When Friends Attack

Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 8:27:28 am PST

For asking the same kinds of questions about Vlaams Belang and Sweden Democrats and other European political groups with checkered pasts that Bruce Bawer raises in his book “While Europe Slept,” I’ve now become an enemy to some people: Atlas Shrugs: LGF and CAIR.

It’s an absurd overreaction to some perfectly reasonable questions, and I expected better from Pamela. As for CAIR “getting their talking points” from me, that’s even more ludicrous. The information about these right-wing European parties is not exactly hidden—in fact, it’s all over the web. A few sentences at LGF urging caution are a drop in the ocean.

Just for the record, I’ve been in contact with Robert Spencer about this issue and his reaction was nothing like what you see at Atlas’s site; he understood the need to be careful about some of the parties in Europe and took no offense at my comments. If you don’t believe me (since I’m now apparently the enemy), ask him yourself.

What a disappointment. Pamela: I hope you’ll take a step back and turn down the rhetoric, and see that the points I raised in this post are not unreasonable—because they’re going to keep coming up, whether from me or others. If you start attacking friends and ignoring the issue, the issue’s not going to go away. But the friends will.