The doctor lectures locals about Islam but his argument is unpersuasive because it\u2019s a logical fallacy that goes like this: Speaker One: No Scotsman would do such a thing.\u00a0 Speaker Two: Angus just did it.\u00a0 Speaker One: Well, then, Angus is not a TRUE Scotsman.<\/p>\n
By throwing Angus out of the group, the Speaker has arbitrarily limiting the pool of True Scotsmen to \u201cpeople who don\u2019t do such a thing\u201d which makes his conclusion self-fulfilling.\u00a0 But in real life, the Speaker has no power to decide who is a True Scotsman and who is not.\u00a0 We cannot accept his conclusion because he\u2019s artificially limited the terms.<\/p>\n
No True Muslim is the argument used by every Muslim \u2018moderate\u2019 including this doctor.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Yes, but the doctor doesn\u2019t have the power to decide who is a True Muslim and who is not.\u00a0 As a nation, we can\u2019t tell who to fear and who embrace.\u00a0 At the local level it\u2019s easy and the towns folk did embrace him.\u00a0 At the national level it\u2019s much trickier so they embraced the hard-line candidate who promised the most protection.<\/p>\n
At a national security level, how can we tell what a True Muslim looks like, versus an Islamist terrorist?\u00a0 You quote the Koran, they quote the Koran.\u00a0 You pray, they pray.\u00a0 Your women cover their heads, their women cover their heads.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 At that point, it does no good to say: \u201cOh, well, they weren\u2019t TRUE Muslims.\u201d \u00a0If we can\u2019t tell them apart before the killing starts, then keeping out all Muslims is safer for America even if it\u2019s unfair to True Muslims. \u00a0That\u2019s a national security compromise most Americans are willing to make.<\/p>\n
Accepting a Muslim doctor in Dawson and voting for Trump for President are not inconsistent.\u00a0 They\u2019re not signs of hatred, bigotry or racism.\u00a0 They\u2019re signs that ordinary, normal people can make rational decisions about their personal welfare and about the welfare of the nation.<\/p>\n
This article will make people in the Dawson area uncomfortable.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if his patient case-load drops off and his employer seeks a less controversial replacement.\u00a0 That won\u2019t be a sign of rural Minnesota hatred, bigotry or racism, either.\u00a0 That\u2019s what happens when you loudly and publicly burn your bridges.<\/p>\n
I wonder if his family found rural life unappealing so he was looking for a way out of his contract?\u00a0 What else could motivate a rational professional to destroy his chosen career?<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Hmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0 This is fly-over rural America, farm country.\u00a0 He knew he was the first Muslim to set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63758,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63752\/revisions\/63758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}