permissiveness: the cause of terrorism

[Forstater, Mathew]

A Jeff Jacoby has an article in the Boston Globe, "Blame Lindh's
Permissive Parents."  According to Jacoby, it all started with Lindh's
parents letting him listen to hip-hop music (although later in the
article, Jacoby implies that it may have begun much earlier, when the
Lindh's named their son after John Lennon!).  From there it was all
downhill--he read Malcolm X's autobiography, converted to Islam, went to
the Middle East, and ended up in the Taliban.  Now that's some subtle
analysis of the relation of culture, politics, and social psychology
folks!  Actually, if we follow Jacoby's convoluted logic, we get quite a
different result.

1) How many kids have listended to hip-hop music in the last 20 years?
Multiple millions, no doubt.  How many joined the Taliban?  One that we
know of.

2) How many terrorists listened to hip-hop music growing up?  After all,
isn't hip-hop one of the symbols of decadent American culture that Osama
bin Laden's followers abhor?  It is likely that most of the parents of
children who became terrorists did not allow their children to listen to
hip-hop.

So, I guess Jacoby would have us all promote hip-hop listening to our
children.  That would seem to make the odds against our kids becoming
terrorists.

Who is this guy anyway? Does anybody know?

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/347/oped/Blame_Lindh_s_permissive_pare
nts+.shtml

Mat