Ho hum. I’ve been hearing about this so goddamn long that maybe some here may be wondering what my opinion is on this..
*Drumroll please*
I don’t know.
That’s it. I don’t know. On an issue like this I can see both sides clearly and I also sympathise with both sides. On one side (generally leftward) they make an argument of freedom of religion, the rule of law and equality. On the other side (generally rightward) they make an argument of sensitivity in light of a very special case as well as the motivations of unity under such an act as the proposed mosque/Islamic centre.
Here’s the thing. I can see the good points in each so I don’t know. If a gun were to be held to my head at this very moment, I would probably go with the left position.
What interests me about this foofaraw is not the issue itself so much as it’s the reaction of the political left to those they disagree with. In essence, it is the same old story. It’s bigotry, pure and simple. The resounding chorus from the left is that xenophobia and bigotry is the only possible reasons for this. It’s hard to retell the multiple accounts I have heard but it reminds me of the tea party reactions, all the sources I read or listened to said the same thing. Racism.
Krauthammer on this:
Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" -- this part is less remembered -- "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."
That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.
-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.
-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.
-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.
-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.
Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?
Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities -- often lopsided majorities -- oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.
What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/26/AR2010082605233.html
Posted on: Monday, August 30, 2010 11:53 PM