Blah, blah, blah
We’ve had nearly a month now of fruitless acrimony over the Ground Zero mosque.
About everything that can be said has been said. Little-read Newsweek and Time have published a near dozen “I accuse” essays about America’s supposedly yokel intolerance — as if we did not get their message at about screed two.
The past inflammatory statements and hypocrisies of the Janus Mr. Rauf have been widely aired, and juxtaposed with his occasional Aspen-like ecumenical “I feel your pain” outreach. We have learned that to emphasize the former is considered bigoted calumny, but to cite the latter is called context.
Rauf, from 1-4
In varying degrees, all four possible motivations of Mr. Rauf have also been widely dissected. For a brief moment let’s review them.
1) Rauf is a sincere ecumenicalist, who simply wants to turn the “tragedy” of 9/11 into a teachable moment of interfaith bridge-building: the mosque, in other words, will be a beacon of America’s tolerance;
2) Rauf is part crass P.T. Barnum, part new-age Deepak Chopra con artist whose therapeutic mish-mash and narcissistic efforts to build a $100 million-complex will result in a lot of lucre and influence for himself: the multistoried and multimillion-dollar mosque then will be quite a nice headquarters for Rauf, Inc.;
3) Rauf is a simple naïf who sort of bungled into a controversy, fled the country, and has no idea of the firestorm he inadvertently lit and so when or how or if to come back: the mosque will not be built as he retreats back to a less foolhardy, less ostentatious project;
4) Rauf is a wily, cynical divisive figure who knows darn well that, on his Islamic flank, radical Islamists will use his mosque for triumphalist propaganda value, while, on his liberal flank, the clueless multicultural left will see it as a way of contextualizing America’s role in the world — as all the while he emphasizes a supposed litany of America’s overseas transgressions; if the mosque is built, it surely by intent will be a much discussed, perennially controversial center aimed at offering context to often polarizing Islamic ideas about everything from Iran, Hamas, and bin Laden, to Sharia and the role of religion and state — a project as praised by the left in the U.S. as it is employed as a banner logo on radical Islamist Internet sites in the Middle East.
The Elite Take
I could analyze all this a zillion ways, but let us try some economic reductionism, crude though it may be. A majority of those in the elite liberal culture (CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the foundations, universities, Hollywood, and the usual suspects) seem to have opted for explanation 1, while a vast majority of Americans, even in liberal New York, seems to agree with 4. So the mosque is as much about ourselves as it is about the seemingly permanently absent Mr. Rauf.
This same divide plays out in varying degrees over the Arizona immigration bill, the gay marriage propositions in California, and even much of the Obama agenda itself.
I have no interest in trying to persuade the elite why or where they are wrong, or in hearing from them for the nth time why I am supposedly not only mistaken, but bigoted for thinking a huge Islamic complex juxtaposed to Ground Zero is in itself bad taste, but, under the leadership of Mr. Rauf — given his written and oral corpus of unhinged and crack-pot ideas — bad taste to such a degree that all legitimate rhetorical means should be employed to persuade concerned parties to move it.
A World Apart
Instead, I am curious about the material foundations that frame each side of the divide — not so much money per se, but the very nature of work. Here I ignore both those on the hard far left who do not like America at all for what it has been, and the hard far right who clearly do not like America for what it has become.
In between those poles, it seems to me that the loud voices of columnists, politicians like Mayor Bloomberg, the concerned in the universities and the arts, many on the public payroll, and the elite self-appointed minority spokespeople assume that the building of the mosque near Ground Zero says something about themselves as caring, tolerant, and liberal souls — the sort of progressive community that they wish the world to see and hear about.
To the extent that there is any danger in alienating millions of Americans, or causing grief to families of the murdered, or the possibility of insidiously lending support for revising the 9/11 “narrative,” or even galvanizing extremists abroad, these are all negligible risks or even fatuous concerns.
The Jihad Victory Mosque, sponsored by yet another off shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, provides some teachable moments. The ruling class shows it doesn’t get it, as usual, and freaks out because mainstream America is suspicious of the mosque supporters and their motives. So the elite educate us with smears and insults. We get some lessons they didn’t intend. Rauf has been caught promoting “Dawa” and “Sharia.” A lot of people are learning more about these concepts and feeling justified in their suspicion of this “moderate imam,” who would welcome funding from the radical Wahabis who financed the 9/11 attack and would welcome funding from the radical Shiites who finance Hezbollah and Hamas. And we see the ruling class media unable to report on these minor problems, cutbacks, priorities, I guess. Meanwhile, the peasants are revolting.
Meanwhile, the peasants are revolting.
Yes, and in the summer, they’re smelly as well.
Which means Harry Reid was right.
You got the “tawdry” part right.
Maybe the elites have our best interests at heart. Perhaps they only hector us so regularly because,in their wisdom, they sincerely want to guide us to a better life, a life filled with the bounties of multi-culturalism, Islamic serenity, an even distribution of wealth, a world free of war and pestilence.
I can accept that.
But since I wasn’t blessed witht the benefits of an affirmative action education; since my personal experience is that success takes a lot of work, and then is not even close to a sinecure; since I can count the millions who have died to secure what this country has built; since, even more recently, I can easily see the acrimony that these elites, perhaps unintentionally, foster, which directly conflicts with what their excited rhetoric demands…..
I need a bit of evidence before I happily dance behind the piper away from everything that has worked though fire and rain in our country for 230 years.
Just show me where the song has worked before. Anywhere, any time, any place. Because I’m still looking and haven’t found it yet.
What I have discovered is that our wise and passionate rulers and rulers-to-be seem shockingly consistent in only one thing…the pursuit of their own wealth and power…including the good and conciliatory Mr Rauf.
It is as simple as this: Which do you want, liberty or equality? Cannot have both. Like gullible children, we have been suckered. Letting ourself trust in pie-in-the-sky has not been a good experience. Come November, we stand up as adults to be counted.
I do not abide nor tolerate “islam”, i.e. submission. It mandates the practice of genital mutilation (called “female circumcision” by politically correct “news” organizations to mitigate its barbarity), burying “adulterers” (always female, I might add) up to their necks in sand, and then stoning them to death through a drawn out agony of head wounds. It cuts off hands, hangs people for the accusation of homosexuality, makes a pretense of “negotiation” i.e. taqqiyah, fitna, hudna, all attempts to secure land deals and concessions when it is too weak militarity to gain victory by conquest (we see this now in the GZ mosk “controversy”, where our only option, to hear it from both the left and from muslim orthodoxy, is to acquiesce in the name of the demigods “tolerance” and “diversity”, midwifed by the quisling bloomberg, to bolster his narcissism and his “tolerance” credentials.
We are to submit to Sharia law, either through death, dhimmitude or conversion to this submission, so there is no ecumenical credibility to islams’ ecumenical pretenses here, but the deciet necessary to take advantage of the infidels (in particular the leftists heretical) vanity, and win all necessary concessions through the infidels complicity, until he is too weak to resist, and force is used to complete submission to the will of “the prophet”.
No. The answer is no. I reject these political goals of this phony “religion”. It’s stated goal is the elimination and obliteration of all practicing religions, the same stated goal of Marxist/Leninism.
No “diversity” here. None.
The only “religion” it shares anything in common is with Japanese Shinto, which holds that the japanese were commissioned by god to divine rule over all others of the world.
We speak of the generality of “islam” always in the abstract, as though it is of equal validity with other faiths. We project upon it the qualities of our own values. We say “islam” uplifts the individual”. It does not. We say it is one of the worlds “great” religions. It is not. It is the greatest killer of its so called fellow “submision”ists in history.
Right now, floods are taking the lives of many on islamic Pakistan as a result of flooding, “Islam” couldn’t care less. The only thing important to Islam with it’s 100 million is to complete a mosk, or should I
sayshill “Community Center”, to give us all some more “community organizing”? From the recently named state “religion” by none other than the resident himself?No. the answer is no. It is not a religion, but a tribal warrior cult of conquest and death.
Here Here! Well spoken. I found myself nearly standing up as I read the end. I shall cut an paste this. You have employed brevity, something Cicero found important for the Orator, to articulate a concise, usable definition of what Islam is all about.
The solution to this crisis, in fact the solution to Americas’ position regarding Islam in toto, is the landmark decision by the Supreme Court in 1878 in the case of Reynolds v. US.
That particular case regarded the right of Mormons to practice polygamy in the USA.
The Court held that,
” In our opinion, the statute immediately under consideration is within the legislative power of Congress. It is constitutional and valid as prescribing a rule of action for all those residing in the Territories, and in places over which the United States have exclusive control. This being so, the only question which remains is, whether those who make polygamy a part of their religion are excepted from the operation of the statute. If they are, then those who do not make polygamy a part of their religious belief may be found guilty and punished, while those who do, must be acquitted and go free. This would be introducing a new element into criminal law
Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?
So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? [98 U.S. 145, 167] To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.
The outcome then was that we could not have a situation in which crimes could be committed in the name of religion and protected by the First Amendment. Belief could not be criminalized, but practice could be. ”
Sharia Law demands beheadings, amputations, honor killings, stoning, etc. These are still practiced in Islamic countries with Sharia Law today. it is perfectly legal and constitutional to require Rauf and other Islamic clergy in the US declare publicly that they agree these practices are illegal in the United States and also agree to do nothing to promote them. That in fact Sharia Law is subservient to US law. They would then have to uphold US law in all their sermons, activities and pronouncements.
If Rauf and other Islamic clergy refuse to do so they should be deemed enemy combatants for seeking to overthrow the US Constitution.
Reynolds v. US holds the key to this conflict.
Precisely. One of the core beliefs of Islam is that apostasy is punishable by death. The majority Sunni view is that shariah applies only in Muslim countries though by logical deduction there appears to be a minority Sunni view that it applies everywhere. Shia Muslims believe the latter. So, at a minimum, we see that some Muslims believe it is not a crime to kill and apostate here. Rushdie’s Japanese translator must have been killed by one of those minority Sunni types.
Since when did we decide to deal as equals with people who believe this garbage. Anybody see anything ever so slightly at odds with the principles behind the First Amendment, not to mention its text?
Setting aside the matter or enforcement in the U.S., which happily is not yet part of Dar al-Islam, there’s the more basic issue of welcoming Muslims into the country, or according them a place at the table once here, when a bedrock principle of Islam is so fundamentally inconsistent with bedrock U.S. principles.
We ought not to take as our final position that adherence to the principle is unremarkable so long as practical measures to uphold it are temporarily in abeyance pending a working Muslim majority. (Ho hum.) Since the punishment is mandated by the Holy Koran and the Koran is immutable and not subject to interpretation, we must insist on Muslim renunciation of the applicable provisions of the Koran on pain of loss of or denial of citizenship. It’s time we dealt with a primitive cult that kills people who argue for (an ameliorative) interpretation of their holy book.
The decision you cite is helpful when it comes to doctrine realized in practice, but the jihad warrior cult has no place among us and other restrictions are in order. What those must be and how they can be legally imposed is a discussion for another day.
Requiring renunciation independent of action isn’t reachable under Reynolds but I believe the U.S. has the constitutional authority to proscribe advocacy of the violent overthrow of the U.S. Advocacy of such abhorrent ideas as death for apostasy is in that same category, but maybe that’s just me.
We need to think “Gordian knot” here. Islam itself is inimical to Western societies and its practitioners inevitably agitate for more and more political authority (and that was a native-born son of Britain). One has to be firmly in the moon calf column to believe that the end result of Muslim dominance is a big positive re survival of Western culture and a life of dignity and security as a dhimmi. Islam isn’t some pussycat variant of Lutheranism or Christian Science. It should be anathema to believers and nonbelievers alike because to Muslims we’re all infidels and that isn’t a good place to be in their taxonomy. Nothing whatsoever in Muslim theology or shariah counsels amity and cooperation between Muslims and infidels.
Pussyfooting around these facts that stare us in our face every day is just a slow implementation of a death wish. So help me, we appear to have one. The more we treat Islam as an honorable religious choice among other honorable religious choices the sooner we will engineer the extinguishment of our way of life. The more we treat it as the jihadi death cult that it is, the more likely it is that our way of life will survive.
Thank you for your words of clarity. I too, am cutting and pasting.
I do not understand your comment regarding ” cutting and pasting”? I know what is=t is of course I just don’t understand its relevance in this discussion.
I, for one, am copying your comment, pasting it into an email, and sending it to everyone on my email contact list!! Thank you so much for that citation. I agree that that case may hold the key to stopping the spread of shari’a in the U.S.
Instead, I am curious about the material foundations that frame each side of the divide—not so much money per se, but the very nature of work. Here I ignore both those on the hard far left who do not like America at all for what it has been, and the hard far right who clearly do not like America for what it has become.
VDH, I love my country with all my heart. I would lay down my life for her and for my countrymen. I love our men and women in the military, for doing that very thing. I love how we race to take care of others, when tragedy befalls them, without hesitation or reservation. I love how our greatest problems revolve around whether we have let too many people sneak across our borders and whether we can afford to house, feed, insure and employ them.
Think about that for a moment. Is 15-30 million non-citizens, and we are debating….DEBATING…whether this is a racist and xenophobic society because we might, maybe, sorta, kinda …want to secure our borders a little better and wonder what impact this might have on our homeland security, our tax base, our healthcare system, our education system. 15-30 million. Now name another country that would beat itself up in the same way if they confronted the same problem.
I love this country because we engage in a debate over the paragraphs you outlined in 1-4 above. Think about this. On one infamous date less than a decade ago, religious zealots from ONE religion, hijacked large commercial planes with our countrymen aboard and slammed them into two of our buildings in New York, the seat of our military structure in Washington, and headed for our seat of government.
Maybe I’m naive, but that sure looked to me …exactly, precisely…like an act of war. And, then I saw on my TV, images of people of that religion, ululating and passing out candy. It sure looked to my eye, as if there was a celebration of the deaths of our innocents.
And, today…less than a decade removed from that atrocious act of mass murder, whether that religion could champion its causes in a high rise to be built on ground that is separated by two buildings NOT TWO BLOCKS…from the ashes and rubble. We are having a “debate” about this. And our own countrymen, some of our very own leaders, and nearly all of our mass communications empire, are joined in calling us stupid, bigoted, hateful. We, the people who endured that attack and wept openly at those forced to jump from burning buildings, we who remember that day…are the evil ones. I love this country, not because of those who slander us, but because they can.
Think of one…ANY…Muslim country where if the facts were reversed, could make such a claim.
The notion is too absurd. Bloomberg and Dowd would be torn limb from traitorous limb.
VDH, I love my country because those who reside here and don’t love her, spew venom daily about her… exemplify the freedoms she gives, the liberties she defends, the self-hatred she endures. What I don’t love, is the fact that we are being bombarded with lies and distortions about her…and my countrymen, via the abuses of those freedoms by those who mean to tear her down from the inside. I don’t like being beaten by our own rulebook or by a rolled up Constitution. A Constitution that is hauled out and shoved back into a corner at their whim.
The difference between the two groups is stark and jarring. I know you don’t golf, so accept my apologies in advance for the analogy. I see the two groups as professional golfers vs. professional baseball or basketball players.
In professional baseball or basketball, you get paid whether you perform brilliantly or whether you perform with abject mediocrity. If you are selfish, throw tantrums, “me first” ball hog, glory hog, self-aggrandizing, trash talking, lazy,…no matter. Your contract is an entitlement.
In professional golf, if you stink this week, you don’t get paid. You don’t even make the cut to play on the weekend. Stink all year, you struggle to make cuts, you go broke. Every week you have to show up and start all over again. Your “batting average” doesn’t carry over to a new tournament. How many home runs you hit last week, is not relevant to this week.
For the average American, especially the small business owners and entrepreneurs who make up the VAST majority of employers …life is exactly like that.
For the smug and pedantic elitists, it is NOTHING like that. Tenure is the guarantee of mediocrity. The security perch from which to look down their haughty and arrogant noses at the grindstone from a safe distance.
Virtually EVERY construct of theirs…is a closed club. And, virtually every one of them conspires to keep out those not marching in lockstep. This is why Hollywood looks as it does, why mass media is 88% the same voice, why academia has no other voices.
I love America, VDH. I just don’t like her enemies…outside or inside her borders. Can you blame me?
Great stuff, cf. Pure poetry and passion.
Lay down your life for your country if you will.
My father did.
I would have once.
Not now. Not ever.
My country and my countrymen have deserted me.
In every election, township to county to state to nation, for the last 50 years.
Lay down YOUR life, not my kids’, not mine.
“I love my country with all my heart. I would lay down my life for her and for my countrymen.”
But have you? No? Perhaps you’ll agree to be waterboarded for charity.
Betty Coward.
“A Constitution that is hauled out and shoved back into a corner at their whim.”
I smell John Yoo, with just a hint of Alerto Gonzales.
Think about this. On one infamous date just over a year ago, a religious zealot from ONE religion, walked into a church and killed a doctor in front of his family.
I have watched as you followed me around, snarking after every post of mine. You are clearly assigned by someone to do this, or you are mentally imbalanced. Probably both.
But, the most glaring thing I noticed…is how you always, always…take the side against our country. Do you live here…as a traitor? Or elsewhere, in a cave, plotting to tear at the fabric of this society?
Either way, you are someone who spends their entire day spitting in the wind. Spew all the venom you like, spray all the invective you can muster. Take on a woman’s name, that’s how the cowards who lob bombs at Israel do it, isn’t it? Hide behind women and children, behind the hospital beds of the sick and elderly?
I’m happy to take on the brunt of your toxic “you people” sneers and snotty little jabs…just as long as you stay away from my other friends here. They deserve better than to have to deal with the likes of you….and whoever sent you. Crawl back under your rock now, hate America from your cave…maybe one day you will come to love and appreciate her the way we do. But first, you would have to grow a conscience and a soul.
Bravo!
Playing the martyr card. How . . . predictable.
Interesting posts so far and they set me thinking. We are not united because of our Constitution but we have the Constitution because we were united. To keep our Constitution we must stay united on the underlying principles involved. The rules and laws being cited to support the right to build are not following the original intent of LIBERTY. Liberty mean permission and if we need permission then we are not free to do as we will. I hope you can follow me on this. We do have rights but they are modified by liberty which is the lubricant that makes it all run smooth. Think Robert’s rules of order. As Individuals the owners of the property may have a right to build but should they be at liberty to exercise that right? Under the over all circumstance I must say, NO.
The exception does not prove the rule. Try again with you illogical hysteria-provoking emotionalism.
Right on!
cfbleachers
How I would love to meet you in person to shake your hand. You have just expressed, more eloquently than I ever could, how I and I’m sure millions of my fellow real Americans truely feel.
Keep writing Victor Davis Hanson. You speak for me but ever so eloquently as I appreciate all your articles.
Muhammad, the young marriage of Aishah, and the mathematical proof of the corruption of the Bible
The marriage of Prophet Muhammad to Aishah when he was in his fifties, while she was nine years old, is vilified either ignorantly or perversely by some under the accusation of “sexual misconduct”.
The marriage of Aishah was not decided by Muhammad but was Divinely ordained to him. Furthermore such a marriage was totally in harmony with the norms of all Semitic peoples, including those of Biblical times, and it still is the norm of many cultures today. Historically, the age at which a girl was considered ready to be married has been puberty. Aishah’s betrothal took place at least three years before the consummation of the marriage. The reason for this was that they were waiting for her to come of age (i.e. to have her first menstrual period). Therefore it is certainly not something that Islam invented. At the end of his life Muhammad married numerous other wives, not out of lust, but to bring them under his protection : several of them were widows, older women or had been abandoned and thus were in need of a home.
Aishah’s marriage at an early age allowed her to be an eye witness to the personal details of the Prophet life and carry them on the succeeding generations. By being both spiritually and physically near to the Prophet, the marriage prepared Aishah to be an example to all Muslims, especially women, for all times. Aishah, the Mother of the Believers, was developed into a spiritual, teacher and scholar, since she was remarkably intelligent and wise. Her qualities helped support the Prophet’s work and further the cause of Islam.
Just like you can’t accuse Prophet Abraham of being a child murderer because he intended to sacrifice his son, you can’t accuse Muhammad of being a paedophile because he married a wife the age of his daughter, fulfilling a Divine order. By the way, which son was Abraham ordered by God to sacrifice? Ishmael (the ancestor of the Arabs) as Muslims claim, or Isaac as Jews and Christians pretend ? The answer can be found in the Bible, and it gives the mathematical proof that the Bible has been falsified by Jewish Rabbis. Get ready for the surprise of your life.
(Genesis 16:16): “And Abraham was fourscore and six years old (86 years), when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abraham”.
(Genesis 21:5): “And Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born unto him”.
(Genesis 21:8-10): “The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
(Genesis 21:14-18): Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there nearby, she began to sob. God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”
Let’s count : Isaac was about two years old when he was weaned. Ishmael was then sixteen years, because Abraham was eighty six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael and was an hundred years old when Isaac was born, according to (Genesis 16:16): “And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram”; and (Genesis 21:5): “And Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born unto him”. Meanwhile, the above description of Ishmael whom Hagar put under one of the bushes is the profile of a baby and not of a sixteen years old teenager. This forgery is so obvious… so bad for the Jewish Rabbis. The Jews were well informed that Ishmael was the one who was intended for sacrifice, but they concealed this out of jealousy and did corrupt the Bible to comfort their heinous claim that it’s only through Isaac that Abraham’s offspring would be reckoned. The Bible has been almost completely corrupted by these evil scribes.
Furthermore, would God fulfil his promise of making Ishmael’s offspring a great nation through a false prophet ? Of course not ! In Matthew 21:19-21, Jesus spoke of the fruitless fig tree (A Biblical symbol of prophetic heritage) to be cleared after being given a last chance of three years (the duration of Jesus’ ministry) to give fruit. In a later verse in the same chapter, Jesus said: “Therefore, say I unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruit thereof” (Matthew 21:43). That nation of Ishmael’s descendants is no other than the Islamic Ummah.
Among the many westerners who have embraced Islam, one interesting thing is that most of them could be called “Searchers for the Truth”. They were the type of people who were spiritual, open-minded and read books on many subjects. They were not brainwashed simpletons who simply wanted to join an easy religion and the dominating culture of the time. They were people who knew a lot not only about religion, but about history, philosophy and other disciplines. They were clever enough and brave enough to find the truth and grasp to it.
And now, how will you recognize Jesus when he returns ? How will you differentiate him from the Zionist Ante-Christ, the false Messiah who shall appear in Jerusalem ? Turn to Islam for the right answers…
It’s nice to see the POV of the triumphal Islamic left from time to time to remind us of the issue.
A man who has sex, married or not, with a nine-year-old is a pedophile, by definition. Now, in Seventh Century Arabia this was not considered reprehensible. Islamic law perpetuates into the present day the crude customs of that time, as if we were to champion blood feuds as an element of American law because the 7th Century English law recognized and endorsed them. As for Muhammed being divinely ordered to marry Aisha, how do you know? Muhammed said so? Well that makes it all right then. I believe Aisha has been quoted as telling her husband that his revelations from Allah came very conveniently for whatever he wanted to do. She must have been a spunky girl.
As for your rewriting the Bible, buzz off.
Zionist Ante-Christ? Nah, most people are convinced that the Anti-Christ will be a lawyer. Minor matter: it is Anti-Christ. Ante- means before, Anti- means opposing. Major matter: Given that the Iranian Islamic Republic swine seem to be intent to bring about Armageddon the real Anti-Christ, who sought to bring about the end of days, might well have been Ayatollah Khomieni. His bigotry, hate filled personality, and totalitarian evil actions certainly fit the bill. He even shared with Hitler (a probably failed candidate) a disdain for the well-being of the people he ruled and oppressed. Hitler had no compunctions about Germany being totally destroyed in 1945, indeed, he encouraged the destruction. Khomieni said that he did not care what happened to Iran, let the whole land burn, so long as Islam conquers as a result. Such people stupidly never consider that the war they bring on might result in the land burning but their cause going down to destruction too. Welcome to the blood soaked future Muslims are bringing upon themselves through the jihad.
If you are so keen on Submission pop off to the Wahhabist Entity. Leave us here in the US and the rest of the West to live without burkhas, beheadings, and benighted barbarism.
Muslims will never be fit for the modern world until there are Zionist Muslims, the way there are Zionist Christians. Only then will some Muslims have shown that they can transcend the narrow-minded bigotry that came from the mixture of anti-rational theology with Nazi-style antisemitism and hatred of Western civilization.
Amen!!!! I think her and other Islamic propagandist use scriptures written by the Apostles to and for Christians and those interested in following Christ to confuse and disarm.
I believe Aisha has been quoted as telling her husband that his revelations from Allah came very conveniently for whatever he wanted to do.
Quite a few Sura are enabling of Mohammed’s lifestyle.
Allah, through the Angel, was apparently very concerned with the Prophet’s household management problems and objects of lust.
After the dear Prophet’s death, his interpreters (excuse me, Islamic scholars) have significantly extended the vague and parsimonious allusions in the Koran into elaborate, codified, and self-serving “law”.
“Law” that Imam Rauf is really hot to teach after establishing his Sharia Index Project on some of the floors of some big ole mosque at Ground Zero.
(wot, me cynical ?)
It becomes obvious why Dante placed Mohammed in the lowest circle of Hell.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Sorry Lola, the correct answer is: His feet will not touch the ground. ~~Matthew 26:64
Oh, please no more female genital mutilation. Not one place in Scripture did Jehovah God wish upon women abuse and mutilation. Male circumcision serves the purpose of preventing uterine cancer. What purpose does female mutilation serve except pain and prevention of natural female sexuality?
“Boys would be girls, and girls would be boys except for Lola. La la la la Lola!”
Feminist101,
Agreed 100%. Muslims treat women inhumanely and it’s extremely offensive and pure Evil on a widespread scale. To me it defines their “religion”.
“The marriage of Prophet Muhammad to Aishah when he was in his fifties, while she was nine years old…”
Pardon me while I puke.
Spare me the details of your pedophile prophet’s sex life.
If I’m going to follow the teachings of a prophet, it’s going to be one who DIDN’T diddle little girls to get his kicks.
That’s right, I knew I left something out, namely pedophiles, child brides and arranged marriages. And also the fact that there’s is nary a peep from leftist feministas against these “practices” and that the leftist feministas go to this much trouble to defend these barbaric practices. Thanks for making my point for me.
Gaffe,
” And also the fact that there’s is nary a peep from leftist feministas against these “practices” and that the leftist feministas go to this much trouble to defend these barbaric practices. Thanks for making my point for me.”
I don’t know where you have been, perhaps with your head in the sand, feminist, my self included, have waged a good fight against violence against women and children. Yes violence continues but so to will the fight against it by yes, feminist. Frankly your comment reeks of misogyny. What my I ask have you done lately to fight the good fight of male violence, yes male by little more than 95%, against women and children?
With that said, embracing the practitioners of Islam is not something this “feminist pig” will ever do.
Thanks for those good words pgillenw! Recall what happened in Waco 1993. Koresh also claimed that God wanted him to “marry” all the little girls and establish the “House of David” by impregnating all the little girls. So you see what we are up against here. In like manner could we possibly sic the ATF on the Muslims.
I know this much Lola. I believe I am capable of discernment from an unbiased perspective because currently I am as far removed from the current Middle Eastern conflicts as one can be. So I’ve just watched and waited.
And what I’ve discovered with Muslims is you have an incredibly difficult time explaining away little Israel. And somehow, these accursed Jews who have perverted scripture throughout antiquity as you attest, seem to be unfairly persecuted, yet incredibly blessed. And that is exactly what my Bible says will happen until the end of the age.
On the other hand, I read something like Genesis 16:12 (I’ll save you the problem): He (Ishmael) will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” and recognize without a shadow of doubt that is indeed proving true.
You tell me:
And yet that hasn’t been my personal experience – just the opposite. Who I do find embracing Islam are murders and thieves in prisons, hatemongers and racists, or some converts to Islam that return to its Islamic roots and declare war on America.
Therefore, I choose to draw my conclusions by “you will know them by their fruits” just as Christ explained. And the only fruits I see coming from Islam here in America’s heartland are rotten…
You’re a good guy, Tex Taylor.
Who I do find embracing Islam are murders and thieves in prisons, hatemongers and racists, or some converts to Islam that return to its Islamic roots and declare war on America.
You left out fat or ugly women who are seduced by Muslim men and convert for promise of marriage,and the teenage girls kidnapped, drugged, then raped into prostitution (UK-Londonistan)
Converts are LIED to
LOLA take you daw spam and put it where the sun don’t shine- heard all FAITH, distrted and twisted by MOhammed and think they have the ONLY book- Thieves and LIARS like Mohammed-
………………….
The Quran is at a job interview. The boss asks – Do you have references?- Quran replies, – Torah and Bible, call them. – So the boss calls Torah, and Torah replies, – I have never heard of him. – Confused, the boss calls Bible and Bible says, – I know him; he is a liar and a thief and is actually from Satan, the devil, don’t believe him. – Pressed by the boss, Quran defends by saying – They are liars. – And the boss reasons – if they are liars, why do you use them for references unless you are insane?
The Bible is not written for the unbeliever to understand but as we seek wisdom it is revealed. It is not addressed to the crowd but to the individual. From my observation and experience there is a specific doctrine that we reject because it is so contrary to our nature but if we cannot accept that Jesus voluntarily went to the cross we cannot understand his command for us to take up our cross daily and follow him.
1Kings 18 is the account of Elijah as he confronted Ahab and his 450 prophets of Baal concerning calling down fire to devour the sacrifice. For some reason the prophets of Baal could not do that. Is Islam more powerful than Baal?
“This book is not to be doubted,” the Quo’ran declares unequivocally at its beginning. Perhaps Lola would ignore the risk of stoning, beheading or a public fatwa after being ratted out by other “holier than thou” followers for simply looking here for the real scoop on the challenges involved in interpretation of symbols used in original script while the Arabic written language was still under development: http://www.solhaam.org/articles/islam02.html or considerations here for the 100 fatwa related verses of the Quo’ran being addressed by the Fiqh Council of North America here: http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=21312
The reverberations caused by Christoph Luxenberg and Salman Rushdie have affected non-Muslim scholars in Western countries. “Between fear and political correctness, it’s not possible to say anything other than sugary nonsense about Islam” without the expectation of fatwa condemnation void of any allowed defense. Therein lies the the fallacy of trial by Sharia law requiring only a single accuser for a sentence of death. Maybe truth will reveal that Lola is really a musi in a mumu
LocalYokel, Lola is a cross dresser. An imam pretending to be la femme.
Go to Hell.
I am neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim. But it seems to me that you are going way beyond the evidence here. It looks to me like all that has happened is that a story that ought to have gone earlier was accidentally put later. That is, you’re probably right that this is the story of an infant Ishmael and not a teen-aged Ishamel. But what that has to do with what you call “their heinous claim that it’s only through Isaac that Abraham’s offspring would be reckoned,” I don’t have a clue.
You need to spell out your reasoning more carefully here.
As for your claim that Westerners who convert to Islam are seekers after the truth, keep in mind that lots of Westerners like that end up as atheists, Wiccans, Buddhists, and what not. Islam isn’t the only choice they make. I doubt that it’s even the most popular choice.
Hey JPF, I’m an American Christian Feminist Independent Mother and you fell for the fallacy that mother’s would only place their babies in safe places. This American, Christian, Feminist, Independent, Mother would put her teenager under the shade.
“it’s a shook up, mixed up, shook up world except for Lola. la la la la la Lola.” Does Lola have Stockholm Syndrome?
Or is Lola a cross dresser?
lola, I was amazed at your post at first, until I saw that it is meant as a joke, so well done that many will take your post seriously, until the punchline, “turn to Islam for all the right answers.” An excellent suggestion because the more one learns about Islam the more one realizes how totally insane Mohammed was. Your post acts as a preview of that insanity.
“Leave us here in the US and the rest of the West to live without burkhas, beheadings, and benighted barbarism.”
All benefactions brought to you, of course, by benevolent peace-loving RELIGIOUS leaders.
The Eighth Pillar of Islam: There is no cognitive dissonance here.
BTW lola, in what other modern religion do its high priests demand so much blood be spilt to appease their god?
Mohammad murdered thousands, took 20% cut of the loot, mutilated people and sent assassins against his critics.
Did Jesus, Confucius, Socrates or Buddha kill anyone?
Well, Socrates might have killed the enemy when he was a younger man in the Athenian army, but your point remains valid. He was a citizen-soldier defending the polis. The father of free inquiry certainly did not advocate slaying the “infidels.”
Please refrain from fabricating the truth, to prove a worthless point. If you know not about the truth of a divine faith, then don’t make a mockery of it. May Allah guide you all….Islam doesn’t preach the insult of other religions but instead preaches quite the contrary. Taking quotations out of a holy book and stating them out of context, has been a common tactic of the enemies of Islam.
From Jesus to Mohammad your choice and don’t couch it in deceit. Jesus appeared to the women who testified of his conquering of death. Mohammad commanded that a women’s testimony is worth half a man’s. Jesus said to those who gathered against the woman to let any who have not sinned cast the first stone. Mohammad commanded that a woman could be struck for disobedience. Jesus took for friends many woman who gathered around to listen and speak with him. Mohammad went to Hell and told the gathering that the majority occupiers of Hell are women. Jesus spoke as a friend and told us love one another, and to be good to one another. Mohammad commanded his followers to use women like a domestic animal.
It’s is too late Lola, we know.
Lynn, I would rather have a broke back and be in hell than live under Islam. Islamic law = dirty ignorant lechers.
Lola, your isogesis is very poor indeed…as most isogesis tends to be. As far as Ishmael’s mother calling him a ‘boy’, she had every right to by contempraory standards. He wasn’t married yet. Besides, my very Southern mother referred to me as her ‘boy’ until she passed away…many years after I married.
As far as your attacks on the Bible, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The Koran is essentially a compilation of things allegedly said by Mohammed – an illiterate. The Bible has evidence that stretches back 2000 years to show it hasn’t been tampered with. The Koran has been edited – witness the “Satanic Verses”.
Rest assured, you are on my prayer list. May God bless you and cause the scales to fall from your eyes.
The Quran is at a job interview. The boss asks-Do you have references?- Quran replies, -Torah and Bible, call them. – So the boss calls Torah, and Torah replies, -I have never heard of him. – Confused, the boss calls Bible and Bible says, – I know him; he is a liar and a thief and is actually from Satan, the devil, don’t believe him. – Pressed by the boss, Quran defends by saying – They are liars. – And the boss reasons – if they are liars, why do you use them for references unless you are insane?
Ramon, honey! baby! Lola does not have a clue what other cultures are about. She’d get stoned for even inquiring. I’m Southern too and am still the “baby” in the family and will be until the day I die. Daddy always tells my adult nieces and nephews that I’m his baby.
Clueless Lola. La la la la la Lola.
Lola: What a load of garbage. It is a dark place where you live, where lies cannot be separated from the truth.
We know the sound of our Masters voice therefore we recognise Him when He comes. We know that the truth sets men free and does not imprison men as in the satanic religion of islam but how could you know these things living in such a dark place? The good news for you is the truth destroys the darkness, so open your heart and come into the light and your shackels will fall off. Your false prophet has a date with the lake of fire, leave him and live.
Trying to draw parallels between your ‘prophet’ and Jesus is laughable and hardly worthy of serious discussion. Your prophet converted people with the point of a sword – Jesus converted people with love and compassion.
Want to speculate the state of mind of those ‘converted’ at the point of the sword?
Big difference.
Lola, my comments are not addressed to you as much as to others. Your misreading of Jewish texts and obvious disdain for them is profound. So sick a mind is usually beyond reach. I will deal here only with the obvious and ridiculous comparison between the Sacrifice of Isaac and the wedding of Mohammed to a minor child.
According to Jewish scripture Isaac was the the time of his ” binding ” 37 years old. At that age he was obviously an adult and also obviously physically powerful enough to overwhelm Abraham. He did not try. Such was his faith in his father and in The Almighty. The sacrifice of a child is horrific for normal parents. Normal parents grieve over the death of a child. Of course in your society this may not be the case but Jews are a life affirming people as opposed to muslims who worship death. The willingness of Abraham and the willingness of isaac to be sacrificed are a testament to their proximity to G-d. The act was heinous to both and only fear of G-d propelled them.
For a man to have sexual relations with a young girl is certainly no sacrifice. For many men, obviously Mohammed as well, sexual relations with a young woman are pleasurable. How pleasurable it is for the girl is questionable. In most cases it is not.
To compare a mans sexual pleasure with a minor girl to a parents sacrifice of a child, even an adult child, is the product of a mind that cannot reason. To build a code of ethics on their similarity leads to a defilement of all moral consequence. That is what we see today. Your post is an excellent example of such moral backwardness.
Right on! Ben Yakov. Parents sacrifice their children in today’s world when they send them off to fight in wars for freedom. That is because decent, God-loving people built this great country for exactly that: freedom. Freedom of worship. Freedom of speech and expression. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear. Some people, and I am one of them, would rather die fighting than become a mutilated, de-sexed slave to some mentally deranged sexual deviant like Mohammad.
lola, I’m not sure if you were joking, especially in light of that last phrase (I doubt it though), but for anyone who’s wondering about the Hagar/Ishmael banishment issue – the “problem” is that Ishmael, at the time of his being sent away was at least 14, so how can Hagar carry him on her shoulders?
The problem is the Hebrew here is ambiguous, depending largely on how you parse/punctuate the sentence. Either Abraham put the bread, water and boy on her shoulders, or put the water on her shoulders and gave her the bread and the boy. Most scholars (even the critical ones) favour the latter for obvious reasons. As professor of Hebrew studies James D. Price writes:
“…only hostile readers insist on interpreting [this] text in a self contradictory manner. However, it is proper to assume that a text is self-consistent and lacks contradictions. If a text can be interpreted in that way, it is honest to accept that interpretation. That is one of the fundamental laws of hermeneutics. Only when a text cannot be interpreted in a self-consistent and non-contradictory way is it proper to accuse it of error.”
Also, in no way can you compare Muhammad’s taking of Aishah for his own pleasure with God’s ordering of Isaac to be sacrificed. The (mock) giving of Isaac was a prefiguring of what, millennia later, God (the Father) would actually do to Jesus (the Son) on that very same hill, on our behalf. The theological overtones are massive, a world away in fact from the convenient “Allah told me to do it” excuse Muhammad invented to satisfy his own carnal urges.
“The Devil made me do it.” ~~Mohammad
Obviously, you have never had teenagers. For the edification of others who haven’t, they are part children and part aspiring adult. When things are going well, they can be quite full of themselves. When they face difficulties — and being sent off into the desert with barely enough food and drink for the day is an extreme difficulty — they can become very dependent on their parent or parents and very distraught, perhaps more distraught than they would be without the parent there. The psychologists call this reversion. It is therefore entirely keeping with the behavior of a sixteen year old in crisis that Ishmael would have been put down for the night wherever his mother said. In fact, Hagar would have had to put a very clingy and strong Ishmael down and told him in no uncertain terms to stay put.
As to the broader issue of Muhammad’s claims — or the claims of the transcribers — in the Qu’ran that scripture was corrupted, this attack on the only record of the prophecies from before allows Islam to put words into the mouths of prophets and take the words they spoke away. Then, as the final stroke, Islam declares that Muhammad is the last prophet so that no Muslim can claim to be a prophet and, like Muhammad, declare the Qu’ran corrupt.
Christianity, however, is not constrained in its prophecy and yet pledged to uphold the prophetic word in Scripture. It is a rock of ancient prophesy strengthened further by Christ Jesus and its prophets after Him.
Islam denies these prophecies, creating their replacement scriptures, unconfirmed and unable to be confirmed by later prophets which Islam also denies. Islam is spiritually a house of cards on a foundation of sand. The only way it can sustain itself is by political control, by killing the prophets who speak against its many errors and degrading the people who do not submit to their dogma.
If Islam was rooted in truth, it would not prohibit “proselytizing”, as they call preaching, but Muslims would welcome in the preacher, like Christians do, and decide for themselves if he preached the truth. If Islam was rooted in truth, it would not kill anybody certain Muslims decide are apostate, but it would let apostates decide for themselves if they are apostate and, if so, let them go seek their faith elsewhere. Islam does not do these things because it is afraid of the Truth destroying their belief of lies. Muslims calls those who do not believe their lies “infidels” as if not believing lies was a bad thing.
McVeigh didn’t blow up the Murrah building.
http://www.amazon.com/Oklahoma-City-Detailed-Account-Building/dp/0965330710
VDH:
Like Sufi Rauf, Obama speaks out of both sides of his mouth. So, what’s the motivation behind O’s reckless ideas, his disastrous policies? Let’s analyze BHO via your four Raufian theories. Is he:
1) Sincere — not a chance.
2) Con man — a bit of that in all politicians. Doesn’t explain him trying to un-elect himself.
3) Naif — well, O is the consummate Leftist bubble baby, insulated from birth from his country. In his case, ignorance is at least a good part of the equation.
4) Other — Obama is a fool of a Leftist, but he is also a tool of Leftists who are not fools. Granted, the “cocoon” lifestyle of influential Leftists in the media, academia, the Democratic Party, etc. explains the disconnect between some them and middle America. The professional provocateurs like Soros/Axelrod et al, however, understand this country quite well. They just don’t like it and plan to change it. Permanently. Insularity and ignorance are not the reasons for their perceived missteps. Their actions are intentional, provocative and malignant. They made Obama and plan use his presidency to remake America.
Dr. Hanson:
A fine analysis, but I fear you are being too kind to the self-annointed elite. Most of those in favor of the mosque are surely of the left and most who oppose it are rational. How do we know? The mosque is a perfect expression of every leftist feel good, multi-culti, equality of outcome, socialistic hopenchangy dream. One suspects that relatively few who are not of the left are so impaired that they would imagine that the Constitution requires America to not only allow but support an obscenely obvious propaganda victory by our implacable enemy in time of war on our own soil. On the other hand, most Americans know a walking, quacking Islamic duck when they see it, thus do more than 70% of Americans oppose it (and support Arizona’s law on the bizarre principles that a nation has the responsibility to determine who shall emigrate and to enforce its laws).
May I offer a fifth choice regarding Imam Rauf? Imam Rauf is a Muslim cleric. It is that simple. As such, he is charged with upholding and teaching all of the tenants of Islam, the foremost of which is the necessity of conquering the planet to universally impose Sharia. He is not only a religious leader but a political leader. In Islam there is no difference. In lands where Sharia holds sway, he and others like him are preacher, teacher, legislator, judge, jury and executioner. His position of leadership requires that he take the Islamist path in the furtherance of the ultimate goals of Islam, which also teaches that Muslims may lie to infidels (that’s us, folks) in pursuit of their goals. If Imam Rauf had not made his true positions so repeatedly clear, one might be tempted to take him at his word when he preaches conventional leftist Kumbayah twaddle, but he is clearly an Imam, true to Islam. One might be tempted to see such dedication as laudable if it was not simultaneously mendacious and opposed to and destructive of all for which America stands. When he blames us for 9-11, but claims to want to heal its wounds with the construction of a blatant propaganda victory for Islam, the middling classes see a particularly obvious, ugly, insulting and dangerous lie. The Left sees another opportunity not to be wasted.
What many do not fully realize is that Islam is, in every way, incompatible with democracy, western civilization and freedom. This is not incompatibility as in the difference between metric and SAE threads on a bolt–a mere inconvenience fixed by a quick trip to the hardware store–but incompatibility on the order of a cancer that must be eradicated before it destroys its host. Americans in particular are so used to the benefits of the separation of church and state that they fail to realize how rare and previous that innovation of the Founders truly is. In Islam, no such separation is recognized or possible. This is the very foundation and nature of Islam. For Christians to renounce Jesus Christ would be impossible. He is the foundation of Christianity, yet made clear that one should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, but render unto God that which is God’s. There is no such clarity in Islam for it is as much a political movement as a religion, and to separate them would undo Islam. Surely Imam Rauf has never suggested–nor could he suggest if he wanted to continue to breath–such a thing. Those Muslims who live peacefully in America, appreciating the blessings of the First Amendment, are, in fact and tradition, not living the clear dictates of their faith. They do not practice the word and intention of Islam. Americans consider them to be people practicing just another unusual religion; those use to the separation of church and state have that luxury. Untold millions of Muslims around the world would likely consider them traitors to their faith, even apostates.
So why does the Left so readily embrace those who live to destroy us all? It may be as simple as an ancient Arab proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” As Mr. Obama has said, most Americans are pathetic God and gun clingers who hate and fear those who are not like them. He, and far too many on the left, simply hate Americans and America. They are post-American, post Western Civiliation. They are bigger, better, more evolved. Could it be as simple as that? Do they see Jihadists, particularly those who smoothly spout leftist boilerplate while winking about their true beliefs, as kindred souls who share the same, important goals of building a socialist worker’s paradise? It would explain a great deal.
Perhaps the clearest, most concise way to express the difference between the Left and the American middling classes is that the left believes in equality of outcome and the MC believe in equality of opportunity. But as you also noted, the Left tends to believe that the concerns of the middling classes are not theirs. They are above it all, insulated from such common concerns. Their fortunes, jobs, pensions, are secure, protected by those who see things as they do. The Congress–both sides of the aisle–often imposes onerous mandates and laws on the MC but exempt themselves. Like Mayor Bloomberg, they are protected by legions of security personnel and technologies. Even those without such daily bodily coverage obviously feel that their moral and intellectual superiority, and above all, their good, pure intentions, will protect them from all harm and evil. Many don’t so much as acknowledge the existence of evil, considering such unfortunate dissonance to be merely misunderstandings that can be easily resolved through the skillful application of leftist ideology.
The Left sees the police as none-too-bright civil servants whose job is to protect their lives and property. The MC understands that not only can the police not protect any individual citizen, they have no legal duty to do so and will almost always arrive far too late to protect anyone anyway. They don’t look down on the police, but they know that there are very few of them and that there are very real limitations on what they can and should do. When good intentions matter most, a gun free school zone sign is powerful magic indeed–for the Left. But for the MC, it’s only a sign, and they know that harm can befall them and their children at any time. They have no doubt that there is evil in the world. They know that when Muslims repeatedly express their specific desires to murder Americans, it would be absolute, deadly idiocy to fail to take their threats seriously. Thousands of American graves stand in mute testimony to that necessity, yet the Left prefers to engage in tortured rhetoric, attempting to explain, over and over again, that Jihadists don’t really mean what they say. Why, serial death threats are an obvious invitation to extend the open hand of dialogue. Only God and gun clingers would be so dense as to fail to see that.
Unlike many totalitarian dictatorships throughout history, should Islam prevail, there will be no collaborators, no useful idiots put in positions of authority to keep the middling classes in line in the new, Islamic reality. Under Sharia, there are only three choices: Convert to Islam, accept slavery, or death. Ironically, because Islam is as much religion as a political movement, there is no political pragmatism and Leftists will be converted, enslaved or slaughtered just as quickly and efficiently as the middling classes. In fact, they’d likely be slaughtered first and fastest as they also tend to be so intellectually and morally superior as to lack the means necessary to defend themselves and to resist.
Americans also tend to over analyze. It’s simple. Imam Rauf is a Muslim cleric, complete with all of the anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-western civilization enmity that cannot be separated from that position and belief.
Henry Kissinger once said, during the Cold War, that the Soviets could absolutely be trusted to act in what they felt was their own self interest. We can trust Imam Rauf and all like him to act in the interests of Islam, interests that are quite clear and are not subject to being watered down by hopenchangey entreaties. There is no moderation in Islam. The Ground Zero Mosque is a propaganda tool designed to demoralize and shame (Islam is also a culture of shame where real or imagined intrusions on honor must be avenged) America while inspiring and energizing Islamists around the world. It is an act of war in a time of war. As 9-11 was a blow from an Islamic shoe, the GZM is the followup blow from the second of the pair. No other reason need be propounded to oppose and prevent its construction. It’s that clear. Likely, that’s why the Left must defend it, and why the Mr. Obama’s State Department (Hillary Clinton, Proprietor) is sending Imam Rauf around the Muslim world, at taxpayer expense, to raise money for a propaganda ploy destructive to America. That this would make perfect sense to the Left is all the reason rational Americans need to understand that such people cannot be trusted with power. Indeed, one might be forgiven for wondering if they should be trusted with continuing American citizenship. Should they not have the opportunity to seek brotherhood and understanding immersed in the lands, cultures and beliefs they so admire and support? Perhaps Mr. Bloomberg should see if Tehran has a mayor.
Well stated, sir.
If this mosque should indeed prove to be an act of war, then the First Amendment would not protect it.
As such, he is charged with upholding and teaching all of the tenants of Islam,
Very good, except that it is tenets. : a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true; especially : one held in common by members of an organization, movement, or profession.
The “tenants” of Islam in America are in welfare harems.
Mike excellent post. You may want to take a look at the comment I made to Gaffe in #3. MBY
Dear Menachem Ben Yakov:
Thanks for your kindness and also for neatly outlining the Reynolds decision. You are correct that this decision is likely the primary precedent available.
There is no such thing as an unlimited right. The First Amendment does not confer upon every sect the unrestrained right to build whatever they wish wherever they wish. It is a long established fact of law and
American tradition that houses of worship are subject to zoning, safety and other reasonable regulations. That said, I suspect that should this matter come to a court battle, Reynolds will be controlling precedent, but first, whether the building of a mosque is merely an expression of doctrine and belief or a practice will have to be determined. Whether this particular location has unique bearing on this case and issue will also be of interest. I doubt that this will reach the courts as, at the moment, New York City does not seem disposed to oppose it, nor am I aware of any other group with standing who would bring such a case.
That said, there is a very good case to be made that building this particular mosque at this particular location is a practice of Islam as opposed to mere belief or doctrine, which is constitutionally protected. Even absent a legitimate zoning or similar prohibition, it can be reasonable argued that this mosque should not be built. It can be clearly shown that Islamic tradition and practice for centuries has been to raze the houses of worship of conquered countries and erect mosques on their foundations as an act of domination and triumphalism. It is also Islamic practice to erect mosques in non-conquered nations for the purpose of subverting those nations and eventually establishing Sharia, and countless examples, past and present can be found. This case is clearly merely a continuation of that tradition and practice, with the added benefit–for Islamists–of humiliating the United States and encouraging jihadists around the world. It is, as I previously observed, an act of war, specifically of hostile propaganda, long recognized as part and parcel of any war effort, particularly those of totalitarian regimes. No nation is required to allow its sworn enemy to commits acts of war on its own soil. The Constitution cannot be read as a suicide pact. The public pronouncements of Mr. Rauf and countless other Islamic authorities, past and present, will present damning evidence of malign intent.
So again, thanks. The more often people of good will can correct the mistaken notion that there is an unassailable right to build this mosque at this place, the better.
Opponents of the Ground Zero mosque are accused of being “Islamophobic” by the usual crowd of liberals. How often have we heard these same liberals say that America has to “end our dependence on foreign oil”. Well, what’s wrong with foreign oil? Could the problem be that a lot of foreign oil is controlled by, um, Muslims? Isn’t that Islamophobia? If “foreign oil” isn’t a code word for “Muslim controlled oil”, then what does it mean? Venezuelan oil? No, it can’t be that; liberals love Hugo Chavez. Mexican oil? I would assume the liberals favor Mexican oil as much as they favor Mexican illegal immigrants. Canadian oil? I don’t see how liberals could oppose Canadian oil; Canada has universal health care and I assume that many liberals are still trying to find houses in Canada so they can keep their promise to leave the country after George W. Bush was elected president.
The left abhors oil.
http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2010/08/27/the-politics-of-oil-chemistry/#comment-91842
It’s irrational and it doesn’t hurt Saudi fortunes that Obama the Bower shut down oil production in America.
Perfect.
Like it or not, the elite world that drives the proclamations of a John Edwards, Al Gore, John Kerry, Mayor Bloomberg, Bill Gates, or George Soros increasingly has little to do with the rest of America—even as it insists that it cares so much for the less fortunate of America that it must be allowed to dictate to others, for their own moral salvation and enlightenment—or else.
And for the most part these are just alligator tears that they shed. The true goal is not to use the wealth of the middle class to raise the poor up, it is to waste and expend the wealth of the middle class so that they are reduced to the level of the poor. With few exceptions the aristocracies never had to fear the poor–it was the middle class that was their most likely and potent enemy.
The Ruling Class knows this well. At the current time there is an undeclared civil war. The productive middle class (and they should NEVER be confused with government workers who make middle class incomes) are the equivalent of the kulaks in the early USSR: Enemies of the State.
To protect one’s status in the Elite from competition, one must thwart the rising of potential competitors. The federal tax system, particularly the income tax, and the many legal and regulatory incursions upon property and commerce that hobble new businesses and obstruct the formation of new capital, achieve that end quite efficaciously…and they are all enthusiastically supported by the Elite, both of our day and of the century behind us.
More than coincidence? Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.
Why do they hate us?
No, not the Islamists. I understand them. And after 9/11 that question no longer pertains anyway, no matter how much their apologists in the MSM try to make it relevant.
I mean the Obamists, the Leftists. What cause do they have that leads to such hatred of their own country that they would raise a mosque over the rubble at Ground Zero, finish the task started by our enemies on that fateful day?
Oh, right. Perhaps the same one.
Liars hate anyone who tells the truth. It is anathema to them. The truth shines a bright light dispersing the darkness of lies.
It used to be just a short time ago that most of our countries enemies were outside the gates but for the last several decades they have breached the walls and taken positions within. They own the MSM, they have taken over education and with Obama as their leader have captured the Unions with bribery. This country is a game to them, its nothing they have fought and died for nor is it something that they would die for, having never tasted adversity and having everything handed to them nothing has worth. They are an effete and dangerous class for any nation for they would sell out what they don’t cherish. This type was which fed the ravenous Guillotine in the French Revolution.
Wars of the past pertained to geography. The war of today pertains to our mind.
Against this invasion the military has no weapon.
Mike:
On not overanalyzing the issue I would add that 99 percent of what I am reading is pure obfuscation for one reason or another.
The pertinent fact is that we were attacked on Sep 11, 2001 by Muslims in the name of Islam. And as to the silly arguments over whether Islam is inherently a violent religion or not-History rendered its verdict a long time ago.
And although this is a bit off topic-that is why I supported taking the war first to Afghanistan and then Iraq even though it has not gone smoothly or easily-but then I for one never thought it would. I thought at the outset that it was going to be a long drawn out, ugly, and expensive affair.
Thanks for your response to Dr. Hansen’s article.
I think we analyze Islam and this mosque way too much.
Islam is the epitome of intolerance. That is a fact no longer open to serious dispute.
It comes down to this: Support the mosque and you oppose religious religious freedom, oppose the mosque and you are on the side of religious freedom.
In this case, it truly is that obvious, that black and white; the choice really is that clear.
I agree, there is far too much hand-wringing going on.
If there is any truth the adage ‘From their fruits you shall know them’, there is no upside to Islam. None. If there is one, it sure has been well hidden from the world. Willful ignorance or willful stupidity cannot and will not change that, yet the Left demands that we be both ignorant and stupid in the name of ‘diversity’. We are supposed to pretend that the horrors spreading out of the Islamic world simply do not exist. Sorry, but that’s stupid.
The the absolute best that moral and cultural relativists can hope for with their naive calls for ‘tolerance’ is the lowest common denominator. What a huge step back into the darkness that represents for Western Civilization! It seems that if Islam were wonderful and good, there would be need for a death sentence to keep people in the religion.
‘Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil’ – Thomas Mann.
Let’s keep Islam’s bloody borders on the other side of the oceans. We’ve already seen enough honor killings and terrorism on our soil as is. Playing defense in this controversy for fear of being labeled a ‘bigot’ is absolutely absurd.
And my pre-emptive response to the predictable objections is ‘Yeah, and not all Nazis were in the Gestapo, either’. It’s the ideology that is twisted.
Why not allow the mosque to go ahead on condition that it is called The Mosque of Repentance for The UnIslamic Acts of Terror of 9/11? (On registration documents, large street sign, postal address, and all official letterhead]
dave Essel asked: “Why not allow the mosque to go ahead on condition that it is called The Mosque of Repentance for The UnIslamic Acts of Terror of 9/11? ”
…Why not? It wouldn’t work since such a name would translate in Arabic as “The Magnificent 19 Martyrs Mosque” and would represent such a triumphalist entity to every muslim outside of the progressive tolerance for intolerance brigade.
“It comes down to this: Support the mosque and you oppose religious religious freedom, oppose the mosque and you are on the side of religious freedom.”
Your message is coming through loud and clear, Vic!
There are two significant facts that show how America is tolerant of Islam, even as we oppose the raising of this edifice to it:
> The thousands upon thousands of American Men and Women in uniform who, over two decades, have lived/bled/died defending the innocent in Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in dar-al-Islam.
> The fact that each and every population center in the Islamic Middle East was NOT a pool of fused glass by the end of the day on 12 September 2001.
That is all that any reasonable person needs to know.
You forgot Three. Not long after 9/11 we elected the son -slash- step son of foreign muslims whose name is Islamic to the core. No Islamophobic country would have done that. Why in his rise to power did Obama not give himself a political stage name? If the leftists who promoted him thought in their hearts we were an Islamophobic nation, they certainly would have. And they did not. That’s all the proof I need.
The Jihad Victory Mosque,will be the most heartless cold triumphalism symbol since the last concentration camp was Torin down.
Great thread. Y’all deserve a little musical break.
If my “betters” thinks it makes them look more tolerant and sensitive for me to be dhimmi… aw, screw them! If it’s ignorant and backward to be upset about 9/11 and offended by a triumphal Islamic mosque visibly near the site, the I’m ignorant and backward! God bless America and having a backbone!
I think this is right– and that it goes deeper. Someone else said it– but this crowd is all noblesse, no oblige. At least the old school wasps (like their English Victorian Age counterparts) expected that they, as recipients of the best their societies could offer in the way of advantages, were prepared to sacrifice and, if required, die to protect it. There was a code.
This crew is afflicted with the same sense of superiority without any achievements to justify it. And they want US to pay for THEIR grand gestures and have us THANK THEM for their inspired examples of leadership. At least the old yankee robber barons and southern aristocrats BUILT something. This crew isn’t capable of ANYTHING.
All of the very rich and powerful American elites are also transnationalists. A mosque very near ground zero, while offensive and insulting to most Americans, is actually a positive development for Americans who are opposed to patriotism and in favor of a borderless world.
Progressives in particular are very hostile to patriotism and Christianity. In any news item about Imam Feisal or the mosque the commentary is always diverted away from Islam to ugly criticism of Christianity and Christians. In fact, I think they hate Christianity so much, that if Christians are opposed to something it follows that they will be in favor.
More to the point, the mosque/community center that some Muslims want to build in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is another contentious site which was approved by the elite with no public consultation. The 15 acres purchased for the project is in a rural area surrounded by farms, farm land and a subdivision. As far as I can figure out, there are only 200-250 Muslim families in the entire Rutherford County, of which Murfreesboro is but one small city. Apparently it is nine times the size of the biggest mosque in Nashville.
This huge Islamic center will have a dramatic impact on this rural neighborhood. To see it on Google is to appreciate their concerns about traffic and property values, and about Islam in America.
Not so long ago a similar incident took place in Nazareth, Israel where there stands the Church of the Annunciation a site of pilgrimage for believing Christians. To make a long story short, the Moslems of Nazareth, who are the vast majority of the city since they have driven out all but a few Christian Arabs brave enough to put up with Moslem persecution, demanded that they be allowed by the Israeli government to build a mosque right next to the Church of the Annunciation. But not just any mosque, this would be a mosque that would be far bigger and stand far taller than the Church and was intended to overshadow and thus indicate the victory of Islam over Christianity. Well, the Israeli government refused to issue the permits and of course the Israeli Arab Moslems held demonstrations, riots, went to court, and complained right and left about how their religious rights were being violated. Eventually the Catholic Church and the other Christian Churches got involved to defend their rights and after almost a year of controversy, demonstrations by Moslems, and counter demonstrations by Christians, arrests and other legal activities, the Moslems finally gave up when the Israeli government issued a permanent and final injunction against the building of any Moslem religious anywhere near the Church of the Annunciation.
Those Americans who oppose the Ground Zero mosque have an uphill battle on their hands, and unlike here in Israel, the outcome could go either way. Here in Israel, Christians still have rights, but only because the Jewish Israeli government guarantees those rights, in the rest of the Middle East under the Arab Moslem governments, the only rights Christians have is to leave or die.
Good that you posted this story about the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. I’m not sure this episode was covered in the press here. Also, I was initially taken aback by this statement:
“…in the rest of the Middle East under the Arab Moslem governments, the only rights Christians have is to leave or die.”
I was under the (mistaken) impression that wasn’t true of Lebanon. A little research turned up an online article published today by Habib C. Malik, professor of history at Lebanese American University. Malik claims 900,000 Christians have left Lebanon over the past few decades. The country is well on its way to being fully Isamicised.
I’m sure this is not news to you. It was for me, and probably so for others here. Our media does not publish stories such as these. They don’t fit the narrative. Thanks for your post.
Exact analogy. Thanks.
I feel all written out. If the keyboard keys are my trigger these days, I’m all pulled out. I wouldn’t make this comparison if I didn’t know what it’s like to feed clip after clip into an M-14, hitting target after target till the smell of gunpowder so soaked into my clothes that I still sniff my field jacket to this day making sure it’s gone.
The Mosque is nothing more, nothing less than a metaphor to me; a battle not just for decency, but for America. There is no decency in building a Japanese war memorial next to the dead hull of the Arizona. None was ever suggested. No decency in building a monument to the terrorists who ripped out 2,977 souls from bodies containing hearts and minds and hopes and dreams; Americans who lived the hell of horrible deaths. There’s no decency in placing a commemorative stamp of brick and morter a stone’s throw from ground zero. And where there’s no decency, I have no sympathy. Terrorists, leftists, apologists for Islam, you killed it. Sympathy and understanding for your rights to build a pat on the back to killers is dead to me.
Leftists. Obamunists. Progressives. Tenured professors. Czars and secretaries of state and waste. Whatever you want to call them, they demonstrate not an ounce of compassion or decency as they make disingenuous, vapid, deceitful arguments why a memorial to murder should be constructed that spits in the face of all who wept openly and survived and all who fell broken and died; in different states of contortion and combinations of bent, battered and roasted degradation. You build a Mosque there over my dead body or yours. Whoever wants it is no friend of America. In reality, undoubtedly an enemy.
Of course Obama thinks the Mosque should be built against the wishes of the American people. But who is he? The fraud of frauds. A mole in the White House? The promise of Obama was a lie. Obama’s election was a sneak attack on America’s hope and goodness.
Obama’s big on teaching moments. Open up your ears Mosque misfit miscreants. You can take notes.
Here’s the comparison I no longer hesitate to make.
Six months on Guadalcanal taught Marines a lesson. The boys left for war intending to honor the code of war. They came home intending to honor the laws of the United States. But in between the Marines learned savagery had to be met with savagery. Four Marines captured on Guadalcanal in six months of battle?
As sure as Guadalcanal was a battle in a war for survival, at block 2887 in New York City, or wherever the city’s positioning of the proposed Mosque, concepts and considerations about religious tolerance and the like are hereby suspended.
Concepts of multiculturalism can go to hell along with every terrorist who tried to harm an innocent American. The idea that all cultures are equal is a dog that doesn’t hunt until we says it’s again hunting season.
What trumps the leftists slobbering love affair for multiculturalism?
Decency trumps it. The American sense of right and wrong. Good and bad. False and true. God-like and ungodly. Sorry, liberals, present your arguments to me and I’ll shove them down your throat sideways.
This is the third month of the battle for Guadalcanal. Try to kill my memory of good Americans that your Islamic gutter religion extremist belief system maimed and destroyed, and we will make you pay.
It’s not a threat. It’s a promise.
The Mosque is nothing more, nothing less than a metaphor to me; a battle not just for decency, but for America.
Exactly
And many who are still dying, from the 9/11 attacks.
But the world has moved on, and does not know or care about them.
Rescue workers, Volunteers as well as the Police, Firemen, and Ambulance crews. Ordinary people. The “little people” on the ground while the “elite” preach
caution, don’t jump to conclusions, and judgements from their barricaded enclaves.
Who cares about ordinary people when demi-god celebrities are so important. Who cares that ordinary people are chronically and fatally ill from the toxic fall-out ingested/absorbed in their rescue attempts.We must worry about Larry King and who is to replace him, about whether some TV commentator still has thrills down his leg…
No we must care about the sensitivity of the perpetators and those who bankroll their depradations, their cheer-leaders and supporters and those who protect them from the requisite adjudication.
Is this truly what America and the American People have become in following their self – appointed “betters”? Care nothing about their compatriots who have paid for their compassion in active aid to suffering others that we turn away to applaud frauds and liars and poseurs, just because they’re in the right club, make that the left club.And because they are “stars”?
Jojo, More than 800 first responders have died due to medical complications from injuries incurred from their heroic efforts to save American lives on the day of the attack and for weeks afterward. They are the forgotten heroes of Sept.11th. Thank you Jojo for remembering. Thank you truly.
When the first Christian church is erected in Saudi Arabia, I’ll reconsider my position on the GZM. When the current kleptocrat ruling Saudi Arabia extends a hand of friendship to the Jewish state of Israel, I’ll change my attitude. When the thugs, murderers, perverts and various and sundry escapees from the Star Wars bar scene that currently rule Iran, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Indonesia, Hamas, Hezbullah, the Muslim (sic) Brotherhood et al renounce definitively the use of terror as a political weapon, I’ll look favorably on the mosque. Short of that………I’ll stick with the rest of bigoted, racist, homophobic, nativist yahoos that apparently compose 70% of America. By the way, why cannot Obama, the blessed one, walk around with his birth certificate plastered on his forehead? Would it damage his golf game?
Not the mosque, Victor? I thought you had more pride.
You know, I remember once when you came to visit Hampden Sydney. You were talking about the Iraq War and actually insisted that Bush had not made one single mistake in the conduct of the war. Even those rich neo-Confederate undergrads were laughing. I should have realized then that you had lost all discrimination and were determined to toe the party line without shame. But even so…the mosque? The lowest of lowest common denominators on the right? Sad.
Keep your pride, Shef. It shall goeth before your fall. Have a nice trip.
Neo-Confederate undergrads. Is that another of those exotic species unique to Australia? VDH is hereby reprimanded for not informing us that he encountered these creatures in Sydney.
And . . . . . . . ?
The advocates for the GZM–our president, the mayor, the MSM–appear to care more about their version of multiculturalism than America and Americans. Since the current administration often engages in the politics of distraction, what are they diverting our attention from? The economy? Plummeting poll numbers? The November election?
“Here I ignore both those on the hard far left who do not like America at all for what it has been, and the hard far right who clearly do not like America for what it has become.”
Please define what you mean by “the hard far right.” If it is as you say those who do not like America for what it has become, then I and millions more like me fall into that category. We believe in all the American ideals and values of equality of opportunity, individual liberty and freedom that has made this country the greatest, most prosperous society on the face of the earth.
The odd, dangerous extremist is driven by insane bigotry and hatred, draping himself in an American flag adorned with swastikas and SS insignia – no more, no less. Violent and sometimes tragically deadly though they are, they are still few and far between. I and the overwhelming majority on the right reject these people and what they stand for.
The hard left, on the other hand, are the ones that hold the strings of power in government, academia, media and pop culture. They are ready and willing to subjugate us “bitter clingers” because they simply know better, and have cadres of followers ready to do their bidding consciously or because they’ve been brainwashed in the public schools for nigh on 50 years.
The great Mark Levin rejects the idea of being “ultra-conservative” and I agree. To be conservative is to be a defender of the Constitution and the principles of limited government. Their is no “ultra” to that.
My momma told me never to argue with children, drunks, maniacs and idiots. So for the “cultural elite” / Napoleons just GET THE NET or call in the men in the white coats to taken them in hand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjS0Novt3X4 No mosque at ground zero
Not so long after 9/11 I ran across the SacredCowBurgers flyer with a stylized picture of the wreckage of the twin towers and the caption
“Everything I needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11″.
I still agree with that sentiment. The response (or complete silence) worldwide by practitioners of islam has only served to reinforce my opinion of these miscreants in the past nine years.
Any muslims who have not condemned the acts of this brutal and inhuman ideololgy are merely enablers and supporters of the villains that lead them.
VDH:
“About everything that can be said has been said. Little-read Newsweek and Time have published a near dozen “I accuse” essays about America’s supposedly yokel intolerance — as if we did not get their message at about screed two.”
What-EVER. Once upon a time,I suppose that these magazines could actually make money by besmirching Americans’ character and defaming the American public.
Newsweak just sold for a dollar…a DOLLAR! And they STILL won’t “get it”.
Now, if you wish to see “yokel intolerance” and suchlike, let’s see the Muslims react to Israel building the 3rd Temple on the Temple Mount.
I’m certain sure that that would just be a chorus of harmony echoing off of the cellars of Heaven, right?
Forget building a third Temple. Today not only are restrictions in place governing when non-Muslims can visit the Temple Mount, but a non-Muslim can be ARRESTED if he or she even looks like he’s mumbling a prayer at that “Muslim” site! Israel made the right call in Nazareth, denying Muslims the right to build a supremacy mosque next to the Church of the Annuncion, but we’re still living with the second class status in Jerusalem that resulted from Dayan’s assigning authority over the Temple Mount to the Muslim Waqf.
In our lifetime, B’Ezrat Hashem.
“Forget building a third Temple.”
Why?
It’s easy enough to do.
Bulldoze the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa…and start building.
The DOLLAR was a tax dodge. Check out the Mel Brooks, Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder film The Producers. It’s all there.
The Israeli decision not to rebuild their Temple at its historic site is a supreme example of religious sensitivity, regardless of the politics surrounding the decision.
The Hagia Sofia, Christian Cathedral for 900 years, became a mosque after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. 500 years later the secularized government of Ataturk converted it to a museum, a very reasonable solution for such a contested holy site.
This is how reasonable liberal-minded progressive (original meaning of the words) people handle such sensitive issues.
Contrast that with Bloomburg braying to the intolerant Leftist fanatics over GZM, castigating a wide cross section of Americans as bigots.
Note also the problems the congregation of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church has had with his city’s administrators re rebuilding their church at Ground Zero (which was destroyed on 9/11).
Bloomburg = liberal, progressive, tolerant? I don’t think so.
Dear Victor,
Bloomberg and the MIC elite are pushing the Gzero mosque to deflect attention from the perpetrators of 9/11… that would be the mossad, Ehud Barak, Dov Zakheim, Jerome Hauer, et al. The media elite knows this and is pushing the multiculturalism disguise to hide from criticism by media minority opinion like Alex Jones and Jesse Ventura.
I think you know this too, and lack the confidence to come out and say it.
James Johnson
Scotty, one to beam up.
Fat chance. Scotty was Mossad too.
also, memo to Peepers: you may be ‘written out’, but not so’s anyone would notice.
LOL!
Those guys are infiltrated everywhere. EVERYWHERE!! lol!
Is anyone around with a very large butterfly net?
Victor, great article. the vast majority of America is now recalculating their future. Many of us are going to downsize our lifestyles even more, particularly when real estate can again be bought. We know where this is going and “less is going to be more”. I’d rather own a small house than be keelhauled with taxes with a big one. I’d rather own a smaller, older car outright than a nice ride with all of the options and a big note and insurance and tax bill to boot.
When all of us baby boomers deleverage, and by the way, we are absolutely teaching our kids the same, (both of my working sons will only have a note on a house, everything else…CASH!) this economy is going to be smaller for quite awhile. And by the way, we should have done this before and we know it!
America is going to do what America is going to do. The charlatans in Wasbhington, Al Sharpton et al. have no affect on us. The beast is going to get starved, one way or the other.
I assume VDH must be reading these comments and I know he knows most of them are written by people who subscribe to theory #4. I wonder what he thinks of that. Does he think those #4′s are a helpless byproduct of the #1′s? Was that sort of the point of this piece?
It’s hard to believe that liberals are too stupid to understand that it is a Victory Mosque. If it was not a Victory Mosque they wouldn’t insist that it has to be built in that location. And it would be slated for opening on 9/11/11.
A Mosque at Ground Zero is a lose, lose proposition.
1. It is a signal to Islamists that Americans are weak and stupid and can easily be defeated from within.
2. Because everyone knows that the majority of Americans oppose the Mosque but believe that their Constitution prevents action being taken to prevent it from being built, the erection of the Mosque will not convince anyone that American liberals are open minded, tolerant ecumenicals (except when it comes to Christians and Jews).
Might I suggest Mr. Rauf and his Moslems be allowed to build their mosque on condition that it is called The Mosque of Repentance for the UnIslamic Acts of Terror of 9/11? (In big letters on its streets signs, in all registration documents, and on all letterhead).
The tone and tenor of your article are those of a thoughtful conservative, fully engaged with, but disapproving of the liberal elite.
I am not as optimistic. I believe the east-coast elite have fully captured the government function and control of the public service employees unions. Opportunities to “retake the fortress” are limited, just as Benjamin Franklin said about the inability of the common man to enter public office during the late sixteenth century; “Few die and none retire.”
It hurts to watch one’s own children not get accepted into elite schools, or not accepted into the State Department because of a quota system imposed by our enlightened leaders. It hurts to watch a child finally become excited about some product he could make and start his own business, only to watch him recoil when he realizes the extent of government regulations and how onerous they have become.
The frustrations are building. America is no longer the land of the free. It is no longer possible to gain the attention of the political class, and make them reconsider the affect of their “enlightened” actions on the common man.
Yet another brilliant essay, Prof Hanson. You are so right in that those people who are sheltered from the direct consequences of their actions/behavior tend to be ignorant of the real world. Another poster’s analogy of a team sport versus and individual sport is apt – it’s like the elites are saying someone has to take one for the team and it’s not me, it’s you.
As for their brilliance, I tend to believe they may know a thimbleful of knowledge about a small subject, however, the collective knowledge of the majority knows a heck of a lot more than they do. Yes again, they believe they can triumph over world knowledge and history with their brains. YAptly, as you said, “Not this pig.”
You know, Victor, i am sympathetic to your POV, but ultimately unconvinced.
Here’s my theory. there is a classic “minority dilemma” in democracies and republics. the ideological claim behind popular government is that the majority of the people are right the majority of the time. So some people get confused and think that if they are on the minority side of any discussion, that implies they are wrong.
so if you are sure you are right on a topic, but you are in the minority, that seems like a contradiction. So then they have to tell a story about how the other side is in the majority for reasons other than being right. both sides of the political spectrum have to do this.
For the right generally its pretty easy. they fall back on their belief in their general sense of moral superiority. Also a significant part of conservative thought is to observe that the media is unfair to them. (And they are, fyi.)
For the left, its more complicated, because usually they are not accustomed to moral thinking. Often then they decide the majority is intellectually inferior, because many in the left fancy themselves as the intelligentsia. And of course theories of media manipulation abound, althoguh in this case sans facts.
But there is one way that liberals are accustomed to thinking in moral terms: on matter of prejudice. They fancy themselves as the morally superior in that area.
I would also add that I find the people who scold everyone else on bigotry are themselves struggling with bigotry. Keith Olbmerann’s diatribe where he claimed there were no non-whites in the tea party movement, for instance, contained several objectively racist statements, for instance claiming he can speak for all white people. He cannot. And to assert you can is itself racist. And of course Chris Matthews, another big racial scold, famously exclaimed that he once was so impressed with obama he forgot he was black. Which implies this is an exceptional state of mind for him. no word if any leg tingling occurred at that time.
So that is my theory. not trust fund babies v. everyone else.
And of course it is all to solve a paradox that isn’t actually a paradox. i have enough faith in the american people to believe we are more often right than wrong, but its more in the “long run” that we do get to the right answer. that means we are very often wrong in the short term. so if you think you are right on an issue, but the majority doesn’t agree, maybe they will come to agree with you. And the theory is a tendency. Best not to get hung up on a disrespectful explanation for why they disagree and just try to convince them.
Btw, the difference in education between liberals and conservatives are actually very slight–basically a few percentage points. what they show is that the least educated and the most educated tend to vote dem. meaning high school drop out and people with some grad school in their background. conservatives tend to be more represented among people who only graduated high school and went to college. again the differences in the number were slight, but there.
the ideological claim behind popular government is that the majority of the people are right the majority of the time.
I always have considered it more along the lines of what Winston Churchill said: Democracy is the absolute worst form of governance, except for all the others. And for people who believe they have a God-given right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” self-governance is the only option. It requires no further ideological claim.
I have no particular faith in the collective wisdom of the masses. Rather, it’s a bit of a stroke of luck that the mushy middle is so malleable and imminently persuadable to one viewpoint or another (this, of course, is a double-edged sword that will wound as often as not). Ultimately, it’s up to us to be the more persuasive. And I have to think we have more than morality on our side. We also have common sense, a healthy pragmatism and wisdom evolved from the long-term study of human nature and all that it wreaks.
If a Mayor Bloomberg or a John Kerry were to…— then they might have more sympathy and less venom for those who oppose their utopian views.
Different circumstances might have altered their course of development but…I’ve become convinced Mayor Bloomberg has been doing all this really stupid yammering on the mosque because he is not especially bright, and, accompanying that dullness of mind, is a fervent desire to not be left out of New York’s small, elite circles. John Kerry was yammering self-serving nonsense in front of the US Senate as a young man, so all the components of becoming a fully-fledged a$$ were in place very early on.
The problem is that most Americans do not live the lives of a Maureen Dowd, or an Al Gore…
Praise Allah :)
There are, of course, some very wealthy, prominent people who constantly analyze and re-assess as a function of experience/knowledge, people who have to make real and practical every day decisions.
Due to ideological lockstep and dullness of mind, however, the Al Gores and MoDo’s aren’t among them. (I have slightly more hope for MoDo than I do for AlGore)
The BDL (brain dead left) appears to be immune to Imam Feisal Rauf’s dissembling and lying. They dismiss any negatives about the man with the same wave of the hand that they dismiss Barack Obama’s failed policies and serial gaffes.
As in everything else under the sun, the elites are addicted to their Narrative.
Bitter, bitter clingers !
“Not this pig.”
A slogan for the fall elections!
On the money. The arrogantly righteous and highminded who support the building of a mosque at ground zero need to be asked one question: Where were you on nine-eleven oh one?
None of them could have been as idealistic, highminded and innocent as my two daughters who were locked down in their classrooms at Stuyvesant High School that day. Standing at the windows of her tenth floor chem lab with the rest of her class, my youngest watched the second plane make impact, people jumping out of windows, the collapse of the structures and the solid black wall of smoke and debris rolling in to engulf her school.
Before graduation with honors in mathematics, my sweet twelfth grader who had never evidenced the faintest interest in anything military and cringed and turned away at gorier passages in the Bible, requested our permission to sign up for ROTC. This at a state school near her elite university because her elite university was too highminded to allow ROTC. Her younger sister spent the summer in Israel as a civilian volunteer with the IDF.
Let Mayor Moneybags and the craphangers at Time and Newsweek put that in their pipe and smoke it.
This got me all teary-eyed. God bless your daughters.
David,
I have a son that’s twentyone, let’s make a shidah.
Great stuff from our classicist. But after some years of discomfort living with the Liberal ethos, political correctness, reaching out, reaching up and reaching sideways, I now feel more sanguine.
They’ve lost. They’ve lost big. They have lost across the whole gamut of important issues.
Their icon has proved to be just an empty suit. The soaring rhetoric simply a bore. That “dumb mutt” Sarah Palin has outscored them on every point.
The Liberals villified Bush remorselessly year after year. Their period in government has been an unmitigated disaster.
In economics, the model-mad macroeconomists are quite lost. They neither saw the crisis coming nor can they prescribe a viable ending. Same with the scientists whose credibility has been undermined by climategate. No amount of peer reviews or nobel laureates will put them back on a pedestal for a very long time.
No more worshiping at the shrines of Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The elitist no longer look like an elite. They look downright silly. They don’t lack diplomas but many clearly lack basic commonsense.
A few were well aware of what was happening in recent decades; some were dimly aware; but many were indifferent because it was all smoothed over by the debt binge and the plastic card.
That has all gone now and everyone is going to feel the pricks. As they say of soldiering, you don’t know what war is until you come under fire.
I sincerely hope you are right. There ARE more of us than there are of them. But just passively grinding our teeth as we watch the news won’t cut it. We must ALL keep talking, writing, blogging. Educate yourself about the candidates, at local, state and national levels. Go to town hall meetings. Support anti-big-government political candidates. Even if a $10 check is all you can send, SEND IT. Volunteer to make phone calls, go door-to-door, whatever. Get your friends and family involved. And not just between now and November. I am talking about for the rest of your life! Or else the bad guys win.
What really annoys me to no extent is that Christians, Jews and others in this country can’t wear their symbols of their religion without nearly a court order. People can’t put their creshes out at Christmas. Nowadays it’s wrong for people to express what Christmas is truly about meaning the birth of Jesus. I have read of girls in malls wearing a cross being attacked by Muslims. Where does it all end? I don’t get why Muslims are allowed to stop traffic in NYC for ‘prayer time’ whilest Christians are harrassed for showing their love of Jesus. I don’t get why these Muslim jerks get to stop traffic anyway when you have to get parade permits and permits to sell hotdogs/burritos on the corner. The insanity in this country is overwhelming. And it’s totally WRONG for these people we elect to NOT get it that there is NO separation of church and state in Islam. The foolishness of these so-called smart people is shocking. The ignorance of these so-called educated people is appalling. Everytime I see that some Harvard grad is put in a position of power (Supreme Court, etc) it now makes me ill. It’s more than time that the people in power and those from namby-pamby land get it that Islam is a true horror and we are living a nightmare. As I keep telling people, “You don’t have to die to go to hell.”
What country are you living in? In the USA, people wear religious symbols in public, openly attend worship services, and place religious scenes in their yards or in their windows. No court orders are needed for any of those activities. (I find no evidence for your claim that Muslims attacked girls in a mall for wearing crosses. Even if the story is true, a single incident does not mean that Christians cannot openly wear religious symbols in the USA.)
You complain that our governments are caving-in to Muslim demands. As an atheist, I find this amusingly ironic: our government has been heavily biased towards monotheism, particularly Christian and Jewish monotheism, since its inception (eg: “In God We Trust,” swearing on “The Bible,” religious prayers at the start of congressional sessions, “one nation, under God,” etc.). It’s no surprise that American Muslims now are demanding inclusion in the USA’s favoritism for monotheistic, Bible-based religions.
Wow, where to begin?
“You complain that our governments are caving-in to Muslim demands.”
Actually, our governments in DC and NYC are demanding we cave in to a ridiculous Wahabi and Leftist desire to build a victory mosque at GZ against the expressed wishes of roughly 80% of the population, and build it with support from tax payer’s money. As an atheist, you have a problem with that?
“our government has been heavily biased towards monotheism…since its inception”
At the expense of whom exactly? Pagans? Weren’t many other popular choices around in 1776, I believe. Not buying the “biased towards” dig, but why should an atheist care about which religion a government favors? Aren’t they all passe?
“…the USA’s favoritism for monotheistic, Bible-based religions.”
You include Judaism in Bible-based religions, and seem to feel the other people of the book, Muslims, can sort of just tag along for the ride because Islam is historically related. I don’t think Jews would agree that their religion is “Bible-based”, and it’s a slap in the face to Muslims to say they are globbing on to most-favored religion status based on being a monotheistic doctrine. I think most adherents of these religions would prefer to practice their faith without government intrusion, and without idiots like you conflating the three.
Your replies make little sense. I didn’t even discuss the issue of building a mosque in lower Manhattan. And, as an atheist, I oppose any government support for any religion.
Me: “our government has been heavily biased towards
monotheism…since its inception”
You: “At the expense of whom exactly?”
At the expense of every agnostic, atheist, deist, polytheist, pagan, animist, buddhist, Hindu, etc. You Christians arrogantly (and ignorantly) believe that semiofficial adoption of your religion has no negative effects on society. The negative effects of organized religions, particularly Christianity and Mohammedanism, are too many to list in a blog comment. The worst effect is the dumbing-down of adults who continue their childlike reliance upon magical thinking instead of reason, logic, and the scientific method.
“You include Judaism in Bible-based religions…”
Of course I do, since the first five books of the Bible constitute the Torah, and since most Jews consider the entire Old Testament to be sacred writings. The phrase “people of the book [Bible]” refers to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. To me, all three are equally nonsensical monotheistic religions. Naturally, you religious folks disagree about whose God and whose words are right. That’s one of the glorious characteristics of religionists throughout history: they have battles, wars, and inquisitions about whose version of magical thinking is correct.
“I didn’t even discuss the issue of building a mosque in lower Manhattan.”
The mosque was the subject of the article and the issue being discussed, I believe.
“At the expense of every agnostic, atheist, deist, polytheist, pagan, animist, buddhist, Hindu, etc.”
Lot of those around in 1776 Philadelphia. Furthermore, you incorrectly imply the above mentioned belief systems never qualify as organized “religion”. And, official atheism under the Soviets, for example, led to exemplary moral behavior, right?
Like most atheists, you seem to theorize that an atheistic society would lead to less human conflict and associated misery than would a religious one under similar conditions. The scientific method generally disapproves of proposing theories that cannot be disproved.
“The worst [negative] effect is the dumbing-down of adults who continue their childlike reliance upon magical thinking instead of reason, logic, and the scientific method.”
Hmm. How is it then that reason, logic and the scientific method came to fruition these past 2000 years in Judeo-Christian societies?
“The phrase “people of the book [Bible]” refers to Jews, Christians, and Muslims.”
Typical atheist misunderstanding. The “book” referred to is not a book, and does not refer the book the “Bible”. Such reductionist thinking leads to ridiculous statements like:
“To me, all three are equally nonsensical monotheistic religions.”
For all their blather about how only they employ logic, reason, and scientific thinking, it’s amazing how intellectually lazy most atheists turn out to be, especially the self-proclaimed elitists among them.
Dr. T Turn in your PhD do-rag. “one nation under God” came about in the mid 20th Century and “In God We Trust” came about during the Civil War. You ain’t no doctor any more than I’m an English teacher. BTW One does not wear the cross Christians are commanded to “bear the cross” so s you ain’t no theologian either. Go talk to Lola she’s a cross dresser hiding under a burlesque being pimped to the ‘jihad by Alla.
Madame X, You do not need to get your ruff up, dear. Christ can take care of Himself. The day Americans celebrate as Christ’s birthday is really the Venerable Day of the Son God(pagan). Bible scholars tell us that Jesus was likely born in the fall of the year. And our friends the Jehovah’s Witnesses rightly tell us that there is a good reason Jehovah hid the actual date of His birth. My guess is because God didn’t want all that greed and drunkenness celebrating His birth, if you follow where I’m going here.
I AM AN ISLAMOPHOBE
Fourteen centuries of brutal, relentless, murderous aggression from a religion that’s fallen from power and grace but’s determined to politically rejuvenate-to make a comeback on the world stage by any and all means-and the PC Left smears the Right that we’re all quite mad to take this seriously; that we’re being hysterical not historical; that Islam has learned its lesson over the years; that it has evolved into a religion of peace; that Moslems today are more civilized than their forebears; and that our fear of this faith is irrational and dangerous and could cause a civilizational disaster.
We are told that we’re Islamophobes and should feel ashamed for being so; ashamed for “demonizing” a mostly harmless religion of one billion souls because of a few, a misrable few (200 million or more), implacable, deranged, unyielding foes wanting to destroy us; wanting restoration of the past; believing that the world is theirs by God’s decree. Well if that is so then I’m an Islamophobe and will be one until the day the Moslem race accepts its fate that the time of the caliphate is past. Until the day they see that the prophet’s dream of a one world state is fantasy. Islamophobes will work like hell to kill this dream until Islam becomes a force for peace. SALAAM.
Click my name and read my piece Apollo vs Fareed Zakaria On Imam Rauf’s Sufism
The children of the elite did not man the USS Cole and do not man it today. It was our friends and family that manned the Cole. The elites did nothing when it was hit and have recently dropped the charges against the planner of the attack.
The elites want us to live with Islam in our communities and sacred sights. They will not carry the cost the want us to bare. Look at the Muslim no go zones in Europe.
Obama’s supporters wonder why more and more people suspect that Obama is a crypto-Muslim, his support for the “Triumphant Victory Mosque of the 19 Martyrs” at Ground Zero being just one of the latest “tells” he is presenting.
Well, here is another one, the White House is sponsoring a workshop this week (http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/08/027113.php)in in which the Muslim Brotherhood associated Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations will bring some 20 Muslim leaders to the White House, where they will have “direct access” to high level officials from the various cabinet level agencies, so that they can advance their efforts by getting such direct, high level access to “federal government funding, government assistance and resources.”
I wonder why ordinary American citizens who aren’t Muslims, with 40 million of them on food stamps, a real unemployment rate over 17%, and one in every 10 mortgages sliding into foreclosure, don’t seem to merit such White House level attention and special concern, and such “Direct Access.”
Good God, the Brotherhood and ISNA at the White House ???!!
Not just commies in the White House but fully fledged Islamic subversives.
The hardest thing to understand is the alliance between the Ruling Class and the Islamists.
Not Obama, he is easy to understand. He is certainly an atheist, but culturally, he is Muslim. There can be no doubt. Many have cited hundreds of examples of his preference for Muslim ways. None have cited any examples of his preference for Christian or Western ways; other than his own notorious lies and the spurious claims that attending Rev Wright’s “church” is evidence of Christianity or that his “Blackberry scripture readings” (how hilarious) are evidence of the same.
No, the hardest thing to understand is the alliance between the Bloomberg-like elitists of the world and Islam.
But let’s not waste time. The answer is clear when viewed in a historical context. It’s no different than the alliance between Germany and Russia at the beginning of WWII, and hundreds of other alliances throughout history. Nations have always allied against common enemies, even though the alllied nations themselves may loathe each other.
It’s no different for our Ruling Class and the Muslims.
The enemy of both is everyday Americans. They hate us because we are achievers, because achievers wield power independent of the central authority. They hate the Constitution because the Constitution keeps us free. They hate freedom because free people do not submit to tyranny.
They know that if they can defeat us, who are the greatest enemy of both the Ruling Class and the Islamists, they will then sort out between themselves which will be lords of the new Dark Ages.
The Ruling Class hearts Islamists — strange bedfellows indeed. Though I doubt this is the reason for their mutual admiration of each other, it’s notable that they both promote political philosophies that entail a top-down structuring of society. At the apex of their respective utopias are “educated elitists”, Ivy League agnostics and ayatollah equivalents. Just a thought.
Obama is an unethical, hypocritical, fascism-supporting, opportunistic, power-hungry, mendacious, Christian.** Those characteristics make him a far worse person than nearly all atheists, but it puts him within the mainstream of Christian politicians.
** The Evidence: Obama attended Reverend Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for twenty years. He and his wife were married by Reverend Wright. His children were baptized by Reverend Wright. His family now attends Sunday worship services given by a Southern Baptist chaplain at Camp David. These aren’t the behaviors of an atheist.
So you think attending Rev Wright’s “church” is evidence he’s a Christian.
That pretty much says it all, as if the bile you spit out against Christianity wasn’t enough.
BTW, there isn’t a shred of evidence he adheres to any religion, including Islam. In his “autobiography”, when his daughter expressed concern about dieing, he didn’t mention either God or an afterlife. Shoot, even most athiests would have done that. This guy is hard core. But it’s just one incident among thousands.
Religious people don’t hide from it. They are proud of it. They don’t need spokesmen to declare it for them.
He’s an athiest and culturally Muslim by choice, 100%. It’s plainly obvious to anyone who chooses to see.
Yeah. But they are the behaviors of a good ol’ con-man.
The owner of the property for the GZM is in tax arrears of some $244,000. He paid millions for the property, or more to the point, he was the face of the purchasers.
Just where is this money coming from?
I have no interest in trying to persuade the elite why or where they are wrong, or in hearing from them for the nth time …
This is the tack I’ve taken with the backers of liberal thought for many years now. For far too long we have engaged these fools on topics like this GZ mosque – there comes a time in the argument/discussion when you realize (or should) there is no logic to their argument.
Attempting to apply logic to an illogical stance is like washing and waxing a junk car in a junk yard – what’s the point?
The sad truth is that the elites are rotten. Do they hate Christianity (and Judaism)? I don’t know. They are basically against any application of the ‘coercive’ personal and collective morality expressed in both. They will have none of it. Most of them are in bed with Islamists and Saudi Arabia.
For all the fine minds inhabiting this web site, too many are just like VDH, trapped in a way by their own patriotism, unable to accept that a ‘Republican’ at the national political levels is not substantially different than a ‘Democrat.’ John McCain finally made a statement against the GZM, but what would John McCain have done as President? How would he have dealt with the Muslim moles in the US gov’t that Adina Kutnicki correctly points to? And after his single, mediocre term, would he have refused Saudi money for his library in Sedona, AZ?
I once saw VDH on C-Span. I don’t have a TV these days, but in those days I did. Somebody called, a ‘truther’, with a theory about 911 as an inside job. He gave a statement, which clearly irked Dr. Hanson, who then refused to respond to the general question, saying something like he won’t respond to paranoid conspiracies. Now we have Pam Geller and Robert Spencer, and brilliant investigators such as Alec Rawls showing how Imam Rauf is tied to the Administration and how Rauf apparently may have written Obama’s Cairo speech (and in the case of Rawls) that the US Park Service is actively helping the Islamists behind the ‘crescent memorial’ try to build their atrocity. So, I understand VDH’s response to the caller that day on television, but I wonder if he and many of the posters here believe that none from these elites could have stood aside for 911 itself. Clearly, some among them are capable of lending a hand to such a monstrosity.
Dear Larry,
You state that “‘Republican’ at the national political levels is not substantially different than a ‘Democrat.’” And that is probably largely true, because that is the nature of politics, to seek out the majority middle ground. However there are differences, particularly now after almost two years of Barack Obama’s indifference to skyrocketing unemployment, the Democrat’s massive increase in national debt, and Obama’s personal attempt to destroy the American Israel connection. But if most American’s actually have it your way, then there is no point at all in voting, and just let Obama and the Democrats run the country and Israel into the ground. Which by the way they are well on their way to doing.
In the 1990′s here in Israel, the various extreme Nationalist parties proclaimed that there was no difference between the Likud and Labor and even put together scenarios to show that the Likud was even more Left wing than Labor or Meretz. These radicals then set up their own little political parties and guess what? They drew just enough votes away from Shamir and the Likud that we ended up with Yitzchak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Shulamit Aloni, and Achmad Tibi and a Labor/Meretz/Arab government. This is the coalition of the damned which brought us the blood soaked Olso Accords, and the Yassir Arafat PLO terrorist government and Palestinian terrorist war into the heart of Israel and the Gaza Strip. As if to add insult to injury, a little later on those same Right wing radicals managed to destroy the first Netanyahu government and put the Labor/Meretz/Arab coalition back into power, this time led by Ehud Barak, certainly the most dangerous and probably the most incompetent leader ever Prime Minister of Israel. Barak’s flawed leadership and failure to defend Israel left thousands of Israeli Jews dead or maimed at the hands of Arafat’s terrorist army, which by the way had been armed, trained, supplied, and subsidized by the previous Labor/Meretz/Arab coalition.
So nowadays whenever I run into someone who tries to convince me that Netanyahu and the Likud are either no different from Kadima, Labor, or Meretz or worse, are even more Left wing and concessionary to the Palestinians than Kadima, Labor and Meretz are, I just walk away because they obviously have no idea what they are talking about.
Just as between the Republicans and Democrats, there are substantial and meaningful differences between Likud, Yisrael Beitenu and the other nationalist parties and the flagship parties of the Left, Kadima, Labor, Meretz, and the Arabs.
“…trapped in a way by their own patriotism…”
After reading this site’s comments the past 2 years, my impression is that the majority of posters here are not dyed in the wool Republicans. Many if not most think that our political class as a whole, R & D, have failed us.
As regards the truthers: Just like the alternative “theories” about Pearl Harbor and JFK’s assassination, I don’t buy it. It’s not a patriotic thing, BTW. Building a case on a few inconsistencies while ignoring the bulk of the evidence doesn’t usually lead to the truth.
Thankfully America is a Christian nation. Our religion and the bible are proof that blacks, browns, Muslims,poor, gays, union workers, etc. are not the true Americans. We want our America back. Let us continue dividing and isolating those who are not like us.
Go away troll.
No Christian or pro-American would speak like that. No rational person would speak like that and I speak for all the rational people on the Right. You clearly are not one of those.
Hmm, I don’t believe the Bible mentions Americans, Muslims or union workers. You might try becoming a little more knowledgeable about subjects that you publicly denigrate, else some will think you just another asinine brain dead Leftist.
Not this, Pig. Now head back to the Westboro Baptists. You really aren’t like us.
Can’t say I would go along with your plan regarding the other groups you mentioned but I do think it would be a terrific idea to divide and isolate dimwits like you; given your feeble-minded, leaden attempt at sarcasm.
Divide and isolate, Edward? Zap the infidels! ha ha ha ha ha ha
Two essays in one – artfully tying the GZM issue to the pillage and ruination of the middle class in America.
If you look at the percentage of tax returns that actually pay income taxes and then remove the very wealthy (those who have so much that they don’t care) and who have the security and upward adjustability of public service jobs, the true middle class taxpayer is overwhelmed at the voting booth by approximately three to one.
At some point we have to just stop paying until government agrees to unravel all of this BS.
The article is spot on except for the fact that it leaves out my family. I just left a weekend family get-together at the shore with my extended family – sister, nieces, their families, etc. and I’m barely speaking to any of them. They are the struggling families VDH refers to – struggling, wondering if they will be laid off, etc. except that they are leftist to the core. Among a few of the sentiments expressed were that the Pledge of Allegiance shouldn’t be said in school because it contains the word God in it, that they would never even listen to anything a Republican politician had to say about anything, and that my mother’s and my husband’s & my objections to the current administration’s policies are racist. Although I would always have described my family as liberal, until now, I have never heard them speak like this before. It was a decidedly unpleasant weekend. I suspect that we won’t be the only family that falls out over this administration. The Obama era is certainly unprecedented.
A most interesting post. Although a lot of us have experienced this with friends or relatives (I personally have many stories), yours appears to be an extreme case.
Rather than ramble on about it, I’ll say only that it is crystal proof that the Obama Cabal’s plan for our country is clicking on all cylinders.
This is a great indicator. I also recently attended a similar reunion and we initially had several acrimonious political discussions.
Ironically, the most vociferously in favor of the Obama regime was the sibling doing the worst financially. The private industry he works in has been purged of opportunity mostly do to government meddling and his job description and pay check have been declining ever since the Democrats took over the House and Senate. But he staunchly defends the Progressives as the protector of the “little guy”.
The next most argumentative in favor of the current regime was a sister – a career teacher and school principal. I don’t blame her, because in spite of taking this supposedly lower economic career path 30 years ago, she is now the wealthiest of all of us owing to a pension worth about $2 million dollars if she achieves the average life expectancy. Listening to her talk, I realized that it is very satisfying and very smugly comfortable to go on and on about Obama and the Progressives when you are so well protected and cared for by public tax money.
As an anecdotal indicator, there are seven of us. Three out of seven wouldn’t vote for a Republican at gun point. Two could care less either way while two (including myself) are staunch small government advocates. We had to declare it a politically free zone and invoke the memory of our dear departed mother to avoid creating any lasting ill will between us.
“but the largely middle and upper middle classes that so overwhelming in the polls oppose the Ground Zero mosque while supporting the Arizona immigration law. As the less educated and more materially minded . . .”
I take great issue with this.
The middle class is no less educated than the amorphous “elite,” or less educated than the ruling class.
In fact, giving the title “elite” to only those on one side of the political divide is equally fallacious.
Certainly proclaiming them “more educated” – even if you could delineate the class more clearly than simply as a synonym for “leftist” – would be lacking in factual basis; and more importantly, simply buys into leftists’ own tendency to proclaim themselves as smarter and more educated.
Let them spend all their money to build it, then have the NY City Fire Department condemn it as unsafe and tear it down.
No mosque at or near Ground Zero -ever.
Why are these people called elites. They all speak like slobs which in my book is decidedly not elite. (This is my linguistics professor side speaking.) David Brooks who lauds Obama – you know the fifty-seven stater expert on the Austrian language – as an intellectual giant is himself an ignoramus who doesn’t know the difference between the Icarus and Phaeton myths but that doesn’t stop him from citing them wrongly. All of these soi disant elitists are woefully ignorant of pure and applied science. Their heroes are the plagiarists Lawrence Tribe, Doris K. Goodwin and the stealer of the Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock’s work, Garrison Keillor. These peiple are contemptible wannabes and definitely not elite.
I never call them elites. I call them elitists.
That’s not a correct usage. Elitists are people who believe that an elite group should govern. The question is: Who defines eliteness? When our nation was young, the elite were property-owning men. They were the only ones who could vote for political leaders and representatives.
Today, most members of the “elite” are college-educated left-wing liberals with positions in academia, think tanks, or the media. Most of these elite also are elitists: they despise democracy (with good reason) and believe that members of their group should govern (with bad reason).
I’m an elitist. I believe that a tiny, elite group of ethical, responsible, logical, and level-headed libertarians should govern. Unfortunately, such people are considered wackos by most adults in the USA, and they will never acquire political power.
That’s one definition. Merriam Webster has a little bit more to say about its meaning in regards to attitude.
OK, OK, I’ll be the elite and govern you Dr. T. Now get back into the hole you crawled out of and get to work. You can never be my equal you low-down troll.
I am convinced that this government has no idea what it is doing. And I think that’s what most of my fellow citizens think – which leads to little if no chance of an economic recovery since the elephant in the room – the thing that most economic models don’t account for, in any empirical sense at least – is the trust and confidence of the citizenry in its leadership. I’d have more confidence in a roomful of monkeys formulating economic policy at this point – since there would at least be a random chance of doing something right, even if only by accident. The current administration is revealing itself to be not only ignorant, but willfully destructive. If they totally screw things up and the system collapses, they are no worse off since they can then dictate the terms for whatever is left. Time to do some tree husbandry – Jefferson style.
You misunderestimate them.
They don’t have an economic policy at all. Their only policy is to end the supremacy of the United States. The “economic” part of that is to destroy the economy. And they are doing an excellent job of meeting their objective.
In general, it is a useless exercise to attempt to understand what they are doing from a historical perspective or from the perspective of a normal American. It’s like trying to make sense of a language you don’t understand.
In his CONFLICT OF VISIONS, Thomas Sowell summarized liberalism as making self-congratulation the basis of public policy. Fits nicely here.
VDH and others, however penetrating their insights, have missed the point. What matters is not Bloomberg’s or other elitists’ attitudes toward the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, but the intentions behind building the mosque, period. They are aggressive intentions. Want proof? Go to this link:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/08/the-other-ground-zero-mosque.html
Having read Angelo M. Codevilla’s superb article on the American Elite my first thought only a short way into it were, this is why Bloomberg and the rest support the GZ Mosque. They are totally disconnected from the rest of us.
Ground Zero Imam a Taxpayer-Subsidized Slumlord
by Connie Hair 08/30/2010
The elitist, media-generated grand illusion of the Ground Zero mosque imam has begun to collapse under scrutiny.
New reports from The Record out of Hackensack, N.J., reveal Feisal Abdul Rauf, the would-be Ground Zero imam, owns taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings in Hudson County where the tenants have made municipal health complaints including rat, roach and bedbug infestations, seeping toilets, leaks, urine-soaked hallways, no heat and no hot water.
Despite millions of dollars in government subsidies, Rauf has trouble maintaining several small apartment buildings in North Bergen, Palisades Park and Union City.
Despite having received over $2 million in public funding for renovations, Rauf’s tenants were forced to file municipal health complaints to seek relief. One such single mother living in a Rauf-owned apartment in Union City said Rauf has not answered complaints.
According to the new reports, Rauf has a long history of taxpayer subsidies and grants for slum properties. There’s even a new revelation of a lawsuit settled in June over what the report terms a suit alleging fraud.
The New York Post reported the site’s developers owe hundreds of thousands in back taxes: The mosque developers are tax deadbeats.
Sharif El-Gamal, the leading organizer behind the mosque and community center near Ground Zero, owes $224,270.77 in back property tax on the site, city records show.
El-Gamal’s company, 45 Park Place Partners, failed to pay its half-yearly bills in January and July, according to the city Finance Department.
Sounds like a good time to raise $100 million for a mosque.
I love that closing line–”Not this pig.” But isn’t the pig in the poem about to be slaughtered?
Putting the Victory Mosque to death. It’s the only decent thing to do.
OT, but I think this outta send shivers thru the true Americans spine:Subject: Fwd: Justice Dept. does away with the red, white, and blue stars and stripes
Well, how interesting. Seems the U.S. Department of Justice has changed their website yesterday. Gone are the colorful red, white and blue U.S. flag decorations on the page, to be replaced by stark black and white. And at the top of the page, is a rather interesting quote:
“The common law is the will of mankind, issuing from the life of the people.”
Catchy, huh? Just one tiny little (too small to be relevant obviously) point – the quote is from C. Wilfred Jenks, who in the 1930′s was a leading proponent of the “international law” movement, which had as its goal to impose a global common law and which backed ‘global workers’rights.’
Call it Marxism, call it Progressivism, call it Socialism – under any of those names it definitely makes the DOJ look corrupt in their sleek, new black website with Marxist accessories to match.
Go here and see for yourself: http://www.justice.gov/
How very interesting that ‘they’ couldn’t find a nice quote from one of our Founders. People, we have lost our Republic and control. We need to get it back ASAP.
Please. I want to wake up.
This all has to be a very bad dream.
It would be normal for Obama to want “common law” quotes surrounding his administration because his parents had a common law marriage (hence the need to keep the term bastard out of the presidential papers) while Obama’s daddy had a passel of other Muslim wives back in Kenya. Just read the book The Obama Nation by Corsi. Think of all the welfare harems the Obama Nation is forcing down American’s politically correct throats even as we pontificate right here and now.
What matters is Bloomberg and the rest of the elite’s gratification at building the mosque… and Taqiyya-boy Ruaf and his buddies know that. (Left/liberals feel generous with your money, they feel tolerant denigrating your freedom and sensibilities to appease jihadists who’ll still hate them… same thing.)
I am just amazed at the level of writing on this posting, not just the article but the comments. I remember making my comments on this site when I felt alone. Not any more! Not only is what I believe being said, but it is being said so eloquently. I feel that I’m speechless. Please keep up this good work. God bless you all!
Professor Hanson will be seen as a class traitor for his dissection here, largely because it’s so insightful and explains the response of the opponents in terms that doesn’t denigrate their intelligence and motives. Personally, I just think people like Bloomberg and Dowd have been brainwashed.
I don’t know where the money for this Middle Finger Mosque comes from, and that’s one of my qualms about it: I’m suspicious. There are a lot more imams preaching radical, apostate jihad than there should be if they were representative of Islam as a whole. That suggests that they’re being supported by the likes of the Salafists in Saudi Arabia or groups influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The kind of money necessary to build and run this mosque is far beyond the means of most Muslims.
Qualm two: The lack of sensitivity to the victims of 9/11. This isn’t how you “reach out” to Americans who’ve been injury by your brethren. Funny that the acolytes of sensitivity and political correctness don’t get that. Apparently, only white Americans need to be sensitive to the feelings of non-whites, non-Americans and non-women. That’s why I call it the Middle Finger Mosque. Anyone else would know how offensive it could be to build a multi-million dollar house of worship for the faith in the name of which the 9/11 “martyrs” murdered 3,000 civilians.
Third qualm: We’ve been tolerant for nearly two decades, before and since 9/11/2001, and yet all we hear from the people claiming to speak for Islam is accusations and exhortations to more attacks, and the attacks themselves continue, although they’re now harder to pull off. This mosque seems like an intentional provocation, and yet our elites are blaming us for taking offense. Whose side are they on? They can insult our intelligence, but we can’t question their patriotism? Since when? We ARE NOT All Muslims. Nobody is advocating rounding up Muslims into detention camps or deporting them en masse. Nobody responsible is threatening to attack peaceful Muslims in our midst. Anybody who did so would rightly be charged as a criminal. All people are saying is, show some of the sensitivity you keep demanding from us.
Barry O, interviewed by Brian Williams says he didn’t watch the rally lead by Glenn Beck. He may not like what is being said, but putting on the blinders and ear plugs isn’t going to stop the ground swell of reasonable people beginning to call out the insanity and charades of government. The estimates put attendance in excess of 300,000
The moderate majority, represented between the two tails of a normal distribution, are deemed uninteresting for the media, which seems to be the reason for hearing of such extremes all the time. Now, it seems the extreme perspectives, right and left, have been aired so much, it’s possible they’ve taken on the perception of the normal, while the majority now occur as a rare voice. That’s how twisted the voice en masse has been expressed in the media.
Maybe there is some hope after hearing reasonable dialogue on Larry King, of all shows.
Want to see what is already being done at mosques in the U.S.? See (http://www.powerlineblog.com/). Pass it on.
SOmetimes I gits all manly feeling bout this here subject… makes me feel like i have to make a doody. — ever have that happent? ya gets soo dum gum fired up about something – next thing ya knows – doody?
I love VDH, and this is a vintage post.
I hope that there is some hope for the elites:
I can confess that I went to a selective college in the 1970s, majored in Classics, by the way, and on to graduate school (in Classics, but didn’t make it to the PhD) at a major university. My parents were professionals, and I had a comfortable upbringing. I acquired all the knee-jerk reflexes in cultural and political matters. The legacy (for me, at the time) of Vietnam and Watergate was a feeling that my country was hypocritical (or something).
Luckily, that wasn’t the end of the story. So many things happened–Democrats refusing to support the Gulf War, the New York Times becoming unreadable (in terms of the prose style, as well as the obfuscation of inconvenient facts, including descriptions of criminal suspects), the Left-leaning media and culture demanding adherence to a PC code of what could and couldn’t be said. Remember Tawana Brawley? Remember the Central Park jogger? It was when the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress wouldn’t support kicking Saddam out of Kuwait, that I realized there were people who didn’t think that the Western way of life was worth fighting for; they were appeasers of the worst sort. I actually had to start thinking of myself as a Republican, then.
By now, it’s quite natural. I’m hoping there may be others like me; I keep my views somewhat to myself, as I don’t have tenure (!) in the school where I teach. Of course, I wouldn’t dream of sharing my personal, political beliefs with my high-school students –frankly, in my high-school days, even the lefty teachers would have scorned to do so, except in private–but I mean that I tend to keep them hidden from colleagues. There’s only so much you can do, when you’ve got diversity training to attend. There are lines I won’t cross, but fortunately, I haven’t been forced to, yet. (I think, as we go back to school, I won’t have to hear too much happy Obama talk, any more.)
Even foolish, elite-taught people like me–remember when there was no greater insult than ‘bourgeois’?–can learn and grow.
Maybe it helped me, that what I’ve done (other than the years off raising my kids) has centered on teaching Latin, and I never transitioned to the fancy critical theory stuff that to some extent took over the field of Classics. Deep down, at its essence, Latin is about learning to read stuff, and if you focus on getting good at that, and becoming effective at imparting it to others, you realize that what you’re engaged in is a conservative enterprise, in all the best senses of the word.
Hope that makes sense, and gives others some hope, even for people toiling in the universities.
The Muslims want to build the NY mosque in the name of goodwill. Their first act was to select Ground Zero, which created ill will. They then had the choice to select a new site and restore good will, or to proceed with their plans and knowingly generate even more ill will. They chose the latter, which means they lied about their intent in the first place. The permit should be revoked.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, I’ve seen the occasional battle to prevent Jews from building a synagogue or Mormons from building a temple where they like. Not to mention the Greek Orthodox church trying to rebuild next to Ground Zero. It just doesn’t feel right to stop a religious group from building a house of worship or faith center or whatever you want to call it on land they own.
On the other hand, I don’t see Jews having the bad taste to build a synagogue next to the U.S.S. Liberty memorial, or Mormons having the bad taste to build a temple next to Mountain Meadows.
One thing seems clear: The continued insistence of Mr. Rauf on building his center close to Ground Zero, in spite of the anger it has stirred up in 70% of the population, would seem to rule out #1 in your list.
One of the problems with saying, “Why would we feel differently if it were a Jewish synagogue or a Christian church,” and then worrying when we DO feel differently, is that we’re overlooking the extent to which Islam is not simply a religion.
There’s a code of law, sharia, that goes with the religion. There are actually Moslems (Imam Rauf included) who want to impose sharia law on the US. Don’t laugh! Look at what’s happening in Europe.
No other system of laws can be admitted here. If the builders of the GZ mosque will repudiate sharia law and declare that they don’t want to follow that law code (and make the declaration in Arabic, too), then I would feel different about their plans.