Creeping sharia in Progressive Land

As I've argued on this blog for years, San Francisco's left-wing has limited success in large part because of an intellectual failure. One of the reasons for that failure---along with old-fashioned stupidity---is that they're hobbled by a generic leftist ideology that prevents them from dealing sensibly with important issues. 

On homelessness Gavin Newsom was able to defeat city progressives because of the latter's ideology-hobbled interpretation of homelessness, which was seen as only poor people who couldn't pay the rent. The implication: we would just have to live with homelessness because it's a consequence of our wicked capitalist system.

Newsom understood that this was bunk and that people wanted something done about the growing squalor on city streets and in city parks. Hence, Care Not Cash was born, passed by city voters in 2002, and Newsom was elected mayor in 2003 after a campaign that featured the homeless issue.

Progressive ideology also requires that graffiti/tagging vandalism be seen as an art genre that must be tolerated.

The latest issue viewed dimly through a prog ideological fog is the anti-Jihad ad on Muni buses. Even though the ad doesn't tar all Muslims as "savages," only Jihadists, Muni can't remove it because of that darn First Amendment loophole that Pamela Geller is using to promote her pro-Israel, anti-terrorism cause: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel, defeat Jihad."

City progs and City Hall are playing into her hands by making a fuss in the first place, and now Muni has actually placed a PC disclaimer on buses next to Geller's ad: “Muni condemns statements that describe any group as savages.” But Geller's ad only condemns Jihadists, not all Muslims.
  

Even Jihadist suicide bombers who blow up marketplaces and buses killing other Muslim men, women and children can't be called "savages"? Not to mention the Jihadists who are killing Americans every day in Afghanistan.

As if Muni passengers need to be protected from heretical ideas---or that anyone pays attention to the ads on buses. (I only notice them when they cover bus windows, which, by the way, only shows Muni's contempt for its passengers).

Muni spokesman Paul Rose lies all the time on behalf of that bloated, dysfunctional bureaucracy. The other day he claimed that the city's push to put parking meters in the neighborhoods has nothing to do with raising money to pay for City Hall's gravy train; it's really, you understand, about "managing" parking in the city.

Rose's statement on this issue isn't a lie; it's just the kind of stupidity that prevents him and his prog constituents from dealing sensibly with it:

"Obviously we think the ads in place right now are repulsive and they definitely cross the line," Muni spokesperson Paul Rose said. "So there's not a lot we can do in light of the First Amendment."

Yes, that pesky First Amendment allows people to say things that upset right-thinking progressives. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they passed the Bill of Rights? Too bad they didn't have the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to lecture them about sensitivity:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations welcomes Muni's counter-ad as a step in the right direction. "A lot of the damage has already been done; we have heard from many community members both at our organization and other organizations across the Bay Area who say they don't feel comfortable boarding the buses that carry these ads," CAIR spokesperson Zahra Billoo said..."This is someone who's thriving on creating fear of millions, if not billions, of Arabs and Muslims across the world," Billoo said.

Bullshit.

Not surprisingly Tim Redmond, political editor of the uber-prog Bay Guardian, does some hand-wringing on the issue:

It's not just idle rhetoric---this stuff frightens people. "We're hearing from people that they're uncomfortable riding Muni," Zahra Biloo, executive director of the Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told me. Obviously, you can't run ads that enourage someone to engage in violence. Is dehumanizing people and calling them "savages" the same thing? Biloo thinks it's pretty close: "It's important for progressive cities to say, 'not in our city,'" she said.

More bullshit. Biloo is surely lying about people who are supposedly "uncomfortable" riding Muni because of the ad. 

Fortunately "our city" is not like Kabul and Karachi, where religious violence by Jihadists is a daily reality. But then religious fanatics in Afghanistan and Pakistan don't have to contend with a nuisance like the First Amendment.