Two rather different looks for Sarah!
If you want to know who and what Sarah Lawrence is – and if you want to know about one of the smartest and most effective libertarian propagandists alive then you do want to know who and what Sarah Lawrence is – then read “The Burqa Incident”, subtitled “How I was expelled from the Libertarian Party convention and (allegedly) narrowly escaped spending the night in jail being interrogated by the FBI”. (This girl is clearly a graduate of the Brian Micklethwait School for Putting Unwieldy But Accurate Titles On All Articles (Or Subtitles If That Is Preferred) So That They Always Know What It’s About And Don’t Have To Guess.)
Sarah was due to speak at the Libertarian Party National Convention, held in Indianapolis in July of this year, which she eventually did, on a subject that included “burqa” in its title. So, she thought she’d stir up a little interest for it by walking around beforehand in a burqa. This is an impressive costume (see below).
The joke at the centre of this characteristically Sarahesque episode is that when our Sarah, dressed in her burqa, tried to enter the premises being used by the Convention, she completely freaked out the security people, who had been scaring themselves about a possible terrorist attack on just such a place as this (lots of people assembled in one place) for the previous several days. However, this was what they said to her:
“If it is not part of your religion to wear that, take it off or leave.”
As Sarah herself points out, the guy had it the wrong way around. What he was saying was, in effect: if you’re a genuine terrorist then walk right in ma’am and do your worst, but if it is just a stunt and therefore no threat and no problem, go away.
It seems that not even someone genuinely suspected because of her costume of perhaps being about to let off a bomb may meanwhile be subjected to insulting and religiously demeaning costume restrictions.
I suppose all wars take a bit of getting used to. It must have been rather like this here in England at the end of 1939, when we were still getting used to fighting that war. Let’s hope this war never gets as deadly and as deadly serious as that war did, and remains stuck at the (mostly) farcical stage for the duration.
Sarah’s article has also just been published in The Laissez Faire Electronic Times, under an even more accurate title.
