Before you generalize about the major

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http://www.suntimes.com/news/steinberg/1870633,CST-NWS-stein08.article

November 8, 2009

BY NEIL STEINBERG Sun-Times Columnist

See? This rampage by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who shot dead 13 people at Texas's Fort Hood Army base Thursday, confirms everything I've been saying all along -- psychiatrists are dangerous, unbalanced individuals; they go into the profession seeking the mental help that they themselves need . . .

Scratch that. Bad joke. But of course, Hasan does represent another suspect group in our society -- Virginians. Edgar Allan Poe was from Virginia. Shirley MacLaine, too. They're not stable people . . .

No one is suggesting that, maybe because the bias against psychiatrists is more of a mild suspicion, and general dislike of Virginians began to ebb after 1865.

But Hasan is also a Muslim, and people who would laugh off the psychiatrist/Virginia slurs view that aspect differently, because it scratches a shameful itch.

"We should seal the borders!" said a friend of mine, someone I generally respect when he isn't saying stuff like that.

"Tell me," I challenged him "how the actions of this Muslim American indicts all Muslim Americans?"

He sputtered, and I went on.

"If a lady murders her kids and says that Jesus told her to do it, does that indict all Christians? All ladies?"

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. There are two false logic threads that define racism. The details don't matter, you can plug in anything.