That is true; indeed, the VAST majority of Muslims are not radicals (at least as defined by the standard of violent Islamist jihadists). However based on my (admittedly limited and possibly not representative) experience, the core values of those “moderate” Muslims have much more in common with radical jihad than they do with Western Civilization (and, for that matter, than with the Hindu, Chinese or Orthodox civilizations with whom the Islamists are also at war).

Further, many Muslim immigrants seem to be self-organizing in enclaves inside their adopted nations and not assimilating. In some cases, sharia law obtains in these parallel societies. As Western nations look weak and ineffective against the jihadis, there is a chance that more and more of the “moderates” will find the path to radicalization easier and easier to take. Of course, a too-heavy-handed response could have the same impact, which is why I allocated 20% of my chips to option B, but at the moment I think A is the most salient by far. I am somewhat concerned about C, but not much . . . government surveillance is too widespread to be effective and federal law enforcement oscillates between ineffective and inept. And it is absolutely clear that there is no way they are taking guns; all such talk has the opposite intended effect.

So, I am 70-20-9 at the moment; as the situation changes, so might my interpretation & allocation.

The reason I put more on B and less on A is that it would not take much imagination to think that the actions of the US would cause many who are prone to violence to be pushed up a notch. For example, someone who was a 9 out of 10 on the “I would commit violence against the West” might be pushed to a 10 by actions of the US.

I don’t think this makes me anything like those who would blame the US for WW2,
etc. Nazis were not suicide bombers.

That said, one would have to consider how many Muslims who really don’t like “our” way of life to cause trouble for the rest of us. My guess it that it would take many, many more of these that those who are in the A category. But the cost of doing so is much, much less, so I don’t know.

The fact that most Nazis were German non-Jews was what allowed Nazis to take power in Germany. Intolerant Muslims are a minority of a minority. Nazis were the intolerant minority of the majority. The counterpart to intolerant Muslims would be intolerant Jews (minority of a minority). That’s why (b) is the bigger threat than (a), even if both are small threats in our generally tolerant society.

Anyways, I ranked b higher than a because terrorism isn’t a very significant problem for America and most acts of terrorism on us soil aren’t by Muslims. A few dozen murders by Muslim extremists every year won’t even begin to affect our lives, except through b or c. Take away the hysterical reaction to Islamic terrorism and it’s a subset of a non-problem.

Discrimination against minorities, on the other hand, can negatively affect millions of Americans and, if it translates into bellicose foreign policy, kill hundreds of thousands of people. I also see B as reinforcing C much more than A reinforces C. Politicians aren’t going too far because of an actual threat to our way of life, they are going too far because of the backlash to a non-threat.

For readers of this blog, the biggest surprise for me was the fact that the average for bucket A and B were nearly the same. I also would have guessed that the average for C would have been higher than the median.

Plotting the responses by bucket (e.g. 0-10, 10-20) is also instructive. What you’ll see (email for chart) is that the cumulative % of responses for choices A and B sketch a similar trajectory–over 50% of respondents allocated less than 20 of their chips to A and less than 20 chips to B, while only 15% of respondents allocated more than 50 chips to A and B. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, knowing the philosophical persuasion of this blog.

Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the cumulative % of chips allocated by buckets for choice C moves up in nearly perfect linear fashion. That is, each bucket contains close to 10% of the total responses.

(c) may be a concern, but it is orthogonal to (a). They are different problems with different solutions. So I don’t see why you have to allocate a fixed number of chips between them.