In the aftermath of Merkel’s call for a German burqa ban, it was inevitable that someone would write the following:

Such actions toward a religious group are not new for Germany, and one might believe that lessons learned long ago would be transferable to new times and circumstances.

Put aside the pissy prissy style in which the writer, more in sorrow than in anger, instructs Germans not to be Nazis again; think rather of the world of fascist burqa-banning states the writer conjures up, those other notorious Nazi regimes – Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, France, Switzerland – that have passed partial or full bans.

UD also finds remarkable the writer’s claim that since some women have been kept masked and swaddled all their lives, it would be an unkindness to unwrap them:

It is simply what they have been taught that decent women should do in public. It has been the practice of all the women they know for as long as they have been alive. For these women banning the veil has several possible effects. At best it makes them profoundly uncomfortable when they are forced into the public realm. It would be like passing a law that says I can’t wear a shirt in public. I don’t have a religious rational for shirt wearing, but having always worn shirts I’m quite uncomfortable with making my body an object for public viewing and quite possibly public judgment… It is difficult if not impossible to change a lifetime of learning reinforced through practice. Even if these women changed their minds, changing the emotional response to their own behavior would be nearly impossible. And frankly no one is trying to change their minds. The result for these women will simply be to drive them indoors, to keep them from going out in public.

Let’s unpack this, shall we? Note that the writer has suddenly decided he’s not talking about veiling the face – and this whole argument is about face, not body, veiling – so that really just as he gets to wear a shirt, they get to wear burqas, see?

And anyway, once you’ve been raised inside a cloth cage, you get comfortable with that and you find you don’t want to be uncaged. Again we’re treated to the writer’s pissy condescension:

It is difficult if not impossible to change a lifetime of learning reinforced through practice.

I don’t know… The Germans managed to de-nazify, didn’t they? … But wait! Maybe not…

One begins to discern a philosophy of life here, ja?

And here’s the kicker.

Even if these women changed their minds, changing the emotional response to their own behavior would be nearly impossible. And frankly no one is trying to change their minds.

Again, it’s “nearly impossible” for people to change so fuck it. And anyway… What does the writer mean when he writes that frankly no one is trying to change their minds?

Well, let’s see. We could take this frank admission of the frank truth a couple of ways.

1. These women live in Salafist environments and that’s just the way it is and that ain’t gonna change so leave them alone. You can’t change Nazis and you can’t change Salafists. Taking off their burqa would simply make these women hypocrites.

2. These women don’t live in democracies where everyone every day – from the baker on the corner to their children’s teachers to lawmakers – is in fact in various overt and covert ways trying to change their minds. Where the very legislation at issue is about trying to change their minds. No, no. Democracies do nothing to establish, protect and affirm themselves; they do nothing to teach the values of democracy to their citizens. Frankly no one’s trying with these women – and with the men who in many cases are the real problem here – so let it be.