I'm well aware they're not all the same. But most ethnic stereotypes have basis in fact. They have to come from somehwere, after all. And you shouldn't have to think long and hard to see why this is so. An ethnicity is defined by attitudes and traditions that most of its members have in common, which the parents instill in their children, and which are not common to humanity as a whole. If these things didn't exist, ethnicity wouldn't exist.

Most of these distinguishing characterists are benign. Some even virtuous, as Thomas Cahill has pointed out. But the laws of probability dicate that some will be downright nasty. Persons from certain parts of the world are statistically much more likely to kill thousands of American civilians in a suicide attack than are people from the general world population. It's not politically correct to say so, and yes I know it's very rude to point it out. But it's true, and it's relevant, and somebody's got to say it. Facing unpopular facts such as this are very literally a matter of life and death for us now.

I don't believe that ethnic origin is fate. Free will exists, and at the individual level, sometimes conscience and just plain sense overrride cultural indoctrination. But culture is very much part of an ethnocally defined group of people, in a statistical sense. We ignore it at our peril.

It's strictly a question of burden of proof. Those foreign nationals from the Arab/Muslim world who are civilized, and who wish not to live here under a cloud if suspicion, need to make it expressly clear that they condemn the terrorists. They should hang sings outside their homes and their mosques reading, "we condemn terrorism in all its forms, and are saddened at what was done." If I were in their place, I'd do the same, and nor grumble about it. And if they intend to become American citizens at some point, adding an American flag would be a nice touch. That's not too much to ask, under the circumstances. And please, no cant about how nobody should have to do that in a free and decent and civilized country. Whatever country we're in, this is still planet Earth.

Those who are already nationalized American citizens can just display the American flag prominently. That should settle all questions.

Of course this cuts both ways. If you're a very pale skinned man with a perpetually sunburned neck and a pickup truck with a gun rack, it wouldn't hurt to add a bumper sticker reading "I oppose the the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians, no matter the provocation." I might just get one of those made up for myself.

By the way, I wouldn't mind seeing all ethnic distinctions obliterated, or at the very least drastically watered down. To hell with multiculturalism. Diversity is getting us slaughtered here. Let's just take the best features from each culture, and make them universal. Keep the rule of law, representative democracy, human rights and science from Western civilization. Chinese herbal medicine is worth having, too. Algebra and the decimal system from the Arab world. Russian music and literature. But throw out all the nasty harmful bits like clitorectomy, suttee, ritual alchohol abuse, the US public school system, amoral familism and suicide terrorism. Leave alone the harmless picturesque stuff like Cantonese funeral rites and Halloween and the British monarchy and carboard shamrocks and Anime. Stuff you wouldn't mind your kids being exposed to in grade school. Diversity as diversion is no problem.

Now bring on the flames! I know you want to.

Pakistan is making very sincere-sounding noises about being united with decent peoples against terrorism. This can't hurt, and it's bound to help civilized people of all persuasions.

I'll make a couple of amendments to my comments above:

1. If you're a Pakistani national, displaying a pakistani flag will do just fine.

2. It's getting damn hard to find American flags. I think people will be understanding if you haven't got one. At least I hope so, `coz I haven't got one.

I was never the sort to plaster my vehicle with stickers. My positions on things have always been too nuanced and unconventional to be represented on bumper stickers, even custom made ones. And having come of age during Vietnam and Watergate, I've found flag-waving to be only a little less crude than flag burning.

But with recent events, suddenly the Red White and Blue have acquired a crystalline unambiguity they haven't had in nearly forty years. The one time in my life I want to wave a flag and I can't get one, by jingo!

Got anything specific in mind?

I feel their pain. I've been in situations like that. Here's what I've learned: if you're going to be damned, see to it that your conscience is not among the damners. If you're going to be hated either way, you may as well be on the side of right.

Another thing I've found: the people who will hate you if you're right are many and vociferous, but the people who respect you for being right are the ones that matter most. They tend to win in the end, despite being outnumbered, for the simple reason that they're smarter. But it takes a while.

And please, no knee-jerking about racist crap and assholes. Especially not after preaching about unconditional tolerance. If you can't practise what you preach (and by the way, no one can practise what you preach) then preach something more workable.

Detail your algorithm for deciding what to tolerate and what not to tolerate. Provide comments explaining the rationale behind each decision fork.

Here's mine:

main function: I tolerate that which is not dangerous. I give zero tolerance to that which is dangerous. If the danger value of something is indeterminate, I flag it for careful observation.

subroutine: determine whether something is dangerous. Take the sum total of personal experience, call it P. Take the sum total of what I can find in history books. Call it H. Take the sum total of prevailing conventional wisdom. Call it PCW. Take the sum total of prevailing wisdom among those who reject conventional wisdom. Call it SCW, for Second-tier Conventional Wisdom. Take the opinios of the Politically Correct. Call it PC.

Into each of these, feed the question: is X dangerous? Take a weighted average of the results, thusly:

P has a weighting of 55
H has a weighting of 40
PCW has a weighting of 3
SCW has a weighting of 2
PC has a weighting of 0

I arrived at the weightings above thusly: that which is verifiable gets higher marks that that which is harder to verify. That which has high predicitive success outweighs that which does not. By these criteria, adjust the weightings until an optimal set of values emerges.

taken at face value, this is all a far cry from squishy sermonizing on tolerance. As well as from categorically dismissing all non-squishies as "racist assholes."

I'm all for a scientific approach to things. In fact I'm quite hardheaded about it. It's the one thing from my period of atheism that I deem of any value. But one must be willing to follow where it leads. No having it both ways.

When "open-minded" is just a word you bandy about, you're no longer open-minded.

Your argument about immigrants and their traits is not utterly without validity. In fact, it's pretty good as far as it goes. However, I'm not sure you grasp all its implications. Some points:

1. If the value of immigration to the US is contingent on its difficulty, what happens if we don't make it difficult enough? Where's the quality control then? What you have provided is an argument for keeping immigration difficult.

1a. With the advances of transportation technology over the centuries, immigration is getting progressively less difficult. It may not be a coincidence that the most successful enthnicities in this country are mostly the least recent (the Chinese are a notable, but only partial, exception.)

1b. Already there are immigrants who've been here for thirty years and never bothered to learn English. They're in dead end jobs, or even on welfare. That's not a good trend.

2. It may well be difficult for the poor to get in, depending on where they start from. But it's all too easy for those funded by an evil Saudi billionaire to get in. This is precisely the opposite of what we want.

3. It's not at all obvious how to keep out the evil geniuses and their henchmen. Even sealing our borders wouldn't work. They'd just come ashore at night by submarine.

4. Since we can't realistically hope to keep them out, it follows that we must watch carefully for them once they're here. That means looking at foreigners with suspicion, based on their ethnicity. It's the Red Scare all over again, but without the poodle skirts and bouyant economy this time. It's unfair to the innocent immigrants, but what's to do?

4a. Besides, it's always been unfair for the immigrants. They have a hard time of it. That's part of what keeps out the riffraff, according to your own argument.

5. The only long term solution I can see is to destroy their power base. Bin Laden and his deep pockets have got to go, and in such a spectacular way as to deter any others with his inclinations.

6. In the meantime, it's live in fear. It sucks, but it's better than getting blown up.

1. That wasn't a suicide attack.
2. It wouldn't be enough to tip the balance in any case.