Why is it that so many of the same people who are skeptical about exporting liberalism (count me as one) are perfectly content with the idea of importing illiberalism?

Even as the terrorist attacks in Paris were happening, a predictable debate broke out over the millions of Islamic refugees now pouring into the West from the Arab world. We were once again asked to pretend that Islamic terrorism materializes in a vacuum that has absolutely nothing to do with theological beliefs of the majority of people in the Middle East and thus nothing to do with brutality and oppression that prevail in the region.

One of the most common talking points regarding refugees has been this:

This tragedy should make us sympathetic to refugees fleeing these murderers, not angry at them: https://t.co/ok8Gg0tApD
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) November 14, 2015

From the Vox piece:

Again, we still don’t know who’s to blame for the Paris attacks, whether a jihadist group was involved, or the motives involved. But if a jihadist group is the culprit, these kinds of terrorist organizations are exactly the kind of danger that many Syrian refugees are fleeing from. It is ISIS, after all, that has terrorized so much of Syria — and forced people to flee their homes to avoid violence.

This kind of emotional appeal avoids some very inconvenient facts. For starters, it looks like at least one of the attackers was a refugee from Syria. Put another way: he was a terrorist posing as a refugee — one of the most potent arguments refugee opponents offered.

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