trump is responding to.

The trickery employed by Hillary’s campaign along with the complicity of the media may work against Trump for a while.  But Trump’s connection with his base of voters is strong, and sooner or later, the disgracefulness of the trick being pulled here will be found out.

-30-