Who’d want to move to Camden?

I’m short on time, so I’ll try to make this short. The Beeb has reported on xenophobic rabbling from the rural city of Camden where locals have rallied against the establishment of an Islamic school.

Now being a secular kind of guy, I do have concerns about faith-based schools or indeed anything that looks like a faith-based school. Not that I automatically write them off, I just as a bare minimum want guarantees that secular dollars aren’t spent with sectarian bias.

Not that an Islamic (nor other religiously oriented) school couldn’t operate under such an arrangement with the right accountability, checks and balances, I don’t automatically support the existence of any religious school. Even if it doesn’t attract state funds (where child welfare is still an issue).

But these aren’t the concerns grabbing the headlines, nor are matters of civic planning or environment. No.

“Everywhere is being destroyed. Why don’t we tell the truth. They’re wrecking Australia. They’re taking us over,” she said. (Source)

Ahhh… The old argument from supposedly unpleasant truth. If you think this idea is unpalatable, then it must be true! The racists that peddle this line of rubbish are of course projecting their cognitive foibles. Xenophobic notions and assumptions are palatable to them, hence they chose to believe them.

Try talking to a rabid xenophobe. Try pointing out things like the errors in Pauline Hanson’s immigration statistics or Danna Vale’s impossibly hysterical Muslim breeding projections. See how fact-evasive they become.

Their prejudices are just to appealing to them and they try to dodge the fact by suggesting that you reason in the same faulty way that they do. It’s so common it’s probably memetic.

Then there’s some chap in his 70’s who apparently got cheered for his less than intelligent efforts.

“Can I just say this without being racist or political?” he said. “In 1983, in the streets of London a parade by Muslims chanted incessantly ‘If we can take London, we can take the world’. Don’t let them take Camden.” (Source)

Okay, firstly. Cognitive dissonance; no you can’t say something racist or political without being racist or political. Perhaps he meant “..without my argument being described as racist or political?” in which case the answer is no. Australia is a democracy and one with a constitution influenced by enlightenment thinking, which means anything put on the public record can be criticised.

Secondly, just because some hot head Muslims talked crap about hegemony doesn’t mean that all Muslims have hegemonic goals. Just because there is this nasty thing called dominion theology amongst some Christians does not mean that all or most Christians adhere to it.

I can think of a further couple of relevant reductios. People opposed to an Islamic school in Sydney lied about a Muslim take-over of a swimming center, ergo people opposed to Islamic schools are all liars. Or… People opposed to supposed Muslim encroachment on Aussie culture demonstrated their violent nature at Cronulla, therefore Mr 70-year old is violent! Don’t let Mr 70-year old go bashing any more Muslims in Camden!

Obviously absurd.

For the past 11 years, for the most part it’s run against the grain of the cultural orthodoxy to speak truth to power about these kind of racists. Xenophobes and their fallacious memes have been a protected species against the supposed predation of a conspiracy of political correctness.

We’ve been told they are widening debate. We’ve been told they are fighting for freedom of speech (even when they expect to not be criticised – what an overblown sense of self-entitlement). They aren’t.

What we have had is a bunch of ignorant and lazy people; too lazy to do their homework and too unenlightened to overcome their self-imposed childishness when facts are presented before them. These people don’t deserve respect and they certainly don’t deserve victim status.

Their ideas are poorly argued, they don’t honestly respect other’s right to be critical and they are the ones victimising other groups of people.

They aren’t un-equal partners in democratic discourse because of some politically correct witch-hunt, they have a lesser status in the partnership because they willfully don’t engage as fully as their interlocutors; they don’t bring the same quality of informed and considered opinion to the table and they don’t afford their opponents the liberties that they themselves demand.

Their position in public debate is substandard because their participation is substandard. It’s self imposed.

They aren’t uniform in their distribution and I’m sure that Camden isn’t 100% made up of these kinds of lazy-minded types, but geez, there has to be a lot of them there. Enough to make any sane and humane person question why they would want to live there, much less build a school.

My immediate concern about a secular Camden (as a part of a secular Australia) is therefore not the building of a religious private school, but rather if Government is going to preference a sectarian bias in lieu of legitimate opposition. Something the state shouldn’t do.

I’d much prefer to just consider the merits of the school. But a good part of Camden isn’t.

~ Bruce