Category Archives: Liberal

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Almost six out of 10 American voters are angry and dissatisfied with how the media is covering politics, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Someone has finally united us, and its through rejection of the 24/7 media (read liberal) hate-fest of President Trump.

Thats a good sign for the country, but not so much for the business of news or for the Democratic Party. Its indicators like this that should be considered seriously by the Democrats and their still failing water carriers. Their spoiled, elitist hatred for the president is not translating well for the American people.

As Obamacare continues its collapse and terrorist attacks around the world are an almost daily event, New Yorks elite remain rabidly enraged at Mr. Trump. Ironically, hes the only person so new to the political scene to not have had a hand in any of the governmental schemes currently ruining peoples lives.

Yet, its Mr. Trump who apparently should be murdered because, you know, after 144 days hes a tyrant or something. According to Rasmussen, consumer confidence is the second-highest its been in the indexs history. The market cap of the U.S. stock market has risen more than $3 trillion since Mr. Trump was elected. Small-business confidence has surged to a 12-year high. In May, the unemployment rate hit a 16-year low.

Yeah, for New York limousine liberals that amounts to a tyranny, especially because their political bread-and-butter relies on victimhood. Mr. Trump is threatening the only thing the Democrats have left suffering.

Whats a panicked gang to do? Much is being made of the New York Public Theaters play featuring the murder of Mr. Trump. Sure, its titled Julius Caesar, but we know thats an inside joke. For those not living in the pretend-world of liberals, the people in charge of the New York Public Theater are using Shakespeare simply as cover for their horrific fantasy, as its rather likely their creative process first involved wanting to kill the president, then they went scrounging around to find the fitting Shakespeare.

How clever they are, as they no doubt assure themselves.

Drowning in smug, the theater released a statement which, in part read: Our production of Julius Caesar in no way advocates violence toward anyone. Shakespeares play, and our production, make the opposite point: Those who attempt to defend democracy by undemocratic means pay a terrible price and destroy the very thing they are fighting to save.

How kind of them. Americans appalled at the presentation of the murder of our sitting president are reprimanded by our artistic betters for not understanding Shakespeare, and the message of Julius Caesar.

Newsflash for artistes: Context matters. Shakespeares intent was based on an historical personage for a reason. When you murder a living president, who is loathed by the very people making the presentation, you lose the right to point back at the original playwright who knew the difference between a historical lesson and contemporary provocation.

This is dangerous for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the inuring of the public to the idea of violence being committed against the president. After the London Bridge terrorist attack, we were told by various media that Londoners were getting used to terrorism.

One man was lauded for keeping his beer with him as he ran from the carnage. The Associated Press headline: UK hails man who fled attack holding beer an unlikely hero.

This is what liberals everywhere want. Why? Because it keeps them from having to face the consequences of their actions. They create chaos and then have no solutions for the collapse of civil society, so the goal becomes to make obscene violence and chaos a normal, or as former Secretary of State John Kerry wished about terrorism, for it to be considered simply a nuisance.

There are many reasons why six out of 10 Americans are angry at the media, defending what the New York Public Theater has done is part of it (You ignorant fools dont understand Shakespeare), but also in purveying fake news. Former FBI Director James B. Comey told us the foundation story in The New York Times claiming Trump campaign collusion with Russia was dead wrong. CNN had to retract a story a day before Mr. Comeys testimony claiming he would deny he told Mr. Trump he wasnt under investigation. The opposite was true.

During an appearance on Fox News Fox & Friends, this columnist was on a panel that included a perfectly nice young man who, as a liberal, explained essentially that the president was unable to work because of the headlines surrounding his presidency. I responded, noting that headlines are not reality, despite the fact that for the years prior to new media and the internet, headlines and people like Walter Cronkite did control what the American people saw and heard. They did control reality.

When liberals lose that, their mask is ripped off as they produce photographs of the president beheaded ISIS-style, or a play featuring his torturous murder night after night.

But Donald Trump is the tyrant. Got it.

Tammy Bruce, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk show host.

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Trump and the liberal hate-fest - Washington Times

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer scolded those who kept to an unsubstantiated belief in the Russian collusion story. He said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions held off his accusers at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing and exposed the absurdity of the Russian collusion accusations. He made the comments Tuesday on Fox News.

I think helped himself a lot, Krauthammer explained. He basically uncovered, or exposed the absurdity of this whole exercise.

I mean this is supposed to be about Russian meddling in our election, he explained. That wasnt even in an issue. Then it was supposed to be about the collusion.

Theres not an ounce of evidence, he said, Im open to empirical evidence, I used to be a doctor. You show me the facts, Im willing to change my opinion. You know this has been investigated for seven months. There have been leaks like the Titanic, and yet has there been any leak of anything implicating the president in the collusion with the Russians? No.

And trying to tag it on Sessions is even more absurd, he added. I mean the man says and I think he was right in saying, that the big charge against him came from what was clear innuendo from the Comey testimony, where he implied there was something nefarious that he could not discuss in public, that would have forced a recusal of the attorney general on the Russia case.

Of course, he continued, the story that was then leaked from the closed session where Comey was, the third meeting, which is exposed as a ridiculous charge. All of us have been at receptions where you meet two dozen people. You cant remember half of them, and he says, which is quite likely, he had no interaction at all. And if he had any interaction, it would have been brief, completely inconsequential, and forgettable.

So wheres the charge? Krauthammer concluded. Wheres the crime?

Lordy, Im not a fan of Donald Trump, Krauthammer said, referring to his former opposition to the candidacy of Donald Trump in the primaries.

But this seems to me to be a case of all smoke, no fire, he explained. Yes, it all looks like this is a coverup, but wheres the crime? Its the first coverup in history in absence of a crime.

You show me the crime, he challenged, I will admit it. But show it to me. And going after Sessions, is simply a way to go after Trump.

I think, look, he won, fair and square, Krauthammer continued. Hes elected, hes the president. You dont like it? Then you vote them out of office next time around. But the idea that theres this kinda of obligation to bring him down to actually build a case for impeachment after three four months is absurd.

And I think its sort of un-American, he added. If he commits high crimes and misdemeanors, yes, but show me. Show me the evidence and I think this is just a sideshow of a sideshow. Theyre going up tributaries to try to find anybody who can be condemned.

I thought Sessions did a very good job fending off all of these charges, he concluded. Where is the evidence of obstruction? I dont see it.

Krauthammer had been a stalwart critic of Trump in the primaries, even eliciting a few Twitter insults from the then-candidate.

The Fox News contributor has since defended the president when he believed he was being unfairly treated by the media or by the Democrats.

Sessions defended himself and his reputation in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, especially when challenged by Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.), who accused him of stonewalling the committee.

Continue reading here:

Krauthammer says Sessions exposed the absurdity of this liberal narrative - TheBlaze.com

Along with their new titles, the BC Liberals newly-minted cabinet ministers are in line for a bonus, in a manner of speaking.

Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon swore in Christy Clarks 22-member cabinet Monday, all of whom stand to take home a little extra pay before a possible defeat at the hands of the NDP-Green alliance in the coming weeks.

University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford says the extra cash isnt chump change.

A cabinet minister gets a 50 per cent top-up on their base MLA salary, so cabinet ministers get about $150,000 a year.

He says that works out to about an extra $1,000 per week for sitting at the cabinet table.

But while its something of a bonus for Clarks caretaker cabinet, Telford said it isnt costing the public anything extra.

If Clark and her 21 Liberal cabinet ministers didnt fill the positions, Telford said the province would likely have a similarly-sized NDP cabinet in place.

Some people may argue that the NDP will inevitably form the government, so they should have been appointed from the start and started working on important files, he said. But there is a process to go through here and the Liberals had every right to form a government.

Clarks cabinet is made up of 13 men and nine women, including five new faces and several ministers who shuffled portfolios to take over for MLAs who were defeated or retired.

In addition to fleshing out her cabinet, Clark also appointed 13 parliamentary secretaries who each take home an additional $15,882 per year.

The Legislature will be recalled next Thursday for the Throne Speech, with the NDP-Green alliance expected to force a confidence vote the following week.

2017Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Newly-minted Liberal cabinet ministers will earn about $1000 extra per week - Globalnews.ca

I would love to be a liberal. As it is, in order to defend my conservatism, I have to lay out my worldview like a spread sheet. My beliefs begin with the logic of the ancient Greeks and the medieval scholastics. Informing this philosophy is my Christian faith. In the matter of politics, I tend to base my arguments on theses propounded in the Federalist Papers and in the works of Alexis de Tocqueville, Friedrich Hayek, and Ann Coulter.

It has become tedious, carrying all these books in my head. If I were a liberal, I could make do with just five words in my intellectual arsenal, sufficient to address any contemporary issue.

Russia, climate change, and Koch brothers are all a liberal needs to say in order to assert his ideas. What accounts for President Donald Trumps actions? In foreign affairs, Russia. On domestic policy, the Koch brothers.

The Syrian civil war, the drought in California, the extinction of this or that amphibian: all caused by climate change.

Read the pages of The Economist or National Geographic. Listen to cable news. The lead-in or the bottom-line, in sum, will be one of these three incantations.

There are other slogans, of course, to which liberals resort in a pinch, everything from black lives mattering to carbon-neutral hoo-ha. Failing to make their point by chanting, they riot, burning their own safe places as a show of forceful inarticulation.

The Red Guards of Chinas Cultural Revolution had their own catchphrases, default responses to anything disagreeable bourgeois, Yankee imperialists, class enemy. Our 21st century snowflakes, emulating their fellow Marxists, have conjured their own demonology. This is what seven years of college will do to a person train him or her to use a dozen different words for coffee, while allowing for just three answers to all of lifes questions.

Alexander Lee, West Chicago

Continued here:

Why I wish I were a liberal - Chicago Tribune

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Two days ago I ordered for my living room a framed portrait of His Holiness Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome, Sovereign of Vatican City, and 226th Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. It is evidence of what strange times we are living in that my decision to hang the pope's picture, once a staple of dining rooms and parlors the world round, will be regarded by many of my fellow Catholics as a regrettable home dcor move at best.

I am not one of those ultramontantist Catholics who pretend that every word that falls from the papal lips is a piece of heaven-sent wisdom to be cherished, but I do believe that the pope is Christ's Vicar on Earth and that he deserves our affection every bit as much as he demands our obedience. We call him by the familiar title of "Papa" because he is our spiritual father; dumping on your father in public is not a good look.

This is not to say that I am not concerned about the well-being of the Church under Francis. So far from feeling sanguine, I believe that the Church is more than half a century into her worst climacteric since the Reformation, a period of doctrinal chaos and pastoral uncertainty comparable to the Arian crisis of the fourth century. I also maintain that this crisis is the direct result of the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Mass, which I hope to see disappear in my lifetime and replaced with the old Roman Rite of St. Pius V in its ancient fullness. I am not, in other words, a happy-clappy liberal Catholic.

But neither is Pope Francis.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that both of his predecessors, St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, had more of the saccharine "Spirit of Vatican II" about them than Francis has. The current pope is a hard-headed practical man, with no illusions about human nature. Nor is he much of an intellectual, though his environmental encyclical Laudato si' is one of the most important pieces of theological writing to have appeared in my lifetime.

His is a decidedly peasant spirituality of intense Marian devotion. He loathes pomposity with the fervor of his ascetic namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. While he is famous for not getting on well with mainstream traditionalists like me, the so-called rigorists and doctors of the law whom he has subjected to endless (and sometimes deserved) ridicule, he clearly has a soft spot for the much-maligned Society of St. Pius X, whose founder was shamefully and perhaps invalidly excommunicated by John Paul II. His gradual reintroduction of these battered and pious misfits into the wider life of the Church is the answer to many prayers.

Much of the opposition to Francis is ostensibly a response to another of his missions of mercy, namely his streamlining of the annulment process, and what some consider his loosey-goosey views about admitting Catholics who have been civilly divorced and remarried to Holy Communion. I agree that in the hands of unscrupulous bishops in Europe and parts of the United States Francis's earnest entreaties for pastoral understanding of difficult situations could be used to justify sacrilege. But I am also realistic. Outside the neoconservative diocesan enclave of Northern Virginia where many of the pope's American critics live, the reality on the ground in many parishes in this country already resembles their fever dreams. At the parish in rural Michigan where my family attended Mass when I was in middle school, the lector most Sundays was a divorced and remarried Freemason. No one attended confession. Virtually everyone receiving the sacraments did so illicitly, with the full encouragement of the pastor. The worst has already come to pass, yet the Church somehow survives, just as Our Lord promised St. Peter it would.

These concerns about sacramental discipline would also be more credible if they were not accompanied by a frenetic, omnidirectional antipathy to Francis the man. Ostensibly traditionalist Catholic journalists subject the pope's every utterance to a kind of graspingly paranoid scrutiny; the most innocuous line from a homily is taken as evidence of a sinister mission to undermine and ultimately destroy the Church. Meanwhile, an eager chorus of anonymous whisperers echo their delusional claims and flatter them for their keen faculties of observation.

Far and away the worst piece of Francis baiting I have encountered so far is The Political Pope: How Pope Francis Is Delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives, a new book by an American journalist called George Neumayr. Crude, feverish, vague, poorly written, full of tabloid speculation, and hysterical prejudices with no basis in Catholic doctrine, this thinly sourced fire-breathing manifesto is, not to put too fine a point on it, one of the most absurd books I have ever read. Set aside for a moment the ludicrous conceit of treating the affairs of the Church in the crudely reductive categories of American politics as interpreted by talk radio (is Tim Kaine really "the left"?); the whole idea of a layman writing a book-length attack on the pope is ridiculous on its face, no matter how subtle its method. What could be more loathsome in the mouth of a Catholic than to repeat slanders of His Holiness made by Rush Limbaugh, a four-times-married childless serial philanderer who believes abortion is a states-rights issue?

The painful but delicious truth is that it is Neumayr and his followers who must answer to the charge of liberalism. It is they who believe that the clichs of the Republican Party have a higher claim on their consciences than the words of popes and bishops and that the hideous sorcery of neoliberal economists invalidates the Church's immortal teachings about usury, the just wage, the maintenance of the poor, and our duties to be prudent stewards of God's creation. That old saw about the mote in thine own eye has never been more appropriate.

Read more here:

Pope Francis is not a liberal - The Week Magazine

President Donald Trumps top adviser, Kellyanne Conway, slammed reports that she was a White House leaker during a Monday appearance on Fox News Fox and Friends.

Co-hostSteve Doocy addressed reports alleging that Conway was overheard sharing sensitive White House information with reporters and colleagues during a Washington, D.C., party Friday night.

A Twitter account alleged that Conway was overheard criticizing Trump, White House legislative affairs director Marc Short, and White House chief of staffReince Priebus.

An account with the handle @KellyanneLeaks tweeted photos of Conway speaking with reporters and others during the party.

The account alleged that Conway was overheard criticizing Short.

Honestly, what the f*** does Marc Short do all day? she reportedly asked.

The account also claimed that Conway was told by Trump to go out there and say that booted FBI Director Jim Comey is going to have to wait and see about the tapes.

Onlookers allegedly witnessed Conway mocking Priebus telling White House staff to refrain from leaking information to the media.

Politico also reported similar information Saturday:

Kellyanne Conway was overheard Thursday night talking about her West Wing co-workers to fellow revelers at a party. Conway was having an off-the-record conversation with a group of reporters and other attendees at the British Embassy at their election-night watch party. She said President Donald Trump told her to go out there and say Jim Comey is going to have to wait and see about the tapes.'

It turns out youre the big leaker from the White House! Doocy said about leak reports.

Conway shotback: If I were a great leaker, I would get much better press, dont you think? Part of why I dont is because I wont leak confidential information.

She saidthat she never reveals any information from or about the president.

I never divulge what the president tells me, Conway said. I never would.

Despite tweets and reports to the contrary, White House press secretary Sean Spicer discounted the Twitter allegations and Politico reports.

Link:

Kellyanne Conway demolishes liberal 'leak' agenda with one phrase - TheBlaze.com

If the GOP health care bill passes, even progressive states could be forced into rolling back protections for preexisting conditions.

Patrick CaldwellJun. 12, 2017 6:00 AM

A Save Obamacare rally in Los Angeles, California on March 23, 2017.Ronen Tivony/ZUMA

When House Republicans passed a controversial health care bill that would allow states to opt out of Obamacares protections for people with preexisting conditions, some GOP lawmakers sought to assure voters that few states would actually take them up on the offer. Its very unlikely that any governor of any state will remove the preexisting conditions clause, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House leadership team, told NPR. Thoseprotections, after all, areone of the most popular partsof the 2010 health care law;70 percent of Americans oppose the idea of letting states do away with them.

But in interviews withMother Jones, health care experts warn that Cole is wrong: If the GOP bill becomes law, many states will indeed eliminate preexisting-condition protections and/or at least some of Obamacares requirements that insurance planscovera range of standard treatments, including maternity care and mental health. And it wouldnt just be states that voted for President Donald Trump. Under the GOP bill, evenprogressive statesmight have to take drastic measures to prevent theirhealth insurance markets from exploding.

In order to win over hardcore conservatives in the House, Republican leadersadded an amendment to their Obamacare repeal legislationthat could have dramatic consequences. The amendment would allow any state to rewrite Obamacares essential health benefits. States could also end community rating, the requirement that insurance companies charge the same premiums in a given area without discriminating against folks with preexisting conditions. If a state waived community rating, insurance companies would still be required to sell insurance policies to sick people, but the insurers could charge whatever price theywanted.The likely result: Insurance would simply become unaffordable for people with expensive medical conditions.

Experts say stateswould likely face enormous pressure to adopt at least some of the waiver options. In part, that wouldarise from insurance companylobbying;the industry spent tens of millions lobbying at the federal level in 2016 alone.But the basic market dynamics created by the GOPbill would play a role as well,potentially creating an industrydeath spiral if states refuse to allow price discrimination based on health conditions. Insurers would be putting pressure on states, saying, We cant operate in this market. We wont participate at all unless you start rolling back these protections,' says says Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the liberal-leaningCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Insurance companies would face an immediate crunch if the Republican bill became law. The legislationends Obamacares individual mandate this year, removing a majorincentive for healthy people to buy insurance. The bill also reduces the amount of money the government offers in subsidies to help lower-income people pay their premiums. With less help fromthe government, healthy people would have even more reason not to buyinsurance.

Before Obamacare, state insurance markets were lightly regulated, with 47 states and the District of Columbia allowing insurers to charge sicker people higherrates. The reason was simple: Unless you compelled healthy people to buy insurance and spent money to help them afford their premiums, there was no way to make premiums affordable while also charging everyone the same rate. The GOPbill would make the math even more daunting, since it would repeal Obamacares individual mandatewhile still requiring companiesto sell insuranceto anyone who wants it.If insurers cant charge sick people more under the scenario, they will likely end up charging everyone more, which, in turn, would drive even more healthy people out of the market. That would drive premiums even higher, causing the market to become unsustainable.

Most carrierslooking at a market where you have to take all comers, and theres no mandate and theres much smaller subsidiesmost carriers are going to look at that bargain and say this is not a viable market for us unless the state takes up this waiver option, says Sabrina Corlette, a professor at Georgetown Universitys Health Policy Institute.

While insurance companies arent fans of many of the Republicans other proposed changes, the waiver options are the sort of policy that the industry has generally been asking for, notes Linda Blumberg,a senior fellow in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute. They wanted fewer requirements on benefits. They wanted to design and tailor benefits to particular consumers as they did before. And they wanted to be able to do medical underwriting, Blumberg says. So these waivers would be popular with the core, the mass of the industry. Its how they did business before. Its how they see that they can keep their costs down.

So far, no governors haverushed forward to say theyd eagerly ditch preexisting-condition protections. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) briefly suggested he would take a look at the waiver options, but he immediately walked that back as a backlash began to brew. But even the governors currently saying they would never touch preexisting conditions might find themselves ina different position a few years down the line when insurance companies threaten to leave the state unless lawmakers change the rules and weaken regulations.

Its a Hobbesian bargain, Corlette explains. Either you are faced with major carriers leaving the market entirelywhich means that both healthy and sick people would lose coverageor taking up these waivers that would almost certainly mean that sicker people lose access to coverage. I think many state-level policymakers will look at that bargain and say, Well, I want at least some people to get coverage, and so well take up these waivers and give insurers some ability to protect themselves against the highest of high-cost enrollees.'

And it wont just be the insurance companies asking for these changes. Aspremiums rise, healthy people could also prove to be a powerful lobbying bloc. At any particular moment in time you have more healthy people living in your state than sick people, thats just the way of the world, Blumberg says. The shear numbers disparity could sway lawmakers otherwise inclined to helppeople with preexisting conditions. When youve got the bigger chunk of your population agitating in one direction because affordability has decreased, and youve got insurers moving in the same direction to reduce their risk and be able to sell more policies to more people, its a pretty powerful combined force, Blumberg says.

When the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the GOPs bill last month, it estimated that half of Americanswould live in states that adopted a waiver to tinker with the definition of essential benefits. An additional one-sixth of the country would live in states that changed the preexisting-condition ban. The CBO projects that premiums across the country would at first rise much higher under the GOP bill than under current law20 percent higher in 2018, and then 5 percent higher in 2019. That trend would change as states begin implementing the waivers. Starting in 2020average premiums would depend in part on any waivers granted to states and on how those waivers were implemented and in part on what share of the funding available from the Patient and State Stability Fund was applied to premium reduction, the CBOs stated.

But the CBO only looked at the first decade of the laws existence. Every health expert Mother Jones contacted noted that the pressures on state markets will only grow as time goes by. The problem will become especially acute starting in 2026, when the state stability funda pot of money the bill would provide tostates to addressvarious problemstotally dries up.

You wouldnt see all these progressive states going after a waiver in year one, but within a couple of years after that I think you would, Blumberg says. The tension and frustration of consumers would start emerging quite quickly, so changes might happen in a year, or it might take a couple of years. But then youre really in a situation that is not going to make anybody happy.

Mother Jones is a nonprofit, and stories like this are made possible by readers like you. Donate or subscribe to help fund independent journalism.

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Think Your Liberal Governor Will Protect You From Trumpcare? You're Wrong. - Mother Jones

Credit: Paste Magazine

By Bill Adams

Mainstream news media has long been accused of having a liberal bias. Some studies have supported this belief. Liberal bias may be inherent in news journalism for reasons that arent flattering to conservatives.

Defining Liberal and Conservative.While political views are neither immutable nor binary, certain characteristics have remained relatively consistent. Broadly speaking, liberal policies support labor, equality and a strong social safety net, strong public institutions, progressive taxation, diplomacy and the avoidance of military conflict, and protection of the environment.

Conservatives emphasize protection of business interests, military strength, lower and flatter taxation, deregulation of the economy, and privatism. Even more generally, conservatives tend to emphasize trickle-down or supply-side economics and liberals in trickle-up or demand-side (or Keynesian) economics. Conservatism, in its definition, is conservation of the status quo. It tends toward preserving the existing economic and social hierarchy.

In contrast, the first definition of liberal in the Oxford Living Dictionary, means [w]illing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from ones own; open to new ideas. Liberalism is often focused on change to gain parity and rights for those who are disadvantaged by the existing hierarchy.

To begin with, Journalism particularly investigative or news journalism is the investigation, understanding, and dissemination of facts and information via news media. The First Amendment ensuring freedom of the press was intended to act as a check on power and was uniquely made to empower the general public.

Similarly, the definition of liberal, with its emphasis on respecting different opinions and being open to new ideas is essentially what freedom of the press is all about; and what makes freedom of the press a threat to conserving the entrenched powers. Thus, to the extent that liberal has generally aligned with equality and speaking truth to power, journalism is an inherently a liberal endeavor.

A Washington Post opinion piece supported the conclusion that more journalists tend to lean to the left politically than to the right, quoting retired Indiana University journalism professor David H. Weaver. (For a countervailing journalist tendency, see false balance.) The piece ventured several theories for liberal bias, ranging from the source of new journalist hiring (liberal Northeastern colleges) to the location of major media outlets in liberal cities. Most of these reasons could be categorized as extrinsic causes and assume that but for these influences, journalism would appear more politically neutral.

However, the article missed perhaps the most obvious and significant reason for journalisms appearance of liberal bias. Unlike the reasons ventured in the article, which likely have some merit, the most significant reason is intrinsic to journalism. The reason itself sounds biased: Good journalism and liberal/progressive values align more closely than do good journalism and conservative values. Good journalism is intrinsically a liberal endeavor.

The broad definition of journalism simply means the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business. This definition includes tabloid journalism as well as truth or fact-based journalism.

However, with the evolution of news journalism, the profession came to adopt various codes of ethics. Wikipedia notes that these codes tend to have the following principles in common: truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness, and public accountability. Thus, the term good journalism is shorthand for journalism guided by journalistic ethics.

More in-depth understanding of issues inevitably leads to more nuanced and complex views, or views that challenge the status quo and conventional wisdom. More often than not, a fuller understanding of an issue will tend to align with liberal values. Consider the following categories:

Profiles of individuals or groups of people: A fuller understanding of a person or group, particularly those who are undergoing great difficulty, will typically result in some level of compassion. Additionally, compassion can temper or replace previously held prejudice or resentment. Thus, good journalism, to the extent it evokes compassion and challenges conventional prejudices through greater understanding will appear to have a liberal bias.

Environment: Scientific data consistently supports the need to preserve and restore the environment. Environmental conservation has consistently been more a liberal cause than a conservative one. Thus, fact-based journalism on this topic will appear to have a liberal bias.

Business and the Economy: While conservatives tend to think of themselves as economic pragmatists, the economy tends to be a much more neutral proposition. The arguments for Keynesian economic policies and Friedman or Supply-side economics dont favor conservatives. Moreover, supply-side economic policies have a poor track record for balancing the national debt or balancing the budget. Regulations are another common target of conservatives. However, any serious discussion will acknowledge that regulations are also important to sustaining the economy, protecting competition, and preventing financial disasters. Thus, good journalism in topics of business and the economy should appear relatively neutral.

Sports: Perhaps the only topic in which reporting is generally deemed apolitical.

International Affairs and Conflict: Nationalism is a substantial part of most military conflicts. Nationalism, aka patriotism, most often comes from the conservative wing. At the same time, passivism has not proven to be a good defense against the military aggressions of other countries. Thus, journalism in this topic should appear relatively neutral. Nevertheless, decisions to engage in military conflict often involve behind the scene agendas that run contrary to the popular narrative. Additionally, the carnage and human toll of war undermine patriotic narratives of heroism and purity of purpose. These topics are central to reporting on military conflicts, and thus give the appearance of liberal bias.

Generally speaking, the liberal mainstream media has not had a liberal agenda dictated from its ownership or management more often the contrary has been true. This circumstance has changed somewhat as media outlets have attempted to emulate the success of Fox News by repositioning themselves as its liberal equivalent, e.g., MSNBC.

However, for the most part, mainstream media has attempted to adhere to journalistic ethics of objectivity, neutrality, and seeking truth. Reporting has been influenced by public opinion and the topics of interest of the period. For example, in the 1980s when media often focused on topics that remain at the core of conservative beliefs excess government spending (remember the $600 dollar toilet seats) or welfare cheats they were still accused of having a liberal bias.

However, the perceived liberal bias emanates as much from the nature of journalism as anything else. At the time, those stories were as much about speaking truth to power, and thus liberal, as current reporting is about Trumps excesses.

Thus, media entities which concern themselves with journalistic ethics, objectivity, and the pursuit of truth, will always appear to have a liberal bias.

If good journalism is inherently liberal, what is conservative journalism? This is not meant to be a rhetorical question because conservative journalism is not necessarily bad journalism. It can be sincere and high-level journalism, as in the case of the National Review or the Weekly Standard. Its just not investigative or news journalism. Its opinion and analysis. In these latter two publications, its not meant to be objective reporting any more than is Mother Jones or The Nation.

In almost all major conservative media outlets, the bias comes from on-high in the organization. All conservative bias in media is dictated from the top down. Objectivity is not part of the program.

Such media outlets come in different forms. There are the aforementioned conservative intellectual publications, which focus on opinion and analysis. Then there are populist and tabloid publications. The Murdoch (21st Century Fox and News Corp.) publications like Fox News and Wall Street Journal are particularly interesting. They pretend to be objective but adhere to a strict top-down conservative agenda. The opinion and commentary sections are obvious.

Less obvious is the news reporting, in which the bias is accomplished by filtering news that is reported so that it supports the conservative agenda. Fox is famous for its laughably false claim to be fair and balanced. The Wall Street Journal recently encountered internal dissension when management sought to influence the way its staff reported on Trump.

Fox News, in particular, has been extremely successful and profitable. It applies many of the strategies Rupert Murdoch learned in his Australian and British tabloid publications, The Daily Telegraph and The Sun. Murdoch, and his former Fox CEO Roger Ailes, recognized that these strategies could be successfully combined with a populist brand of conservatism by provoking white resentment and fears.

Thus, unlike the Weekly Standard and the National Review, Fox News seems less concerned with serving an ideology than with exploiting it for profit. The country and even the Republican Partys agenda have paid dearly for Murdochs exploitation of populist conservatism.

As for publications like Breitbart or radio commentators like Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones: no reasonable person goes to these outlets for news. They are ideological rallying sources.

Thus, in that conservative journalism intentionally as part of its program discards the journalistic ethical canons of objectivity and unvarnished truth, it is not journalism as we have come to expect from real news outlets.

Freedom of the press is a liberal value. It preserves the right to speak truth to power. It is the common citizens check on the powerful. Conservatives endeavor mightily to reframe their cause as that of the common citizen against the elites. But that unnatural distortion is never sustainable.

The current alliance of Republican billionaires and the white working class attacks educators and subject matter experts (elites), people of color, and immigrants; and thus is still an alliance of the more privileged against the less privileged. In the end analysis, conservatives always support the existing privileged class; and it is the purpose of the First Amendment to check abuses of power by that class.

In the current political climate, populist conservatism is open in its disdain for academics and scientists as intellectual elites, and racial and cultural sensitivity as political correctness, and compassion as bleeding heart liberalism. Thus, now more than ever, good journalism journalism that seeks truth and evokes understanding, tolerance, and compassion is inherently liberal.

Bill Adams is the founder and chief editor of UrbDeZine. He is also a partner in the San Diego law firm of Norton, Moore, & Adams, LLP. He has been involved with land use and urban renewal for nearly 25 years, both as a professional and as a personal passion. He currently sits on the Boards of San Diego Historic Streetcars, The San Diego Architectural Foundation, The Food and Beverage Association of San Diego County, andThe Gaslamp Quarter Association Land Use Planning Committee.

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Why Good Journalism is Liberal - San Diego Free Press

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, June 12, 2017, 2:00 PM

Slamming Mayor de Blasio as a quintessential limousine liberal who cant understand straphangers woes because he doesnt take the subway, mayoral candidate Sal Albanese proposed hiking the citys capital contribution to the MTA to $1 billion a year.

The former Brooklyn city councilman and longshot Democratic primary candidate said he hopes to become the mass transit mayor, hitting de Blasio for taking two chauffeured SUVs from Gracie Mansion while largely shunning a subway system that has sunk into crisis in recent months.

He could show some leadership by using the train once in a while, Albanese said at a press conference outside Gov. Cuomos Midtown office, where he dropped off a letter offering to up the citys payments if elected. Hes a limousine liberal, basically. Hes someone who rides around in a limousine and tells working people, Hey, take the train. Thats Bill de Blasio.

He said the issue is more than just symbolic, since it stops de Blasio from grasping just how badly the recent spate of transit meltdowns have affected New Yorkers quality of life.

Malliotakis says de Blasio should spend more to fund failing MTA

Hes missing the fact the trains are packing people in like sardines. Hes missing the delays, the signal breakdowns that happen on a regular basis, said Albanese, who regularly tweets about his subway trips and said last week it took him an hour and a half to get to his office, when it should have taken twenty minutes. So, hes missing that.

The state, not the city, controls the MTA, a fact de Blasio is quick to point out.

But Albanese said the issue is serious enough that the mayor should dive right in anyway, and said the city should more than triple its annual contribution to the MTAs capital improvements, with the number one priority being updating the outdated signal system that frequently stalls trains.

The state has not done enough, Albanese said. Cuomo could be much more proactive when it comes to mass transit. However, hes holding all the cards, so you gotta work with him.

Busted track switch in Penn Station delays LIRR trains

De Blasio said last week hed have his reps on the MTA board come up with their own plan to fix the subway system if Cuomo does not, though he did not specify when that would happen.

The last time he answered the question, he said his last subway ride had been April 18, to a Midtown press conference on smoking.

The time is coming soon? Sure, so is Christmas. Bottom line is the mayor has neglected this important service. Hes been missing in action and totally kinda cavalier about it, Albanese said.

This is a bread and butter issue. This is not some esoteric issue, he added, saying the meltdown threatens the citys economy and its growth. Its also important to keep people in the city. Eventually young people who want to come to New York City will get disgusted with being stuck on a train on a regular basis.

Ex-Councilman Albanese announces 2017 NYC mayoral run

A rep for the mayor defended his record.

"Mayor de Blasio made a record $2.5 billion capital contribution MTA to support new buses, subway cars, signal and station improvements, while introducing a citywide ferry system, and expanding bike lanes and CitiBike. That's a transit record we are happy to compare with anyone," said de Blasio spokesman Dan Levitan.

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Mayoral hopeful Sal Albanese calls de Blasio a 'limousine liberal' who doesn't understand MTA issues - New York Daily News

Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New York, bows while speaking on the murder of Imam Alauddin Akonjee outside City Hall in Manhattan, August 18, 2016. Activists and members of the city's Muslim community condemned the attack and continued calls for the authorities to classify the killings as a hate crime. (Photo: Bryan R. Smith / The New York Times)

Between Donald Trump's Muslim ban and the murder of six Muslim men in a mosque in Qubec City, the debate around Islamophobia has again taken center stage in North American politics. On the other side of the Atlantic, anti-Islam groups like Pegida, the Front National and Wilders' Freedom Party are gaining growing public support. Central to all of this is the rise of a militant xenophobia, with hatred of Muslims as one of its cardinal principles. At the same time, anti-racist organizers are also coming together -- building our analysis, fortifying our ability to defend ourselves in the face of increasing and rampant bigotry, and mobilizing to turn the tide.

Unfortunately, however, many of the arguments against Islamophobia in anti-racist circles turn out to replicate rather than subvert the underlying logics that attack, demonize and dehumanize Muslims. Challenging the Islamophobic far-right cannot simply be about upholding the same capitalist and imperialist -- even if slightly less racist -- stances that have destabilized much of the Global South in recent decades, furthering war and displacing Muslims who have travelled to Europe's shores only to be met with an explosion of nativist hatred.

With the departure of Barack Obama from the White House, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has become a global icon of this supposedly progressive anti-racist politics. A self-professed feminist who flew in 25,000 Syrian refugees and greeted them with hugs and winter coats at the airport, Trudeau is often perceived as being emblematic of everything that fascists are not. Yet even under his government, many of the same anti-social policies that brought Donald Trump to power in the United States are now being intensified, while anti-immigrant measures remain on the books.

For this reason, it is crucial to critically assess some of the liberal arguments against Islamophobia that are often put forward by people like Trudeau, as well as by many activists who would situate themselves to the left of him. Many of these arguments, while appearing to be anti-Islamophobic, actually uphold the national security state's framing of issues. In doing so, the dominant economic and social framework that underlies Islamophobic laws and policies, and the racist ideas incorporated within it, remains in place -- thereby impeding our ability to move beyond it.

Argument 1: "Counter-Radicalization Is More Effective Than Harsh Counter-Terrorism"

When the previous Conservative government in Canada introduced a wide-ranging surveillance and policing bill -- Bill C-51, theAnti-Terrorism Act, 2015 the public outcry was swift. Bill C-51 was dubbed the Secret Police Act, and hundreds of thousands of people signed multiple petitions against it. Central to the outcry was the argument that the bill was "ineffective." The "more effective" strategy being proposed in Canada, and across Western Europe and the United States, would involve "counter-radicalization" or "counter-extremist" programs. Such supposedly pragmatic calls for counter-radicalization have gained increasing support -- including by the Canadian Liberals under Trudeau -- without any critical reflection on the deeper problems with such programs.

In a report released last February, the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Ben Emmerson criticized the prevailing approach towards counter-radicalization as conceptually flawed and ineffective, noting that "states have tended to focus on those [areas] that are most appealing to them, shying away from the more complex issues, including political issues such as foreign policy and transnational conflicts," preferring instead to emphasize "religious ideology as the driver of terrorism and extremism."

The American Civil Liberties Union, Article 19, and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University pointed out similar objections in a joint letter to Ben Emmerson, writing that counter-radicalization "initiatives in the United States and Europe focus overwhelmingly on Muslim communities, with the discriminatory impact of stigmatizing them as inherently suspicious and in need of special monitoring."

Trump's announcement that counter-radicalization programs in the US will now exclusively target "Islamist extremism" elicited a fair amount of outrage -- but the reality is that such programs have long subjected Muslims to disproportionate attention, even if this was not always as explicit prior to Trump's presidency. For instance, 68 percent of the 1,747 children and teenagers referred to the UK's counter-radicalization program, Channel, between March 2014 and March 2016 were Muslim, while Muslims constitute only 8 percent of the population. Last March, a four-year-old Muslim boy was sent to Channel when his drawing of a cucumber was misconstrued as a cooker-bomb.

Central to the assertions that counter-radicalization is a more effective mode of counter-terrorism is the assumption that there is in fact an existential threat to Western societies from groups of individuals wishing to cause it harm, many if not all of whom are considered Muslim. Terrorism as a concept itself remains unquestioned, and the state-sponsored project of defending "us" against "them" is legitimized -- although using an ostensibly softer touch than the hard violence of war and criminalization. Instead of developing community-based or individual-focused programs to counter radicalization, the Islamophobic laws, policies and imaginaries that represent Muslims as a fundamental threat to Western society must be dismantled.

Argument 2: "Inclusion Is the Answer"

Greater inclusion of Muslims in white-normative societies is often posited as the solution to Islamophobia -- and, from a national security perspective, to the alienation that supposedly produces the radicalization of young Muslims. Social inclusion is widely seen as a counterpoint to the exclusionary nativist rhetoric of Islamophobes and fascists. For example, the recent decision by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to permit women wearing the hijab to join the federal police force has been hailed as a positive move against the exclusion of Muslims. Similar examples of Muslims taking on roles in policing agencies are heralded the world over.

Such arguments for greater inclusion, however, often fail to challenge or transform the problematic dynamics of the entities within which inclusion for Muslims is being sought. The RCMP, for instance, has its roots in the North West Mounted Police, the settler-colonial police force developed to surveil and attack indigenous communities. Racial and gendered violence continues to pervade the everyday practice of the RCMP, and the presence of Muslims did not dampen the force's deep-seated Islamophobia, but was actually exploited to entrap vulnerable Muslims in false terrorist plots staged by undercover agents presenting themselves as Islamic authorities. This experience parallels the FBI's use of Muslim informants to build its surveillance dragnet of Muslim communities.

Inclusion of Muslims, then, does not necessarily eliminate or reduce Islamophobia. On the contrary, inclusion may perpetuate institutional racism by recruiting Muslims into existing structures of power -- while at the same time making it more difficult to detect, since there is no overt exclusion involved. Instead of aiming for inclusion in existing power structures and institutions, the fight against Islamophobia must aim to dismantle institutions that sustain themselves through practices of racialized surveillance and criminalization.

Argument 3: "Islamophobia Plays Into the Hands of ISIS"

A common refrain heard in recent arguments against Islamophobic policies and anti-Muslim polemics is that the latter "play into the hands of the terrorists." It is widely claimed, for instance, that the hateful rhetoric espoused by Islamophobic populists like Donald Trump and Geert Wilders actually reinforces ISIS' narrative of a Manichean world divided between Islam and the West -- a world in which there are no gray zones where Muslims can live harmoniously with non-Muslims.

In this framing, Islamophobia is considered objectionable mainly because of how ISIS might exploit it, rather than for its own intrinsic violence. Islamophobic statements are represented as the trigger or pretext for Muslims' violence, rather than as something that is itself a source of violence -- like illegal and aggressive wars, extrajudicial drone killings, torture, secret detention, hate crimes, invasive state surveillance, and so on. While Islamophobia may be the immediate object of critique, it is still Muslims and their supposedly terroristic propensities that feature as the fundamental problem in such narratives.

As a result, the argument re-directs attention away from Islamophobia and back towards Muslim violence, even while claiming to do the opposite. Our gaze ends up being diverted from the structural racism woven into the warp and woof of Western liberal democracies -- a racism that has already undergirded the destruction of many Muslim societies in the name of fighting terrorism.

Argument 4: #NotAllMuslims -- "Islam Is Peace"

In response to prevailing stereotypes that Islam is fundamentally a religion of violence, promulgated by extremist far-right ideologues, Muslims and anti-Islamophobic allies often insist that Islam is a religion of peace. Both sides of the argument -- Islam means violence versus Islam means peace -- cite portions of Islamic religious texts, particularly the Quran, to demonstrate some authentic true nature of Islam and Muslims.

The problem with such readings is that they perpetuate the orientalist assumption that all actions performed by Muslims are somehow determined by scripture -- a reductionist conceptualization of Islam that does not reflect how Muslims have actually engaged with religious texts for centuries, through rich and diverse interpretive traditions. Theological and intellectual debates about interpretation that have gone on for 1,500 years are thus roundly ignored, and the vast cultural, political and social history of over a billion people that shapes Islam is subsumed in limited translations of particular verses.

Instead of propagating essentializing constructions to rehabilitate the image of Islam and Muslims, an anti-Islamophobic stance should focus on critiquing the state policies and public discourses that have made such rehabilitation efforts seem necessary in the first place: policies and discourses that criminalize, incarcerate and wage war against Muslims, while providing a cover for civilian attacks like the shooting at the Muslim community centre in Qubec City.

Argument 5: "Non-Muslims Are Also Terrorists"

To counteract the overwhelming tendency by fascists and other right-wing extremists to equate the concept of terrorism with acts of violence committed by Muslims, it is essential to point out that significant amounts of political violence in both North America and Europe are committed by non-Muslims, in the name of causes like white supremacy, anti-immigrant activism and nationalism. However, the assertion that all these various forms of violence should also be labeled terrorism, as Prime Minister Trudeau recently did for the Qubec mosque attack carried out by a self-avowed white supremacist, fails to challenge the legitimacy and cogency of terrorism as a concept.

This is undesirable for at least two reasons. First, because certain types of violence against civilians -- most importantly, violence committed by states -- still tend to be excluded from or marginalized in the definition of terrorism. The primary focus remains on non-state actors, even though states are the most significant purveyors of violence in our world.

Second, it is undesirable because many governments have claimed that the existential threat posed by terrorism requires the expansion of their own powers: through implementation of emergency laws, for example, and deterioration of the rights of individuals, through measures like preventive arrests and detentions. Broadening the category of "the terrorist" may therefore serve states -- from the American to the Syrian -- seeking to rationalize their own violence as necessary for fighting terrorism.

Instead of widening the scope of who is considered a terrorist to include white supremacists and fascists, the notion of terrorism must be deconstructed altogether: to demonstrate that the term depends on spurious criteria to distinguish some forms of violence (delegitimized as terrorism) from other, equally terrorizing forms of violence (legitimized as counter-terrorism).

Argument 6: "Muslim Women Are Not Oppressed -- They Choose How to Dress"

In North America, as in several European countries, Muslim women's attire has become a primary focus for Islamophobic attacks -- by the state as well as by individuals. In Canada, for example, the Conservative federal government that preceded Trudeau's issued a policy manual in 2011 preventing women wearing the niqab from swearing the oath of citizenship (this policy was eventually overturned by the Federal Court of Appeal). And there have been several efforts in the province of Qubec to pass legislation barring women in niqab from receiving or delivering public services. In these initiatives, the niqab and hijab are represented as inherently oppressive pieces of clothing imposed on Muslim women by religion, community and/or family. State prohibition is pitched as an attempt to save Muslim women from sartorial subjugation.

In response, arguments against niqab and hijab bans often emphasize that Muslim women actually choose to veil. In doing so, they reaffirm the problematic premise that the value and legitimacy of a person's actions should be judged by whether they are an expression offree choice: choice exercised without any limitations or restrictions. But choice -- all choice -- is of course fraught: the ability to see choices and pick between them is always constrained by one's upbringing and social context. Individuals never have full information or full agency. Choice also changes, and can be misconstrued.

Furthermore, the ideology of free choice has often been allied with imperial projects of violence. From the French colonization of Algeria to the American invasion of Afghanistan, multiple wars have been waged around the world in the name of bringing choice to Muslim women. But individual choice is not necessarily seen in all places and times as the central organizing principle of human life, as it is within liberal states. As Lila Abu-Lughod, Professor of Anthropology and Women's and Gender Studies at Columbia University, appropriately asks: "Might other desires be more meaningful for different groups of people? Living in close families? Living in a godly way? Living without war?"

Responses to anti-hijab laws and rhetoric cannot begin and end by valorizing choice. Rather, they must be about limiting the power of the state to withdraw benefits and services from its constituents as punishment for living lives that may not accord with liberal norms and priorities.

Argument 7: "Muslims Are Citizens Too"

The assertion that Islamophobic counter-terrorism measures violate the rights of Muslim citizens of Western liberal democracies -- who should be treated equally, without any discrimination on the basis of race or religion -- is a popular theme in organizing against such measures. However, it is inadequate to simply defend the rights of citizens while ignoring the situation of those who are not citizens of the state, but made subject to its power and violence in the name of national security. As University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin observes, Canadians have long tolerated serious abrogations of rights and freedoms for non-citizens that would likely be considered unacceptable against citizens. The same is true in the United States and across Europe.

In Canada, for instance, many cases involving terrorism have not been tried using criminal law, but dispatched with using immigration law, enabling the deportation or indefinite detention of suspects under a lower standard of proof and without many of the procedural safeguards (such as they exist) of criminal trials. The argument that Muslim citizens should not have to suffer Islamophobic laws and policiesbecausethey are citizens perpetuates the disadvantage and vulnerability of non-citizens.

Furthermore, in settler colonial states like Canada and the United States, the institution of citizenship is built on a foundation of indigenous genocide and dispossession. In these contexts, the quest for inclusion in citizenship risks normalizing the colonization of indigenous nations. Upholding citizenship as the ultimate source of rights, freedom and belonging tends to prevent critique of the violence and exclusion embedded within citizenship: against indigenous peoples and against migrants. The struggle ahead must be about collective liberation beyond inclusion in liberal frameworks of citizenship.

Argument 8: "Obviously Innocent Collateral Damage"

Cases of white progressive activists monitored as national security threats are frequently cited to demonstrate the absurd overreach of counter-terrorism. The injustice involved in these cases is meant to be apparent and inarguable. The protagonists are represented as obviously innocent collateral damage of counter-terrorism, and their entrapment in the expansive net of national security as a manifest wrong.

Such examples are considered persuasive because the victims are not generally regarded as legitimate objects of suspicion. This is in stark contrast to Muslim, South Asian, Black and Arab men, who are consistently demonized as national security threats, and who have suffered extreme state abuse because of this -- extraordinary rendition, torture, secret and/or indefinite imprisonment, and so on. The innocence of this demographic is not taken as obvious, but must be proven time and time again against a default presumption of guilt. Unlike the targeting of "obviously innocent collateral damage," the state's surveillance and securitization of brown- and black-skinned men is not widely treated asinherentlyirrational.

For example, Professors Deepa Kumar and Arun Kundnani observe that while the exposure of the National Security Agency's massive warrantless data collection program generated widespread condemnation, the revelation that Muslims were specifically targeted for surveillance attracted far less attention and outrage. While many objected to the US government collecting private data on ordinary citizens, Muslims tend to be seen as reasonable targets of exceptional surveillance -- simply because they are Muslim.

Arguments invoking the obvious innocence of certain victims of national security problematically entrench the problematic distinction between those who do not deserve to be treated with suspicion. They perpetuate the state's normalized suspicion of precisely those groups that are most vulnerable to the violence of counter-terrorism.

Moving Beyond Liberal Anti-Islamophobia

Critiquing common liberal arguments like these can help organizers imagine and articulate other types of responses to Islamophobia: responses that do not merely shift the position of Muslims in the state's existing racial landscape, but upheave and re-make this terrain altogether. Doing so is particularly important in our present political moment, when the ostentatious Islamophobia of far-right organizations and the Trump administration is often understood as exceptional -- occluding continuities and similarities with the Islamophobia of liberal governments like Obama's or Trudeau's. This in turn perpetuates the dangerous illusion that liberal politics are a refuge from right-wing racism, when the truth is that they are constructed of many of the same components.

Of course, opposition to Islamophobia should not remain limited to the discursive field. It should also include -- and in fact prioritize -- building and organizing within racialized communities to assert dignity, power and freedom. Examples of such organizing abound. For instance, the first iteration of Trump's Muslim ban was met by a general strike by the primarily Muslim New York Taxi Workers Alliance, whose inspiring actions set off a spate of airport shutdowns that were crucial to defeating the administration's first set of executive orders. Similarly, hours after the Qubec shooting, Muslim organizers and their allies issued a call for days of action across Canada against Islamophobia, white supremacy and deportations.

Deconstructing widespread liberal fallacies is therefore by no means a comprehensive or sufficient approach to a genuinely anti-Islamophobic politics. What it may do, however, is strengthen and further our collective struggle against the intertwined scaffolding of racism, patriarchy, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism upon which the Islamophobia of the neoliberal security state and the neo-fascist right continues to rest. Deepening our analysis in the days to come, when it may seem easier not to, would be a critical first step in building towards the worlds we want to live in.

Read more from the original source:

The Problem With Liberal Opposition to Islamophobia - Truth-Out