Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Everything was going fine until the neighbors voted for the wrong guy.
The doctor in this article intentionally moved to Dawson, which is about as far from Georgetown as you can get, culturally. This is fly-over rural America, farm country. He knew he was the first Muslim to set foot in town but he chose to anyway. And the people were welcoming to him. They knew his religion was Islam but they didn’t care; to him, he was their doctor, not some nutjob with an assault rifle. They could see the difference and accepted him fully.
But now he can’t accept them. Not anymore. He can’t accept that they voted for the candidate they thought would do the best job of defending the nation from the terrorists that they – and he – want kept at bay.
I’m not one of those who is suspicious of all Muslims. The fact majority come here for exactly the same reasons my great-grandparents did.
And most Americans get that. A vocal minority don’t – but then a vocal minority has had a problem with every wave of immigrants, ever.
The problem, of course, is that this wave of immigrants does harbor some bad actors:
The doctor lectures locals about Islam but his argument is unpersuasive because it’s a logical fallacy that goes like this: Speaker One: No Scotsman would do such a thing. Speaker Two: Angus just did it. Speaker One: Well, then, Angus is not a TRUE Scotsman.
By throwing Angus out of the group, the Speaker has arbitrarily limiting the pool of True Scotsmen to “people who don’t do such a thing” which makes his conclusion self-fulfilling. But in real life, the Speaker has no power to decide who is a True Scotsman and who is not. We cannot accept his conclusion because he’s artificially limited the terms.
No True Muslim is the argument used by every Muslim ‘moderate’ including this doctor. He arbitrarily defines Islamist terrorists as Not True Muslims so therefore we should have no fear of True Muslims because True Muslims are not terrorists. Yes, but the doctor doesn’t have the power to decide who is a True Muslim and who is not. As a nation, we can’t tell who to fear and who embrace. At the local level it’s easy and the towns folk did embrace him. At the national level it’s much trickier so they embraced the hard-line candidate who promised the most protection.
At a national security level, how can we tell what a True Muslim looks like, versus an Islamist terrorist? You quote the Koran, they quote the Koran. You pray, they pray. Your women cover their heads, their women cover their heads. From this angle, everyone who claims to be a Muslim looks and acts the same right up until the day the terrorists break cover and slaughter everyone at the Christmas party, or everyone at the dance club, or set off bombs at the marathon. At that point, it does no good to say: “Oh, well, they weren’t TRUE Muslims.” If we can’t tell them apart before the killing starts, then keeping out all Muslims is safer for America even if it’s unfair to True Muslims. That’s a national security compromise most Americans are willing to make.
Accepting a Muslim doctor in Dawson and voting for Trump for President are not inconsistent. They’re not signs of hatred, bigotry or racism. They’re signs that ordinary, normal people can make rational decisions about their personal welfare and about the welfare of the nation.
This article will make people in the Dawson area uncomfortable. I wouldn’t be surprised if his patient case-load drops off and his employer seeks a less controversial replacement. That won’t be a sign of rural Minnesota hatred, bigotry or racism, either. That’s what happens when you loudly and publicly burn your bridges.
I wonder if his family found rural life unappealing so he was looking for a way out of his contract? What else could motivate a rational professional to destroy his chosen career?
Joe Doakes
Hmm.
There are two simple facts at work here. We have to let in people at a rate that reflects how fast and well they assimilate. (I am not talking about genuine political oppression, either.) There are legal ways to do this. Supposedly you can’t do it by country. For example, people from Pakistan have a great integration record and then there is what Minnesota is notorious for. Too bad you can’t just do it by country.
Second, I will take Andrew C. McCarthy’s word for it that Islam is inherently political and sharia is integral to their theology. I had a muslim boss a million years ago and he made it very clear to me that there were people in his own religion that wanted to kill him.
I’d prefer more Sikhas, Hindus, Zoroastrians, and Jews myself.
Good luck working all of this stuff out.
There are a lot of people who buy individual health plans in that area. Premium rates have tripled while deductibles and out of pocket maximums have made the Affordable Care Act Unaffordable and medical treatment Inaccessible. It’s amazing that an actual doctor would not see this single issue as a legitimate reason to vote for Sideshow Donald or at least provide some empathy. Case in point; Lac Qui Parle County has 2 hospitals, Madison Hospital and Johnson Memorial in Dawson. Blue Cross of MN dropped their Individual Health Plans and only offered their HMO plans for 2017. There was a newspaper story this February about a farmer whose young son who has some serious medical issues and he was being treated at the beginning of the year. The bills had processed and the family was starting to get them about a month later. It turned out that Johnson Memorial was out of network on the new HMO plans so instead of a (ridiculous) $13,100 Family Deductible, that family was going to be on the hook for $26,200 because they didn’t to to a network provider. The Madison Hospital is also out of network which means that there isn’t a hospital in the entire county for the largest insurance carrier in the state.
Again, that doctor can’t understand why somebody would vote against Mrs. Clinton?
He can’t accept that they voted for the candidate they thought…
Fact that this person, whether Muslim, Jew or Zoroastrian, is unwilling to accept free will of the people of this country tells me he will never be an American. Should never be an American. He should go back to whatever flea infested paradise where you are not allowed to think for yourself. Don’t want to accept the American exceptionalism, GET THE FUCK OUT!
The carcass of Osama Bin Laden was buried, at sea, in a Muslim religious ceremony.