ANDY McCARTHY: Garden-State-Variety Profiling Hysteria

From today's National Review Online:

Do you think Americans are threatened by Islamic terrorism? If we are, don’t you think that in trying to prevent Islamic terrorism it is proper for the police to consider whether someone is actually Islamic? If so, what exactly are you condemning when you condemn “profiling”? Read more.

Comments

[Derek Catsam]

Andrew --
This seems like a reasonable assertion at first, until one thinks of two points:

The overwhelming majority of Islamists are not terrorists. This is not a minor point -- it is at the heart of American civil rights -- that you do not target a minority group as a whole based on the actions of a few. In this case a few that amounts to, what, .00001% of all American Muslims?

But let's say that we are not concerned with the niceties of civil rights law. Then there is the other problem:

I'll gladly trade you racial profiling at, say, airports only if you will grant me racial profiling of white men in all federal buildings. Why? Because the second largest terrorist attack in United States' history was undertaken by white men in Oklahoma City, and their intentions all along were to do far more than attack that one building -- some, indeed, are still operating, waiting to kill innocents every bit as much as Jihadists. Selective racial profiling against some terrorists seems inefficient. It seems racist. It seems dumb.

But again, I'll give you all Muslims if you'll give me all white men. We won't be any safer, but it can allow the folks over at NRO to think they are clever and reasonable.

Derek

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