I think that this has a lot to do with the Nationalism/Patriotism divide that Daniel Larison often writes about. Hirsi Ali takes the “proposition nation” idea to a wild extreme. I think Hankest’s hypothetical is a very astute point. Hirsi Ali talks as if the current secular/liberal values are an eternal part of Europe. Obviously, this isn’t true; the last century was filled with counterexamples. What if the nations of Western Europe enacted crazy new laws or constitutions? According to Hirsi Ali’s logic, anyone who disagreed with these political structures would be totally estranged from the “community” (the fact that she uses the word community to refer to nation-states is pretty weird too). But that’s clearly not the whole story; people aren’t only bound to their communities by political assent, but also by ties of tradition, language, history (i.e., patriotism).

She is no friend of Christianity, or conservatism, or traditional values.

Atheists must be laughing their asses off, watching people of tradition and faith fighting each other, and knowing that they will be the ones who benefit.

Someday, American conservatives will understand what a bunch of suckers they are. But by then it will be too late.

Sounds like Mr. Grey is fighting against “Islamophobia.” Just like David Duke, who loves to make common cause with “anti-racists” like Ahmadinejad, and victims of the “racist attack on Gaza.”

Its all some variation of the idea that my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

Non-native Muslims residing in Europe need to have the same respect for Christianity and European majority rule that European visitors to the Middle East are expected to have towards the people of those countries, their history, culture and traditions.

Just because this woman works at AEI doesn’t mean she’s not right about this.

Nevertheless, what would be the reaction if Ms Ali asked someone like Dershowitz, or Senator Liberman “If the US and Israel went to war, which side would you be on?”

NOW that would be brave.

The same cannot be said of Muslims in any non-Muslim society. My experience of them is that they cannot just agree to disagree. They always insist on the primacy of their values, as primitive as they are.

Still, is she trying to save Europe or attacking her former co-religionists at the behest of her new paymasters? There is a lot of inflammatory propaganda around funded by the usual suspects. People like Mark Steyn may be the enemy of our enemy (to use an Arab expression), but that does not make them our friends.

It was known, though, better not to tease or make fun of the dragon, because if you did, it would start making funny noises and spewing flames. So the people made an effort not to upset the dragon and to always appease it. Of course there were the occasional accidents where the dragon would trample a building or county or two, but hey, what would you expect with a dragon of that size and still growing? After such calamities, important people would always say: the dragon is an animal of peace.

Then some people started to shout and say that the dragon was actually more dangerous than it made itself look. One woman even came forward with the preposterous claim that she had escaped from the belly of the beast and that a lot more women were being kept there in submission, not only by the dragon but by the dragon’s servants that lived there too: men.

Other people started to claim that the dragon’s actual objective was to become so big it would cover all of the earth. While they were making these claims most other people would try to make them shut up, because they didn’t want the dragon to get upset and why would they make these wild accusations in the first place?

Well it turned out that this dragon was ordered by a god, who claimed to be the one god. The order was passed on to a prophet who created the dragon just by writing down this one god’s message, word for word in a book. And because it was this one god’s word nobody would be allowed to question it, making sure no deviation from the original plan would be possible, ever. Basically, the plan calls for the spreading of the word of the one god until all people live by the laws set out in this book. No more need for discussions, votes or democracy, because everything is written in this book!

The dragon is the collective work of not only those who actively, sometimes forcefully, promote this plan, but as much so of those who passively submit to it. Some make up the teeth, some the belly, some are responsible for the breath of fire and a lot are just part of it because they don’t know any better.

the only thing for evil to win is for good to do nothing

Her’s a hypothetical for Alaan Hirsi Ali. What if Switzerland lost its collective mind and started systematically murdering it’s ethnic Arabs? Which side would Ms Ali fight on in that case? An aburd hypothetical? No more absurd than the one she tossed out.