Janet Albrechtsen, Islamic Terrorists, polite language, the hate that dare not speak its name, and columnists who shouldn't be served a beer

(Above: some ordinary Christians going about the business of worshipping their god).

Our cherry tree is in full flower and the parrots are in a frenzy - at the end of July. Guess the sweet things have got totally confused by reading Tim Blair.

Meantime, you won't find anything on this site about the private sector education furore, because it is after all the private sector, and therefore of no interest to the average commentariat columnist. Buyer beware is the best they can offer as the hucksters and fraudsters and con artists offer expensive certificates and residency permits to desperate students, and then do them over in careless free wheeling style by offering bodgy education, dodgy courses, failed promises and receiverships.

So who do the forlorn turn to? Why the clucking, flapping, hapless, helpless government, which believes in all the free market, unregulated folderol and just wants the cash flow to continue unabated.

Which is why when we turn for our text for the day, it's Dame Slap aka Janet Albechtsen, and she's not writing about long suffering Indian students, she's banging on about The hate that dare not speak its name.

Well actually the hate does a pretty good job of speaking its name. Albrechtsen's piece is a standard bit of frothing and foaming about the evils of Islamic terrorism, and the need to call a spade a spade, or a shovel a shit mover, or even to insist that a rose is a rose is a rose, which by any other name would still smell as rank as a dung beetle on heat. Or some such thing.

But rather than focus first on Dame Slap, there was a wonderful evocation of the response she seemed to want to evoke:

Is there any such thing as a ‘moderate muslim’? My 90 year old mother was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room next to a young pregnant woman in traditional muslim headscarf and attire. My mother, who chats to everyone and doesn’t have a harsh word to say about anyone, turned to the woman and asked kindly ‘When is the baby due, Dear?’ The woman’s calm demeanor changed and she snapped back ‘We’re going to breed you bastards out of this country!’ Then got up and changed seats. My mother was horrified. Is this the face of moderate Islam?

Well done Brenda. Of course there are no moderate Muslims. They're rude unhappy disgruntled in your face offensive people of the lowest and commonest kind. Why I've never met a moderate Muslim in my life, as opposed to the wonderful tolerance displayed by Australians and Christians and Calathumpians.

Whew, that's alarming. But what to do? Well fortunately Bluey knows where it's heading, even if he's constrained by The Australian's guideline which suggests that it will not publish comments that incite racial hatred. Which Bluey would love to do, without it seems understanding that religion is not race based. But he does manage to drag in refugees in his call to arms:

Muslims in Australia accrue extraordinary benefits because Australia is not founded on Islam, and that if Australia were to become Islamic, as all Muslims must desire, they would be as disadvantaged as the citizens of Islamic states. And that therefore, it makes no sense for them to remain Muslim, unless of course, they intend to establish an Islamic regime here and to the backwardness apparent in all Islamic states. If the multiculturists continue to enable the islamic insurrection, then the descendents of the ANZACS and that ilk, will indeed awake and resolve the matter as it should be. The politicians will not help. How could they.

Awake? Resolve the matter as it should be? Like wipe them from the face of the earth, or just evict them to New Zealand, or perhaps turn Tasmania into a gulag?

But then poor Dame Slap is feeling besieged on behalf of put upon Christians:

There are no such sensibilities about calling a spade a bloody shovel when Christian extremists firebomb abortion clinics. No concerns about wholesale branding of Christianity by using the Christian word. Nor is there a fear that using the word will radicalise young Christians. In other areas, too, we don’t shy away from using descriptors to explain extremism.

Well if she'd added "but not in America, where the opposite applies", she might have been a little closer to the mark, because of course in America righteous Christians are regularly outraged when nut jobs and fruit loops are described as Christian extremists even when there's clear evidence that their extremism is based on their religion. Indeed Fox News became notorious for downplaying alleged killer Scott Roedor's Christian faith when he took out Dr. Tiller for running an abortion clinic. It was easier to label him a right wing anti-government, anti-tax, anti-abortionist than upset the Christian base. As one commentator noted:

The articles confirm what we already “know” about what turned Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Roeder into killers: the Muslim faith of the former is all the explanation required, while the Christian faith of the latter is not relevant to the explanation at all. (here)

Dame Slap similarly ignores the howls of anger, anguish and defiance that greeted the release of a US Department of Homeland Security report warning of an increase in right-wing extremism and right-wing terrorism. Presumably she hasn't yet caught up with the news that liberals are fascists, and therefore these fascists are really liberals. She doesn't even note that the littering of references to "right-wing terrorists and extremist groups" studiously avoids reference to extremist christians, when in fact right wing extremism in America goes hand in hand with fundamentalist christianity like a horse and carriage.

While I don't have any problem with labeling Islamic extremism as just that, I also don't have any problem labeling Christian extremism as just that - yes, the mob the picketed the local abortion clinic on a weekly basis and drove it out of the neighborhood, I'm talking about your vile offensive in your face extremism.

But that's in a ratbag blog dedicated to loons. Feeding the fire, stoking up the flames, pouring verbal petrol on the situation by always insisting that extremists and terrorists should be defined by their religion serves their heroic and deluded cause as religious warriors. 

I generally don't go around talking about crusading Christians (and certainly not when in the company of the meek and mild cleric who runs the local op shop), and I don't generally see the benefit in frothing and foaming at the mouth about Islamics as if they were a singular, coherent collection of extremists. 

It sounds as if Dame Slap does, but then she doesn't seem adverse to conjuring up the hate that dare not speak its name.

And in the likes of Helen and Bluey, she's found it.

But let's leave the final word to one of her correspondents, Ron:

Janet, I don’t know the import of your article, but I consider fascist-islamists and fascist-zionists and fascist-fundementalist christians as the ideological kin to all conservatives. The fascist-islamists and the Howard huggers, Dr Spin, and all manner of acid tongued conservatives, should really embrace each other in their respective narrow world view and their mutual annal retentiveness. So Janet, what does the lefty barman say when Bin Laden, John Howard and George Bush walk into his bar? “Get the hell outa here!”

Hear hear, and by the way Ron I've got a list of commentariat columnists who don't deserve a drink either ...