Democratic Boot Licker...
"Are the Republicans terminally stupid or are they just playing the dangerous fool? In either case, the irrational attack on Muslims everywhere by the GOP’s leadership is not only deeply subversive with regard to the American ideal of religious tolerance but also poses a profound threat to our national security. Nor does it help that some top Democrats like Harry Reid are willing to demean Muslims even as we fight two wars in which victory depends on our ability to convey a respect for their religion..."
Bob Scheer
Truthdig
6 comments:
"Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the [Cordoba] center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism.
"As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything "offensive" to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …
"As for the gorgeous mosaic of religious pluralism, it's easy enough to find mosque Web sites and DVDs that peddle the most disgusting attacks on Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and other Muslims—to say nothing of insane diatribes about women and homosexuals. This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be "phobic." A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational."
Christopher Hitchens
Slate
RK:
This is an interest sideshow. This mosque has nothing to do with getting people back to work, ending the wars or moving the country forward.
It's conservative talking heads gone wild. Suddenly, the defenders of the Constitution dump it for some cheap political haymaking to in the run-up to November. I think the tone of noise coming from the "conservatives" is very unconservative.
Sunny,
George Will made the observation last Sunday that opposition to the mosque stems from a strange new public sensitivity to being in any way offended. Its this same sensitivity, he argues, that has led to blatently anti-free speech actions such as campus speech codes and other forms of political correctness run amok.
George Will...another one of those draft-dogging, chicken harks.
I'm not opposed to people protesting this mosque, just like I'm not opposed to neo-nazi and KKK'ers marching in the street. I hear a lot about these "campus speech codes" but I've never read anything credible on their existence. Got any links on these codes?
According to wikepedia:
"One web site describes behavior that speech codes are meant to prevent:
Discriminatory harassment includes conduct (oral, written, graphic or physical) directed against any person or, group of persons because of their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran's status and that has the purpose or reasonably foreseeable effect of creating an offensive, demeaning, intimidating, or hostile environment for that person or group of persons
(Uelmen, 1993)."
Wikepdia also says:
"A speech code is any rule or regulation that limits, restricts, or bans speech beyond the strict legal limitations upon freedom of speech or press found in the legal definitions of harassment, slander, libel, and fighting words. Such codes are common in the workplace, in universities[1], and in private organizations. The term may be applied to regulations that do not explicitly prohibit particular words or sentences. Speech codes are often applied for the purpose of suppressing hate speech or forms of social discourse thought to be disagreeable to the implementers."
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So we have speech code where I work. Private colleges would have speech codes. These codes have been challenged at public colleges.
This sounds like a conservative bugaboo to paint those liberal universities as hypocritical. Obviously, conservatives never met a public institution they like. Obviously, anyone who would consider teaching or working at a public university would be less than ambitious, because they are dodging the "free market."
Sonny,
I’m surprised at your puerile, ad hominum attack on George Will. He is in agreement with you that the mosque protests are inappropriate and unconstitutional attacks on the right of Muslims to build a house of worship wherever they legally choose, yet you recoil from standing with him on that common ground. Why is it that those of you on the left are so committed to the cause of personal destruction?
Similarly, I'm suprised that you are unfamiliar with the prevalence of Campus Speech Codes. Have you been out of the country for 25 years, or just willfully ignorant of a development so antithetical to freedom of thought at our institutions of higher learning that the Association of University Professors was compelled to publish this statement way back in 1992:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/policydocs/contents/speechcodes.htm
Any internet search of Campus Speech Codes will produce far more hits and recent discussion than would such a search on “KKK” or “Neo-Nazi” marches. The former is a staple of modern college life, the latter a vestige of our racist past – one concentrated in the pre-1965 Democrat south, I might add.
One of history’s great liberal philosophers – Voltaire – once famously said “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” So too, one of our own great Jurists – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes – wrote into a first amendment case that the measure of our freedom is our tolerance for “ideas we hate.” Liberals once celebrated the antiseptic of free thought and the marketplace of ideas; sadly, contemporary liberalism no longer wants to compete in that marketplace, and would rather stifle free speech in the interests of a conflicted, ersatz, feel-good society.
Let the Muslims build their mosque – by letting them do so, it defines who we are. So too, by them wanting to build it where they want, it defines who they are.
RK:
I'm sure George Will and I agree on sometimes, but he's a weasel in my book. That's good that he brings consistency in his conservatism by being in favor of private property rights and building the mosque near Ground Zero. Hell they built Wal-Mart by Civil War battlefields. There's a statue of Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg.
But alas, tis the season to make political hay. It's a time of the anti-activist judge crowd to look away from the Constitution and display their racist stripes.
Concerning the Campus Speech Codes, I never pretend to know everything and I don't devote my time to every vein in the trivial pursuit of everything. Regardless of these codes, an individual has the right to speak his mind. Speaking one's mind can result in personal attacks, jail, ridicule, assault, battery, etc. You can control the actions and reactions of those receiving your message.
In universities, my though is that you have the right to speak your ming...even if it lowers your grade. I experienced that in my college days and I learn to accept the arbitrary pettiness of a couple of ego-bound professors.
There are many burners on the stove of life and you can pay attention to every pot that boils.
I don't know that I like being called a "liberal." It's easy to group me off into a corral that allows you to dump your political perspectives on. I prefer to be thought of as an individual whose mind is a swirl of conflicting fears, experiences, human encounters, etc. that make up the ingredients of individuality.
Perhaps is a mass society, that is not possible. But we are not interacting here as a mass society. We are two guys typing out our thoughts and observations in a blog comment field. Does it really matter what we as individuals think? Isn't it want the mobs thinks that is important? Could a country of 312 million people tolerate 312 million individual thinkers? Of as we get bigger do we have to condense individuality?
Stay tuned. Maybe I'll have the answer after breakfast and coffee...
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