There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.There may be valid reasons for opposing the construction of the mosque, but retribution for religious intolerance in Saudi Arabia is not one of them. The best rebuttal I have read was in Matthew Yglesias' blog yesterday:
...it is absolutely crucial that we bend over backwards—as even George W Bush tended to recognize—to avoid framing 9/11 as part and parcel of some broad American conflict with Muslim peoples or the Islamic religion. Our framing is that America is a diverse, pluralistic, free, and open society... Our theory is that liberalism is an political system that can accommodate a wide array of people and faiths. To abandon that theory is as repugnant as it is foolish.If Orthodox Jews spit on Christians in Jerusalem, should Conservative Christians retaliate by spitting on Jews at Wall Street? What utter rubbish.
Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
I'm no Gingrich fan, but I think he's an educated, reasonably intelligent and rational person.
ReplyDeleteWhich leads me to conclude that he doesn't even believe this rubbish he's spouting. Rather, he's appealing the to segment of the electorate that does believe it.
Rather than appealing to people's better natures, he's appealing to their worst.
Welcome to politics in America.
Rich, I totally agree. In fact, one of my oldest friends (50 years+) is an avid supporter of Newt, so it's with some trepidation that I post this. But "hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders" and all that.
ReplyDeleteA friend and I were just saying this evening that there seems to be a dearth of statesmen and a plethora of politicians these day. The former believed in service to one's country;the latter serves his own interests.
ReplyDeleteThis whole situation is sickening. A mosque is a kind of church... This is by far one of the most disturbing thing I've seen people support... It really worries me that people will protest a church being built because they think the followers of the church are somehow magically linked to the people who supposedly were behind 9/11.
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