Real democracy is messy. It’s got protestors and agitators and banners and manners and morals and financial pressures and gossip and policemen on horses keeping an eye out to make sure it doesn’t turn violent. Oh, yes, it’s also got government, but apart from paying for those policemen, government ought not to be too deeply involved as these things sort themselves out. If what the Muslims want to do is not illegal, then government should have nothing more to say.
That does not mean, however, that everyone else should also have nothing more to say. The attempt to build a large, new mosque and Islamic center anywhere near the site of the World Trade Center is so offensive, so bizarre, and so deliberate that it should be stopped.
And stopped it will be, through the offered mediation of New York’s Archbishop Dolan, or the skittishness of the financial community, or the disturbance of the neighbors, or the anger of the protestors, or the refusal of the building contractors. It will be messy, and it will be sharp. Inspiring and disturbing, with loud shouts on the streets and a few quiet words in the back rooms.
But that’s democracy—it’s how things get done when you accept that government shouldn’t do everything. The churches and the synagogues have long experience with this kind of democratic negotiation. Time for the mosques to learn how to do it, too.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Definitive Post on Ground Zero Mosque
Joseph Bottum at First Things has the final definitive word on the GZM. Read the whole thing here. Summary from the tail end of the post (dang, I wish I could write like that, my TNT is not helping.):
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
The messy part is the unstable part. It will feed the Left's racial paranoia. Who knows where it will go after that.
ReplyDeleteExcept that Islam has declared war on infidels and the West (not figuratively, but literally) and the Cordoba Mosque is part of that war, a memorial to an islamic victory and a recruiting and training site for new warriors. All of this is a matter of public record if you do some research on Islam and the role of Mosques in Islam. When Rauf says his goal is sharia in the U.S., that means he's part of that war. Sharia means stonings for adulterers, executions for apostates, executions for those that depict mohamed, stripping women of the right to heard in court (e.g. in their own rape trials), executions for gays and lesbians. The list goes on. I'm not a legal scholar or military historian, but it seems to me all the evidence is available to assemble a strong case against the mosque, or at least for investigating its ties with known terrorist groups.
ReplyDeleteShane,
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, you sound like a certain 'Dawg I know and I am sympathetic to your argument. If what you say is true, then the perpetrators should be investigated and arrested and that will bring the GZM project to its end. Absent compelling evidence, we can't argue that the government should bar the mosque from being built. The remedy for your complaints are the proper enforcement of the laws against conspiracy and terrorism.
Bdaddy is right when he sites me for having the same "victory jihad" revulsion.
ReplyDeleteWe have the right to fight. I am more repulsed when I hear we still don't have plan to re-build ground zero because of our bureaucracy. Holy Smokes, these guys are winning on three fronts.
1. They have destroyed a symbol of the American spirit.
2. Our ineffective ability to recoup our prowess and rebuild in the matter of ten years has provided a more lasting victory for our enemy.
3. The focus seems to be placed on a straw man argument of Islamophobia trumping the Constitution.
So no matter how much I agree with the constitution, my feelings of repugnance will always be misconstued as racism.
Bottum's article was most excelent. I wish I could write like that too!
Even though Bdaddy sites my concerns, it should be known I have no problem with " the right to build". I just want to be vociferous in my opposition, which is also my right. (I have changed my Icon to Porky Pig as a finger in their eye until this is defeated) But we shouldn't want this to be defeated in court.
Unfortunately, the louder the protest, the more emboldened they become. Our echo of discontent becomes their rallying cry for victory.
If we had re-built the Towers, one story higher, within a couple of years.... THAT would be their defeat. They would be a speck on the map and we probably wouldn't be so pissed off about this mosque being part of the jihad victory tour. As long as there is a hole instead of two towers at ground zero, we continue to lose.
'Dawg,
ReplyDeleteStop with the sugar coating, will ya?