Rethinking Robert Sibley.

Robert Sibley is a senior writer for the Ottawa Citizen. Now before anyone throws a fuss about which paper is and is not in fact garbage, let me just stipulate that whatever the content may be, the more relevant and considerable thing to be concerned for is what is being confirmed and denied in certain opinion pieces.

Take Sibleys "Rethinking Multiculturalism" (Sat June 10). By title alone, he alludes to his conclusion before asking any questions. But don't stress: he asks as a subtitle: "How does a country respond to people who consider many of its key values anathema?"

Already we are told to rethink multiculturalism. And that a country should respond somehow to people who oppose some key values of the country. Whether they do, in fact, philosophically oppose some key values of the country is up for debate. Not in Sibleys article. He stages a mock debate and treatment of the reasoning-and-non-reasoning of homegrown terrorists.

His opening paragraphs are equivocal and fictionalize the political scene for us. Seventeen men and teenage boys of Islam. Nobody could believe it. Not in our neighbourhood, community, religion- 'Such were the refrains of family, friends, and imams.'

I beg your pardon? Is Sibley actually intending on convincing me that the majority of the country is not violent? What about those who condone Iraq and Afghanistan and send their children off to fight? Whose refrains are those? Do they make any more sense?

Sibley also failed to do much significant research when prompted by certain elements of the story. He even cited a just-released study by the British government that provided no definitive answers as to why young men of liberal democratic societies would want to harm that society. Sibley seems to be suggesting that if the British government doesn't know, then the answer is more elusive. Thanks Sibley. Thanks for citing a study that was inconclusive. That has to be the easiest journalism I've ever glanced over in a long while.

He shifts the question to Canadian society. He asks why these young men who arent particularly poor, downtrodden, friendless, or uneducated (at least in a technological sense), would turn against a society that welcomed their parents. Sibley then gives us a brief paragraph-long sociological treatment of what drives people to become undemocratic, citing John Walker and David Hicks- Westerners who converted to Islam because they felt alone. Sibley then converts the western-gone-islam message into the same logic for the group he is trying to deal with. One of the Toronto terrorists said young mulsim males are regarded with suspicion by non-muslims, have difficulties getting good jobs, and have questionable futures in Canada.

What does Sibley do with these notions at this point? Bottom lines it: so there you have it, a group of highly susceptible terrorists. But, 'to acknowledge this is not to provide a sociological justification to terrorism'. No, the root cause isn;t Canadas failure to accomodate. Western society has its faults and alienation is one of them. But Sibley says that to elevate alienation and self-pity to murder is to elevate narcisissm to pathological proportions.

Hold UP now.

So Sibley just admitted that this demographic of the population is not equal, despite what the liberal democratic system has been promising for hundreds of years. But instead of possibly arguing that in fact these men represent a challenge to liberal theory to hold itself accountable, he suggests that their response to this fact is unacceptable.

Sibley keeps on begging the question throughout his article on why they want to do it, but never entertains the notion that their grievances come from a place or experience where liberal democratic theory failed. Instead of equality, there is inequality on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, and so on. The only people who are equal are the upper echelon, and from any kind of critical viewpoint, this upper echelon is the same group that promulgate the empty promises of liberal democratic theory; that sell us on capitalism and our appetites, that admittedly invest in the future as a consumer-oriented tech society. Perhaps to acknowledge the grievances of these men is not, as Sibley says, an excuse for terrorism. But to translate the grievances into a failure of a system these men hold little to no real power in, perchance that becomes a reason for terrorism, not an excuse.

When the Blacks held liberal fiction accountable, there was rioting. When women held liberal fiction accountable, there was laughter. When the Muslims hold multiculturalism, the charter, and all of liberal theories promises accountable, there is the seed sown for a world of paranoia and corruption of values. Liberal democrats start to decry as they did during the red scares that nobody is safe, and thus begin the shredding of the rights that are foundational to our system as not their system. Ultra negation.

Sibley, who I am not done with, also wanders into his own prescribed notions of important western philosophy. He talks about the Greeks, Romans, Cicero, Plato, and then finds himself comfortably at Voegelin. "Voegelin coined the term 'pneumopathological' to describe those who live in a day-dream fantasy about the world. Those gripped by pneumopathologies live in a 'second reality' in which they imagine their actions will change the world to suit their fantasies. Then Sibley says through another guy that terroristic acts as a moralistic model is a symptom of the disease in which evil assumes the form of spirituality. So Western virtues good, and nonfulfilment and thus pneumopathology is bad. But are they really different?

The definition of the term suggests the creation of a fiction that is unrealistic about the world, to which the creater participates in. Well how exactly does that differ from the liberal theory of equality and justice? We are in the social contract. We made it up. We imagine political relevance in terms of voter behaviour. We here in the west are also gripped by pneumopathologies. Sibley failed to make that connection. Furthermore, his failure to make that connection is suggestive of his own interests in the article he was writing. Orientalist.

But Sibley just isnt done with his other. He goes on to remind us, "the worst oppressors of Muslims are Muslims themselves." Worst? When did he get to decide and implement the use of the word 'worst' for someone elses circumstances? Furthermore, how can he hide behind this fact- used to demonize Muslims as brutal and perhaps irrational- when that seems to be the world history of our own region?

Sigh.

Sibley returns to the notion that some may want to further accomodate Muslim imigrants. "But it's hard to see what more Canada could do without abandoning liberal democratic principles." Sibley goes on to remind us how the Toronto District School Board abandoned the pretense of secularism to give into parental demants that devout Muslim children get a place to pray. "That's rather accommodating, yet some of the children who attended the boards schools are among those accused of terrorism."

Can any of my readers here believe this passed off as journalism?

First of all, it is a sign of ignorance to suggest accomodation and congruence with the liberal democratic system is the abandoning of liberal democratic principles. So often when the status quo is challenged, defenders hearken to the abandoning of the good ole times. As far as I've been able to demonstrate, this challenge is entirely consistent with the liberal democratic nation-state model. For me, doing less would be a further loss of liberal democratic principles. The fiction of the liberal model is bunk; it is not inequality that comes about from relative circumstantial preferential treatment- but in fact the attempt to remedy the inequality promulgated circumstantially because of the mainstream preferential treatment.

Secondly, to forget on purpose that the Lords prayer- and other prayers were given in the hallways only a few decades ago, and to forget that God is in our national anthem- that is to be at the heigh of ones own self-righteousness. We are not neutral- the dominant culture wins and has been winning for years. The reason why schooling is at such hours is from a dominant cultures schedule- not the minority. BUT then to suggest loosely that in giving this space it created terrorists- that is to be at the height of fallacious slippery sloped reasoning. It is to hold a few variables constant and the rest not held at all.

Back to my philosophical contention with Sibley. Sibley recommends an education in Liberal virtues and notions of citizenship. He refers to poor Mr. Scruton, who also isnt dealing very well with the issues at hand, suggesting "people who see law, social identity, and loyalty as issuing from a religious or tribal source cannot really form part of the Western political culture...."

This passage is also intending on being forgetful on purpose. It is to forget that many of our laws, social identities, notions of loyalty, virtue, and abstract notions of goodness issued from religious and tribal sources, should the use of the world tribal be replaced with various competing christian religions. To contend with the origins' direction of law is to forget our very own. Furthermore, Western political culture as a liberal democratic framework is wholly compliant in theory with any source of law or legitimacy insofar as it is willed from the people. Now the debate shifts from whether legitimacy is gained by being a majority, or whether the existence of a minority is enough to warrant such legitimacy. That, I don't know, I'm not actually an expert on liberal debates and don't want to weigh in on things I don't even consider the right formula for legitimacy.

But here's the kicker. At the near end of this page-long op-ed piece, Sibley writes, "This doesnt mean we should deny the brutality and horrors of western history, or ignore other cultures. But it does mean we shouldn't feel guilty about or apologize for the West and its history. For all its flaws and failing, western civilization, unlike any other civilization, has a singular redeeming quality: a history of opposing those who suppress human freedom and dignity. This, arguably, is the source of the West's spiritual richness."

What history is that? Is it our own history? Did the majority suddenly oppose the second-class citizen-stature of blacks, women, hispanics, asians, the indigenous? Did any of those groups get strong opposition on behalf of western culture to the indignities suffered, or did the Western culture in fact create and promulgate them? Who is Sibley actually kidding, himself? Stop telling me not to deny the brutality and horrors of western history, and then actually doing it.

Why anyone gave him a whole page to theorize on, I'll never know. I'm still serving cups.