The Problem of the Problem of the Problem

In an article in Jihad Watch today, Spencer writes:

“. . .the anti-Christianity hysteria is the single largest factor keeping people from thinking clearly about and acting upon the civilizational challenge that the Islamic jihadists present.”

This observation by Spencer demonstrates an egregiously erroneous etiology of what I have called “the Problem of the Problem”—i.e., the Problem of PC that prevents the West from dealing with the Problem of Islam.

In the above statement, Spencer is locating the etiology, the primary cause, of this secondary Problem (which, as I have argued before, is really our primary Problem) in the constellation of anti-Christianity sentiments in the modern West. In doing so, Spencer is executing the classical fallacy of putting the cart before the horse: or, to put it another way, he is mistaking a symptom for a cause.

The current anti-Christianity hysteria is indeed a “factor” in obstructing our collective rational response to the problem of Islam, but it is not a whole factor: it is a part of a larger mosaic, a piece in a larger jigsaw puzzle, or paradigm, of axioms for which so far the best label is PC Multiculturalism. It is this larger paradigm—and not merely one of its jigsaw puzzle pieces—that is “the single largest factor keeping people from thinking clearly about and acting upon the civilizational challenge that the Islamic jihadists present.”

That Spencer could utter this baldly ass-backwards diagnosis so late in the game is dismaying, and bodes ill for our second-tier War of Ideas: that battleground where those who have “gotten” the problem of Islam have yet to “get” the problem of PC that is preventing the majority of our fellow Westerners from “getting” the problem of Islam.

I’m not quite sure which came first: Spencer’s erroneous etiology of the Problem of the Problem, or his myopia to it, qua it. I would venture to say that the etiology of the Problem of the Problem of the Problem—i.e., the Problem of Jihad Watchers blind to the full nature and scope of the Problem of PC which in turn is the #1 enabler of the Problem of Islam—is not in Spencer’s erroneous etiology: that is but a symptom of his general myopia, for which I have yet to come up with an explanation. Possibly, this general myopia to the tertiary Problem (which may soon edge out the secondary Problem for its status of being really the primary Problem) stems somehow from the same political correctness about which it has its blind spot.