Today's (Dec. 22) print edition of the New York Times frontpages a brief piece on one of Newt Gingrinch's main campaign themes, to which he has apparently been devoting a lot of thought (sic) for a while. The headline says it all:
In Islamic Law, Gingrich Sees a Mortal Threat to U.S.
Now the hyping-up of putative "threats" to the well-being of the nation from "creeping Islamism", or whatever the jargon-du-jour may be, has been a notable feature of the Obama Era (wonder why that is?) - it's scarcely original with Prof. Gingrich.
However, Newt, IMO, gives the game away in an almost throwaway line a few paragraphs in:
But to Mr. Gingrich, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, the administration’s language smacks of the willful blindness of an earlier era. “The left’s refusal to tell the truth about the Islamist threat is a natural parallel to the 70-year pattern of left-wing intellectuals refusing to tell the truth about communism and the Soviet Union,” Mr. Gingrich said.
While the rest of the NYTs' piece (to their credit) tends to challenge or debunk the Newt's overheated nonsense, I think the above quote lays out his (and many another politician's) real aim: to make "Islamism", if not "Islam" itself, the new "communism".
"Communism" in the McCarthyite sense, that is: a real (if distant and/or marginal) threat to our values, but one hysterically overhyped and inflated: not so much for the "threat" in itself: but as a cudgel to beat one's political opponents with.
One wonders what Newt Gingrich's response might to be if he were called on to reiterate his support for a purely secular system of justice ....