"Behold, Aziz! The Americans prattle about freedom of religion and private property, but as soon as the Faithful try to exercise those rights, the Crusaders go crazy! How easy it is for us to tell our people that the Christians are bigoted against us, with this example to point to!"
If the Methodists could do it, the Moslems can.
I have layers of problems with the whole thing. First is being irritated that they even need permission. Private property, remember? If this were something we liked, that is the first argument we'd use.
And whether we like it or not, Islam is a religion. We may despise its filthy tenets, but they qualify just like Hasids and Carmelites.
I think what bothers me the most about this is that by opposing it, we accept a very basic cultural outlook of our enemies. I mean the permanent enemies of liberty, not the current Moslem ones.
Yankees forget, this country is already full of explicitly triumphalist memorials specifically designed to humiliate defeated Americans . Placed on the exact spots where the victories occurred, constant, daily reminders, to those who personally bore slaughter and defeat of their loved ones.
White Folks forget too, and not just down South.
It seems to be a tool of tyrants to keep this sort of eternal, collective, multi generational, distracting enmity going. Look at so many hell holes of the world, and how often you find people fighting about something that happened before they were born. No one needs a list of these permanent blood feuds.
The English- following their own Civil War, and the Anglo/ Americans, following their Civil Wars in 1782, 1814, and 1865, decided not to make those hates permanent and active parts of their futures, and by and large did that. In America, from the start, the tolerant (and therefore forgetful) spirit marched, even when Englishmen still disabled Catholics at home. The old country hates didn't survive very well in the free soil here. (Sure, we talk sometimes, but Irishmen don't murder their English landlords, or Moslems blow up Jews, here. At least not wholesale.)
We despise irredentism, Balkanisation, and grudge baiting when our enemies do it, because they are poison to free people.
We're better than that generally. And we're better than that specifically, too. Stopping this mosque won't change our enemies.
Let them dance in the blood of innocents. It won't alter what happened on September 11.
And it reminds us of what they did that day, and what they remain.
Sorry, that's a lot of talk. But I really think we're fundamentally wrong by opposing this, and playing into their hands besides.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
My Ground Zero Mosque Rant...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Should the state interfere with building a Mosque on private property near Ground Zero - presuming there is no exercise of government authority beyond the enforcement of the law, no condemnation, no takings, no subsidization, then government has no right to interfere.
But that says nothing of the wisdom of the choice or the legitimacy of the anger about it. I do not expect Mayor Bloomberg or President Obama to stop the Mosgue, but trying to pretend it is a good thing is ludicrous. As WSJ pointed out the Carmelites left Auschwitz - not because of force of law, but because it was the right thing to do.
Some on the right ponder how we will feel when some "moderate" cleric rants hate at the US so close to ground zero. But what about the possibility that some disgruntled wackjob attempts to duplicate the first WTC bombing on the mosque ?
Symbols matter. I would not wish to be near the Ground Zero Mosque on September 11, or April 19th. Would you ?
I agree with you, on the mosque.
I do have one minor quibble on war memorials though. Many are explicitly triumphant, no question. But the one I go past everyday, listing as it does the names of those from my town who died in that war, for me that isn't a symbol of humiliation, but a symbol of the cost. There are an awful lot of names, from what was a very small town. For me, it serves as a constant reminder that my ancestors have fought and died over this nation, and I had better not screw that sacrifice over.
Post a Comment