Yeah. this one is pretty simple. Active opposition to the Moslem Community Center makes you a religious bigot and illustrates your selective interpretation of the freedom of religion clauses in the The Constitution. There is no 'hollowed ground' argument against a whole recognized religion. Ignorance, intolerance and religious jingoism are the wrong views to support here.
As all polling shows, most people who oppose the mosque don't support using force to stop it from being built (I know thats a difficult concept for liberal to understand since you all are all about forcing your morals on others). The hollowed ground argument does make sense. A historical example example would be Pope John Paul II asking the some nuns to abandon their convent at Auschwitz. The Pope understood that Auschwitz belonged to its victims and not a religion. Here is an image demonstrating the proximity of the mosque to ground zero. Whether the area qualifies as being in Ground Zero depends on your definition of Ground Zero. The caption for the image says the building previously in that lot was actually flown through by the first plane during 9/11 (not sure how true that is).
So hopefully the millions of muslims,gays and anchor babies who are of age to vote will make their vote count.
No it doesn't. It's is a singling out, a demonizing of one religion though guilt by (your) association. There are no 'group' of victims here; though I thank the Pope for for sanctifying gypsies and homosexuals along with the Jews. How about the Mosque as a memorial to the Muslim victims? Just think a little more broadly and see the hypocrisy.
Love the site that you posted this from, America's "Independent" Party--if by "Independent" they actually mean radical right-wing shill party. Check out THIS link to America's Independent Party's platform, positively JUICY hypocrisy: link The “reason for being” of government, and of America’s Independent Party The protection of the life, liberty, and private property of the people is the primary reason for the existence of human government, and more particularly, our precious American republican form of self-government. This is why we willingly accept no breach of the rights of the free exercise of religion, free speech, free press, free assembly, free association, and the right to petition government for the redress of grievances. We defend all of the enumerated rights listed in our Bill of Rights, and, in addition, all natural rights that are not enumerated, as per the Ninth Amendment. And before you whine about me attacking the source, an aerial photo of ground zero and the highlighted block were the center will go doesn't support your argument, you're just telling us what we already know.
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Here's a new Politico article today about this very topic: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41076.html It's really long, so click the link to read. Here are some relevant pieces from the first page: Republican leaders have largely abandoned former President George W. Bush's post-Sept. 11 rhetorical embrace of American Muslims and his insistence — always controversial inside the party — that Islam is a religion of peace. This weekend, former Bush aides were among the very few Republicans siding with Obama, as many of the party's leaders have moved toward more vocal denunciations of Islam's role in violence abroad and suspicion of its place at home. ... Muslim leaders say, regretfully, that they also see a dramatic change. Republicans have "shifted completely away from the Bush administration line on relations with Islam and they've obviously made the political calculation that bashing Islam and Muslims is a winning issue for them," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who blamed the "tea party movement [for] liberating the inner bigot in people." The shift has various causes. One is simply the freedom of opposition. "The stronger imperative for Bush's stance was geopolitical," said former Bush speechwriter David Frum, referring to the Bush administration's reliance on Islamic allies for the prosecution of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now Republicans are liberated to say what many think, and what many of their supporters want to hear. I especially liked this: "There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia," wrote former House Speaker Newt Gingrich a day later. So for one of the GOP's biggest voices, it has nothing do with location - it has to do with treating Islam the way Christianity is treated in a country run by a dictator.
And they hypocrisy in yours scares me. I find it disturbing that you think Islam should be indicted on the behaviors of a few and that a city should be held hostage to the prejudices of those who seek political gain from fear-mongering but that Christianity should not be held to the same standard.
Does it cause you pain that there has been one for almost 40 years standing just 4 blocks away from Ground Zero?!!!! This is an absolute red herring, there is no reason to be any more offended by the building of a cultural center 2 blocks away as opposed to 4 blocks away from Ground Zero. You can have some reservations about it and not be a bigot, but the active and vocal organized opposition to this reeks of a KKK rally and the rhetoric and methods being employed PROVE that point. This opposition has morphed into a giant exercise of an anti-Muslim/anti-Islam hate orgy which seeks to harass and intimidate an unpopular minority. The same vigor and level of organized harassment met by Muslims in OTHER parts of the country, thousands of miles away from Ground Zero, should crystallize this opposition as one grounded in bigotry and deep intolerance of minority rights. The fact that my community (the Jewish community) has been vocally supportive of this project is something that I am deeply proud of, since Jews should know fully well the importance of supporting and upholding the religious and civil rights of other minorites in this country. Well, save of course for the few useful idiots and self-serving Jews like Foxman at the ADL, whom I should mention has been widely admonished and discredited for his position by prominent Jewish figures and organizations in the press. I mean for pete's sake, even Jewish hardliners and traditional Likud apologists like Dershowitz and orthodox rabbis in NYC criticized the ADL for its stance!
Actually, if you look at world history, torture has been implemented with very little protest time and again. Human history is stained by it. The opposition of torture is relatively new. Our thought on that topic has evolved for the better. As for the 14th Amendment, I still do not understand how there is any rationale for its alteration. The 14th Amendment is not problematic.
Granting extra-special status to 3,000 victims is a little weird too, unless you live in America. The evil people who perpetrated 9/11 come from countries where such violence is a pretty regular occurrence. I don't think it's particularly helpful to get into the relative awfulness of crimes of people who believed they were doing God's work on behalf of one religion or another. But I certainly think it's shortsighted for anyone (American or otherwise) to believe that more or more awful crimes have been perpetrated on behalf of misunderstandings of Islam than Christianity or Judaism. Regardless of how various religious texts and philosophies (of basically peaceful religions) have been misread, the fact remains that those crimes were perpetrated by renegades and not by leaders within the religions themselves. The resistance to the building of a mosque makes the mistake of equating Al-Qaeda with Islam in a way that Jews and Christians refuse to own when confronted with either bombings of American abortion clinics or Palestinian villages (not to mention, for example, The Crusades). If you're looking to put crimes in God's name in perspective I think you need to look at a bigger picture than how many people were killed in an abortion clinic bombing vs. 9/11. It is a terrible, terrible, unimaginable thing that 3,000 people perished horribly as a result of religious zealotry, but it is only as unusual as it is for us because we're Americans. We live today in a global community and when considering relative violence perpetrated in God's name (whichever God), it is shortsighted to consider only that violence which has occurred within our borders. Regardless, Islam is no more responsible for 9/11 than Christianity is for Matthew Shepard (to pick an example from thin air; there are so many and I could also have chosen The Holocaust). And people that make the mistake of laying the blame for Al-Qaeda's actions at the feet of a worldwide religion make not only that mistake but also a much grander mistake: that of believing that one act of violence should shake the fundamentals of this country's founding principle of Freedom of Religion. Of course, this very debate is what Osama Bin Laden had in mind when he hatched his plan. And those that buy into the idea that Islam is fundamentally bad, evil or un-American are helping him in his basic cause of starting a religious war and doing his work for him.
NOWHERE have I articulated a position on whether it should be built. The only position I have articulated is that they have the legal right to build it. Because I advocated having an actual discussion about it that does not involve the open flinging of epithets, you assume that I oppose the mosque. That assumption carries the same lack of rationality as those who believe that all Muslims are terrorists. Thanks for proving my point. Reading is fundamental.
Actually you advocated not having a discussion at all, called the entire thread BS and said that you would ***NOT*** participate in it. Certainly you are right that the flinging of epithets and rudeness in general is not helpful. Obama is very wise in this way; I (for example) am not. But this is a conversation we need to have. And soon. Because one side of the aisle (yes, the GOP) is currently engaged in fanning the flames of anti-Islam sentiment and that has borne extremely nasty fruit. The question of this particular mosque is only the tip of the iceberg. I would be very interested to read your response to rimrocker's first response to you in this thread. Again and as usual, his was much more sober and artful than mine and I wish you'd chosen to reply to him rather than or in addition to me. With my hotheaded responses, it is too easy to respond to the hotheadedness and sidestep the substance. It can be found in rimrocker's post. I would also be interested in your response to the general danger of equating Al Qaeda's actions with the entire religion of Islam. Because we are heading for a world of **** that way, thanks ENTIRELY to the GOP and the anger they have stoked toward a worldwide religion, and as I just said above it is EXACTLY what Bin Laden wanted to accomplish when he flew those planes into the WTC. We are handing it to him on a silver platter.
Actually, the common intelligence opinion I have heard time and time again that bin Laden is counting on our better nature in that it will cause us to not do the things that are required for security. Our security plans (airport and otherwise) are a joke. bin Laden has stated that he wants to kill 4,000,000 Americans. In 2008, Homeland Security published a document listing 15 threat scenarios. The most likely to occur is the detonation of a 10 kiloton nuclear device in the heart of Washington, D.C. That ought to scare you. There is plenty of missing fissile material from the former Soviet Union and a device of that size can easily be smuggled into the country in a briefcase. The estimates: 30,000 dead from the initial blast and thousands more dead from radiation in the subsequent days. Even worse...the dismantling of the American government and the resulting lawlessness.
An excellent and timely article from The Forward on the history of Jewish religious freedoms in America, drawing a parallel to the fight for Muslim civil rights today. Worth reading, and precisely why every Jew with a conscious should be pro-active in support of religious and civil rights of their fellow minorities, while being VOCAL with their opposition to the nationwide campaign of bigotry against a fashionably unpopular minority.
Osama has clearly indicated that his main cause was to start a holy war. We are helping him with that. We have two basic choices here (and neither involves security, as that can be improved regardless of these choices): 1. Equate Al-Qaeda's actions with the entire Muslim religion, or 2. Label Al-Qaeda renegade nuts that have nothing to do with peaceful Muslims, which currently comprise the vast majority of that religion. And chase Al-Qaeda to the ends of the earth to punish them and exterminate them without going to war with Islam. This option also involves wrapping our arms around peaceful Muslims and saying "you are welcome here; your violent brothers are not." Today's GOP (along with the ironically named "Tea Party") has chosen option 1. That option is not only at odds with our country's founding principles with regard to religious freedom and is not only deeply at odds with how we deal with Christian or Jewish nuts who act violently, but actually helps to create an Us vs. Them mentality that aids in Al-Qaida recruitment and proves Osama's basic premise that we should be at war with each other on behalf of our respective Gods. Option 2 can easily include maximum security without demonizing an entire religion. Further, it wins hearts and minds. It is instructive to note that GWB originally went for option 2 and that many of his former advisors are backing Obama's response to the mosque and calling for a tamping down of anti-Islam rhetoric. The current GOP (and certainly its angry, misguided stepchild The Tea Party) says **** that; we want option 1. Which option do you like best?
Also, while I strongly support not only the right to build the mosque but the building of the mosque itself -- as it would serve as a blow to Al Qaeda renegades by saying we love peaceful Muslims -- I even more strongly support a government funded center dedicated to religious freedom right ON the site of the WTC. This center's mission would be to loudly demonstrate to the world that this country is not for or against any religion, but was founded on the principle that everyone has the freedom to worship (or not worship) as he or she chooses; that that's part of what makes this country special and strong. It would be, to my mind, the most aggressive counter-punch to 9/11 imaginable to respond to violence with a reminder that America is great because it loves and embraces all people, regardless of religious differences. It would be a hallowed place in which reminders of all acts of religious violence were prominent and all those acts condemned and in which the Good Works of all religions would be celebrated.
