Friday, November 20, 2015

On Ben Carson's "Comparison" of Refugees With Dogs

Ben Carson compares Syrian refugees to dogs.  That's the headline of the Politico article.  I saw a philosopher comment today remarking, "Ben Carson: Syrian refugees akin to 'mad, rabid dogs.'  And some Xians like this creep?"
Here is what Carson said with regard to balancing safety and humanitarian concerns:


“For instance, you know, if there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you’re probably gonna put your children out of the way,” Carson said. “Doesn’t mean that you hate all dogs by any stretch of the imagination.”“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly,” he added. “Who are the people who wanna come in here and hurt us and wanna destroy us? Until we know how to do that, just like it would be foolish to put your child out in the neighborhood knowing that that was going on, it’s foolish for us to accept people if we cannot have the appropriate type of screening.”
So the headline is misleading and the philosopher dead wrong.  Carson makes an analogy with a terrorist and a rabid dog, not a refugee (since someone entering the U.S. seeking terror is not seeking refuge.)  The salient point of the analogy is that terrorists are like mad dogs, and if you think there might be a mad dog in a group of dogs, you don't let your children play with the dogs until you know which one is rabid.  A fine analogy.  Nothing to see here, though this sort of coverage shouldn't be surprising.



2 comments:

  1. Dogs in the US, rats in the UK. The Daily Mail published a cartoon depicting rats mingling with middle-eastern-looking people trudging across the page towards a line marked "European Border". To any sane person, this seems to be warning that the current flood of refugees and economic migrants currently heading towards and through Europe might well contain terrorists or other undesirables. Cue screams of horror from The Guardian (of course) who claim that this slurs all refugees with the "vermin" label, just as Jews were slandered by the Nazi propagandists. If you haven't seen it, and the response, it's worth a look.
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/19/turning-backs-refugees-isis-paris-attacks-islamic-state#comments

    I think our Old-World liberal daftness has a charm all of it's own.

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