UPDATE: Sorry, I can’t just leave it at that. In this thinly-veiled "liberals hate America" article, Goldberg writes this:
The dirty, embarrassing secret is that this sort of multiculturalism has made Europe a wellspring of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, but America’s Muslim community has remained overwhelmingly peaceful. Why? Well, if the answer doesn’t lay in President Bush’s "outreach" — and few think it does — or in Euro-style multicultural condescension, maybe it has something to do with the American "we" that Couric and so many others seem so embarrassed by.
This strikes me as totally, completely, utterly wrong. The U.S. has been able to assimilate Muslim immigrants because it has a long tradition of accepting and ignoring cultural differences (despite the efforts of Goldberg and others). In other words, America doesn’t have the overpowering sense of ethnicity-based national culture that European countries tend to have.
Look at multicultural Canada — that’s not exactly become a hotbed Islamic fundamentalism. Now look at France which seems to takes strides to segregate minorities (particulary Muslims) from its culture, which causes the "wellspring" of Islamic discontent. Or Germany. Or even the Swiss.
UPDATE: Ezra gets it…
I already said a bit about this bizarre Jonah Goldberg column at Tapped, but I hadn’t yet seen this doozy of a concluding paragraph:
The dirty, embarrassing secret is that this sort of multiculturalism has made Europe a wellspring of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, but America’s Muslim community has remained overwhelmingly peaceful. Why? Well, if the answer doesn’t lay in President Bush’s "outreach" — and few think it does — or in Euro-style multicultural condescension, maybe it has something to do with the American "we" that Couric and so many others seem so embarrassed by.
So the causal factor behind Islamic radicalism in Europe is…."multiculturalism." Namely, the type of multiculturalism that allows for hookah bars, the wearing of Muslim symbols to school, and honor killings. It is not, mind you, that immigrants have a much harder time economically integrating into European society, the consequence of post-World War II guest worker programs, or that Europe is much closer to Turkey, Algeria, and a host of other Muslim nations, and so receives poor, marginalized immigrants from Muslim nations, while America’s distance prohibits all but highly skilled, relatively educated, Muslim immigrants from financing the trip over. Nope. It’s hookah bars, which America totally doesn’t have any of, at all.