Tolerance is a virtue. Cowardice isn't. We are using the former as an excuse for the latter. As our gutless reaction to recent events in the Swat Vally of Pakistan and the British parliament sadly proves.

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Item:  The British government refuses entry to Dutch politician Geert Wilder, because he made a 17 minute agit-prop movie equating the Koran with terrorism.

Item: The Pakistani government surrenders the Swat Valley, a resort area not 100 miles from Islamabad, to the Taliban and sharia law.

Britain will survive, as will Mr. Wilder, though he faces hate crime charges in the Netherlands for doing no more than telling the truth as he sees it.  The odd thing is that there has been so little outrage, or even discussion, about either.

The quiet insult to Mr. Wilder and the silence accompanying the introduction of sharia law in Swat--and the bombings, beheadings and girl's school demolishings that produced that happy outcome--are both attributable to what we liberals like to call tolerance.

Color me cynical, but I'm starting to think we are full of ... it.  Specifically, the chicken variety.

I think the implacable, unreasoning, bearded Islamist serial-killers have us scared half out of our principles.  It's like we're in a room with a maniac and we're afraid to make eye contact; maybe if we ignore him he'll leave us alone.  We liberals can't accept that there are people so barbaric as to hate us.  Us, the light of the world!  Who do they think we are, George Bush?  We don't hate them, we're tolerant!

But I'm beginning to hear the real word behind that pretty sound: Cowardice.

If it walks like a chicken and clucks like a chicken it's a chicken.  We're a bunch of chickens and the Islamists are Colonel Sanders.

Let's take a look at what the Taliban is doing in the Swat Valley and Afghanistan, or wherever they make the rules.  And let's not bother ourselves with regulated hairstyles or what they do to petty thieves, let's get to the heart of the matter: Women.

Actually, women is a western word, a liberal word.  The Islamists call them something else.

Slaves.  Ignorant, invisible sack of baby breeder.

They keep women as brood mares, unlettered and house bound.  And they know how to keep the slaves quiet.  They do it the same way we did, back before the Civil War.  Make it a crime to teach a slave how to read.  The Pakistani government just made a pact with girl's school blower-uppers.

The Taliban's definition of the proper role for a woman is one of total subservience.  Let me put that in terms that might get a rise out of you.  They think women are subhuman.  There is, right this moment, in Pakistan, a political movement that has won a major victory over a nuclear-armed state, that believes women are subhuman.  Not entitled to show their faces in public, not allowed to go to school, not allowed to question their masters.

We don't hear so much about that stuff, do we.  If we're outraged, we're pretty quiet about it.  Check the TV news, check the newspapers, check the blogs, check this blog.  You're more likely to read purple-faced rage about the late George Bush, or Rod Blowjobovich, or slimy bankers, sneaky auto execs, juiced-up ballplayers and evil politicians, which 60% of us think means Dick Cheney, and 40% Nancy Pelosi.

I hate to break it to you kids, but that's small change. The distance, philosophically, between Karl Rove and Ralph Nader is........that far.

The distance between either of them and your average Taliban Neanderthal is...........................................................................................................

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............................................................................................................(xⁿ)

But we're too cowardly to admit it.  Instead, we pretend what really chaps our asses is that cheater A-Rod.  Him and octo-mom.  We argue about a ten-point swing in the tax-cut-to-spending ratio of the stimulus bill like it mattered.  Comments fly across the screen, radio hosts foam like hydrophobics, Anderson Cooper promises to "keep them honest."

Well, folks, honestly.  Every day a little more of the earth is being swallowed up by global slaving and the UN is quiet.  They would say something, but they're busy right now.  Some Jews built a home on the wrong side of the desert.

That's the reason these poor, insulted Islamists are so obstreperous.  If it wasn't for the crimes of Israel against the Palestinian people, the Taliban would be hosting the Vagina Monologues right now.  Try to understand.  Their pride is so hurt they just can't help themselves.  They have to treat their women like heifers to build up their self-esteem.

Above all, be cluck, tolerant, and hey, how about that George Bush, cluck cluck, wiretapping cluck, Guantanamo, cluck cluck, extraordinary rendition, cluck, no cluck war cluck for oil cluck cluck cluck.

Yes, I know those things are wrong.  I'm a liberal just like you, let's stipulate that all our abuses are inexcusable.  But I was wondering:

Do female dogs have to cover up in the Swat valley too?

Does sharia law allow for a flap on the burka, or must one hike it up to pee?

Are the plans for the Swat Valley Hooters on hold for now?

Don't laugh, that could be you someday, or your sister or your mom.  As long as we're too chickenhearted to call a spade a spade and a slave a slave, preferring instead to take shelter behind the feeble walls of cowardice thinly disguised as tolerance.  Because it feels safer (it's not) and seems easier (see above.)

'm not stumping for yet more wars.  My visceral disgust with the middle-passage mentality of the Taliban in particular and radical Islamists in general is not a neo-colonial manifesto or a call to a new crusade.  It's not our war and it's not a war we can win, even in Afghanistan.  It's their war, and Pakistan just surrendered an important fort.   At the very least we ought to let them hear about it.

But, before we do that, we ought to let ourselves hear about it.  If we can hear over the squalling of octo-mom's fourteen kids, her agent and publicist, that is.

Authors Bio:
San Francisco based columnist, author, gym rat and novelist. My book, "The Confessions of a Catnip Junkie" is the best memoir ever written by a cat. Available on Amazon.com, or wherever fine literature is sold with no sales tax collected.

For those seeking more detail on yours truly, the following is from my website, allangoldstein.com, where you can partake copiously, and for free.

"Allan Goldstein lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jordan, and a minimum of two cats. His op-ed newspaper column,"Caught off Base," has appeared in San Francisco's West Portal Monthly for the past decade. Satire, invective and humor are specialties.

He also blogs regularly on opednews.com and on hypocrisy.com under the pseudonym Snark Twain. Other work has appeared in Spitball, The Baseball Literary Review, The Potomac Review, and several magazines including Rock and Gem and Pilot's Preflight. He is currently at work on his third novel."