It is fascinating to me that no one, of whom I am aware, has yet to notice the parity of reasoning underlying the Right's "Islamo-Fascist" and the Left's "White Racist."

For years now, while many on "the Right" have decried the horrors of "Islamo-Fascism," those on the Left (and others), not without good reason, have ridiculed them for doing so. That there are Islamic terrorists throughout the world determined to destroy all those who threaten to impede the realization of their theological and political aspirations is a stone cold fact that only a fool or a liar would think to deny.  However, "the Islamo-Fascist" is a painfully one-dimensional caricature, a villain that would be worthy of a superhero comic if not for the glaring poverty of imagination from which it springs.

Now is not the time to speculate on the possible reasons why the Islamic terrorist — an incontestably abhorrent creature to whose actions death is the only justifiable and desirable response — does what he does. I, for one, in contradistinction to the Ron Pauls and Pat Buchanans of the world, simply cannot accept that if only America ceases to assert itself in the Islamic World, the Islamic terrorist, at least vis-à-vis the United States, would go the way of the dinosaur.  American interventionism, no doubt, accounts for some of the Islamic terrorist's motivation, but to understand him solely in these terms is to grossly misunderstand him. Still, this account has the virtues of plausibility and partial truth: it is plausible because it accommodates the fact that however repulsive and alien a figure, the Islamic terrorist is a flesh and blood person motivated, like all human actors, by reasons, and several studies as well as Islamic terrorists themselves have indicated its partial truth.  In short, this is an account of the Islamic terrorist.

Yet the reality of the Islamic terrorist stands in stark contrast to the ideality of the "Islamo-Fascist." The latter is an abstraction.  The "Islamo-Fascist" is a fiction, the embodiment of raw, undifferentiated Evil, the despiser of all that lives.  According to the Bill Bennetts, Sean Hannitys, and David Horowitzs of the world, he is consumed by "hatred" for anything other than himself, but this "hatred" is born of insanity, the product of a wild irrationality.  It isn't that the reasons for his "hatred" are illegitimate; there are no reasons for it.  The "Islamo-Fascist" "hates" the United States especially because the latter is "so good" and he is so "evil."

Unquestionably, when imminently threatened by anyone, I firmly believe that one must act first and ask questions later.  That "Islamo-Fascism" is a fiction alters not in the least the fact that the world is full of Islamic terrorists that desire to destroy American life, murderous vipers whose ambitions we must crush with nothing less than death.  Yet if our objective is to achieve a genuine understanding of who our enemies are — an objective purportedly shared by a considerable number of people, including those who believe in the threat of "Islamo-Fascism" no less than those who do not — then we need to move beyond the caricatures.  And "Islamo-Fascism" is indeed a gross caricature.

On this score, leftists are correct. However, the Left has been trading in fictions of its own for decades.  Ironically (or perhaps not so ironically, depending on one's perspective), leftists haven't exhibited a fraction of the willingness to punctuate the cartoonish distortion of "the White Racist" that they have extended to that concerning the Middle Eastern terrorist.  "The White Racist" of the Left's imaginings is no less a fiction, and no less dull, than "the Islamo-Fascist."

For the leftist, "White Racism" is the most abominable of all evils, and "the White Racist" is its personification.  Ironically, there are remarkable ontological similarities between "the White Racist" of the Left's imaginings and the God of the Medieval theological vision.  During the Middle Ages, God was typically described by theologians and philosophers as "the Uncaused Cause."  Since the world is comprised of beings that are the "effects" of "efficient causes," they reasoned, and since nothing can be the "efficient cause" of itself, the very fact that there are any "effects" at present decisively establishes the existence of something that is the "First Cause," and ultimately, the Ground of all that is.  Yet since this Being is the First Cause, it must itself be uncaused, and this, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, is what everyone means by God.

Of course, God has also been understood by Christians, medieval and otherwise, as the Perfect Being, the apex of "the Great Chain of Being."  If the contemporary leftist subscribed to this medieval belief that everything that exists can be ranked according to gradations of perfection, then "the White Racist" would occupy not the position traditionally reserved for God, but that reserved for the Devil. Still, the similarities between the medieval conception of God as "Uncaused Cause" and the leftist's conception of "the White Racist" should not be overlooked.

"The White Racist" is the most unsympathetic of characters.  Not unlike his "Islamo-Fascist" counterpart, there are neither causes nor reasons to explain either "the hatred" of "the White Racist" or his "hateful" actions (one may object that his "hatred" is caused by "ignorance," "fear," "envy," or some other unwarranted or irrational emotion or set of emotions, yet this objection fails for on the contemporary portrait of "the White Racist," these emotions are as constitutive of his character as "hatred" itself).  Yet it is "the White Racist's" "hatred" that is the cause of all that is ill in the world. In fact, even the Islamic terrorist is a creature born of "White Racism."

It is true that this last point is rarely stated so bluntly, but when those on the Left link problems besetting any non-European peoples, regardless of who they are or where they reside, to "Christian Crusaders," "Western colonialists," and/or "American Imperialists," make no mistake about it, they are waxing indignant over, you guessed it, "White Racism."

Interestingly, when the Left (and others) complained ad nauseum that the Islamic terrorist in Iraq is the product of American aggression, they left themselves open to a devastating rejoinder that, strangely, was never forthcoming.  According to their own (confused) logic, the Union, then, was to blame for the Ku Klux Klansman — the quintessential "White Racist" — and the era of Jim Crow that he helped to initiate, for the unabashed assertion of white racial consciousness that ensued upon the end of the War between the States and of which the Klan is emblematic was a reaction to the humiliating defeat and other indignities suffered by the South at the mighty hands of the North.

In other words, if American interventionism or "imperialism" is to blame for the Islamic terrorist in Iraq, then it is at the feet of Northern interventionism or "imperialism" that the blame for "White Racism" in the South must be laid.

It is fascinating to me that no one, of whom I am aware, has yet to notice the parity of reasoning underlying the Right's "Islamo-Fascist" and the Left's "White Racist."  But perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, for it is always much easier for ideologues to discern fictions when they are the cherished ideas of their opponents than when they are component parts of their own worldviews.