I saw this nice map today, and it just reminded me of completely and utterly useless the GOP has become. During a time in our nation when we sorely need a strong, rational voice to counter the economic & fiscal malfeasance of the Obama & G.W.B administrations, here we have the GOP banging the drum about a Muslim version of one of these near Ground Zero. Our country is bleeding money out of every orifice, and the GOP are all worked up over what is essentially a matter for private individuals to hash out with city government. They wail about how this will be a terrorist recruitment & staging area, yet the only evidence they have to support this seems to be a rather obtuse game of “6 Degrees of Radical Shitbags”. They complain about how it’s “Hallowed Ground”, yet the site is sprinkled with Strip Joints, bars, and Naughty Nightie shops (which are establishments Muslims find offensive, yet they still want to build there).   I’ve even heard claims that if they can build Cordoba House, the terrorists will have won, completely ignoring the obvious fact that the terrorists won on the day the Patriot Act was signed, the TSA & Homeland Security came into existence. The fact that we were practically throwing our liberty & freedom away just to buy an illusion of safety was our greatest defeat.
I know some of the 9/11 families are all upset about this, but really, let’s be realistic, 2976 innocent souls died that day, and with all the to do over 9/11, you had a large number of anguished individuals carrying on about how awful it was that Cousin Bill (twice removed on my mother’s side, who I haven’t seen but 3 times in the past decade, and that was at a wedding or funeral) died in the attacks, and OH! how it just breaks my heart! Excuse me while I go protest the proposed site, and then go drown my sorrows with a Whiskey Sour and a healthy helping of naked titty over at the New York Dolls, 2 blocks away.
The demagoguery is just pathetic. They are fighting for relevancy by creating useless demons to slay for political points among a base that must be too stupid to understand the greater threat to our nation. The willingness for these “leaders” to carve out & rationalize exceptions to the Bill of Rights is absolutely maddening, and the willingness of those who claim to fight for liberty to eagerly support them while they do it makes me want to renounce my citizenship because I’m embarrassed to call these cowards my countrymen. I won’t even go into how such pissing & moaning plays right into the radicals hands, further painting America as the land of intolerance, bigotry, & double standards.
Reminder: Tolerance is not being OK with something that annoys you. It’s permitting something to exist that makes you angry & deeply offends you, because you have no right to rob others of their rights (provided that the practice of their rights does not adversely impact you). I know people who find homosexual behavior to be deeply offensive, but they still advocate for gay marriage, because they know tolerance.
So, to the GOP & those who buy their rancid filth, fuck off. Let them have their bloody Mosque et. al., at whatever site they want. Don’t like the Cordoba House? Buy the land next to it and open a BBQ joint with lots of roast pig, and put your dumpster next to the Mosque. But unless they build the place, and then start grabbing people off the street & forcing them to pray, or they declare Sharia Law holds inside the walls while US Law does not (and we allow it, like an embassy), then this is a non-issue! Stop beating it & focus on coming up with some smart ideas on fixing the financial health of our country. You politicians don’t even have to come with ideas on your own (we all know the majority of you barely have a room temp IQ), there are lots of real smart conservatives out there with really good ideas who’d love for you to take them & run, but you are all too stupid enjoying the media attention to give them a listen.
Fuck you all, go die in a fire!
meh, I agree.
I was hoping that they would build it so that someone would firebomb it.
I’ve seen plenty of Muslim on Muslim terror, but never non-muslim on Muslim terror. It would be refreshing.
Thanks for your candor.
I’ve been meaning to thin out my bookmarks, you just made it that much easier.
Fool.
“Buy the land next to it and open a BBQ joint with lots of roast pig, and put your dumpster next to the Mosque.”
That made me laugh out loud.
Teamdub, you’re that offended by his opinion? He’s one author among… 4,5? Not all of whom share interests or opinions.
If your inability to deal with his strongly held views is typical, I’m amazed you’ve managed to visit here at all.
I don’t totally disagree with you that I don’t want election 2010 to be about this mosque (BUT…see end of comment)
“I know some of the 9/11 families are all upset about this, but really, let’s be realistic, 2976 innocent souls died that day, and with all the to do over 9/11, you had a large number of anguished individuals carrying on about how awful it was that Cousin Bill…”
My wife’s best friend lost her brother in the WTC, and her family who are good friends of ours cannot enjoy weddings, birthdays, and we always tiptoe around it to avoid pulling off the scab. Now if you want to diminish the anger I feel on behalf of them, so be it. But to hear some little bitch Imam (who’s traveling on taxpayers’ dime to blame America and fundraise for the mosque) say it was the US’s fault that Bill died, and then have him want to build a mosque where the landing gear hit. It’s a little much, so excuse our collective pissiness about it.
“The demagoguery is just pathetic. They are fighting for relevancy by creating useless demons to slay for political points among a base that must be too stupid to understand the greater threat to our nation. The willingness for these “leaders†to carve out & rationalize exceptions to the Bill of Rights…”
Nobody said they don’t have the right, we’re saying not to build it because it’s too close, titty bars or not.
“Reminder: Tolerance is… permitting something to exist that makes you angry & deeply offends you, because you have no right to rob others of their rights…”
As a sidenote, do you have any understanding of Islam? If you travel to the nations where funding for the mosque is coming from, could you travel with a Bible (if you chose to)? Could you proselytize atheism? Regardless, it’s a two-way street, and tolerance in a free society means sucking it up when you don’t like what people are protesting.
It’s really a moot point. For once, I’ll be cheering for the do-nothing unions when they refuse to build the thing.
What’s funny is that religion is being erased all over the nation by government who’ve interpreted freedom of religion to be no public display of religion (if I recall correctly, you had a post a few weeks ago noting something similar that you wanted religion to be enclosed inside a building- proselytizing is also free speech, by the way- your right is to say no), but suddenly this is a big first amendment issue?
And by the way, we can’t get out of the financial issues we’re into. If you had hope for the GOP, it was misplaced. The GOP has more, better people than the DNC but not nearly even a majority w/in the GOP.
How about you take the lead in stopping the demagoguery? People don’t like Muslims building a mosque on or near Ground Zero because of the terrorist attack perpetrated by Muslims there on 9/11. That’s the argument, period. Only liberals and you are bitching about the First Amendment strawman here.
9/11 happened and 2976 people died in a terrorist act on American soil and that’s as well worth remembering and being angry over as Pearl Harbor. Deal with it.
deskbox
TEAMDUB – I won’t lose any sleep.
BadIdeaGuy – Sadly, any hope I had for the GOP died during the Bush years. I see glimmers of intelligence every now & again, but then it fades into the racous background.
Now, it’s not about diminishing your (or anyone’s) anger, it’s about making sure it’s directed at the right people (i.e. the ones who attack, not the ones who live in peace). Now, being decidedly non-religious, I don’t know a whole lot about Islam, but I do know that, just like Christians, most who practice the faith believe that violence is not the answer. Yes, Islam has more than it’s share of violent radicals (thanks to issues that have little to do with Islam, and more to do with culture & society), but every population has them. Should I hate on Christians because of the likes of Fred Phelps or Eric Rudolph? Should we all surrender our guns to the government because some gun owners go on rampages?
You punish the act, not the association. Until a Muslim commits an act of violence, you leave them in peace. If you have an Imam preaching violence, you keep an eye on him & his congregation.
And if the guy building the place is a total ass, so what? There are a lot of complete assbags out there building all sorts of architectural monstrosities for nothing more than their own ego & to make a buck (e.g. Donald Trump or Bruce Ratner). Â How about those Mega-Churches that I linked to? How many of those are run by the likes of Benny Hinn, or Ted Haggard? The world is full of despicable people, but being despicable is not a crime (yet).
And since when do we look at other countries and say, “We’ll adhere to our core principles as soon as they adhere to our core principles.”? The fact that Islamic countries practice intolerance of other religions is no reason for us to do the same. I mean, what is the point of doing that, so we can all one-up each other on how bad we can treat the people in our borders, a race to the bottom of despotism?
Seriously folks, you have all the reasons in the world to be angry about 9/11. Hell, I’m still angry about 9/11. I’m also angry that Catholic priests were fucking little children for decades and the church leadership did everything in their power to hide it, and continue to try to hold priests above the law. But I don’t protest the building of a Catholic cathedral, or the existence of the Catholic Church.
Finally, this is a sterling example of the first amendment. You don’t force your opponent to shut up, you destroy them by showing how weak their position is. You don’t stop a place of worship from being erected, you create a better place of worship so that your opponent wastes millions of dollars for nothing. It’s a marketplace of ideas, and religion is just another product to be hawked. The Muslims just want a nice fancy storefront. It’s all competition, plain & simple.
This is a local issue to NYC, if the residents there want to protest and cause a fuss, that is their right, and more power to them. But for national leaders to get involved in a decidedly local problem, and to make such a big deal of it, smacks of people looking to get on the news & talk show circuit. There are bigger fish to fry, the Mosque issue is bread & circuses entertainment.
Oh, and the best part of all this mess. The very people who are raising the loudest ruckus over this Cordoba House, were the very same people who crafted & passed the laws which made it easy to get the permits (& financing, I think) for Cordoba House in the first place.
meh. Read the Quran, it’ll tell you everything you wanted to know about the “religion of peace”.
Read the history of the spread of Islam. You can start with the Wiki if you’re busy guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam
What you’ll find is that Islam spreads like a disease, in the wake of successful societies which have declined and weakened. In almost every case, Islam’s first ambassadors to a targeted society are benign caliphs or imams, who make it seem so appealing, building centers to educate and inform the world of Islam’s good intentions, lavish palaces where visitors are welcomed by bedecked Imams, faces wreathed in smiles.
Now, skip the next 30 years and look at France. It has Islamic hell-holes containing 30 million Muslims that the strong French government won’t even set foot in. Islamic youth regularly riots in France, causing billions in damages. Or look at Germany, another successful society which allowed unlimited in-migration of Islamic peoples, and now those vaunted German engineers can’t get competent factory hands to build their uber-machines in their sparkling modern factories, but the government is still stuck feeding, clothing and housing the Islamic labor the Kapitans of Industry brought in.
No, Mad Rocket, Islam has a future for us: just like Europe, we will be used to dump their fecund, near-illiterate masses into, and by assimilating them, our society will fall to the level of those masses, simply because we will be incapable of raising their standards to equal ours. In modern times, this migration has happened over and over, but damn few of those Muslims assimilated have become anything but a burden on those societies.
…and you thought Latin immigration was bad? Just wait until we get 10 to 20 million Islamic sloths in here. BTW, the Atlantic Ocean won’t save us, this invasion is already happening in Canada, which should be a “gleaming” modern society, what with their new petroleum production and all, but their big cities all have growing ghettos of Islamic migrants, ask any who travel there, as I do.
“Give us your tired, your poor….yearning to be free” was a fine sentiment when the standard of the world was hard work, ACROSS ALL CULTURES. That was then, and the “now” is that immigrants move in, and expect to be taken care of in socialist paradises, but want to run their own affairs via their own rules (Sharia’h Law).
Instead of firing up your flamethrowers, Nukesters, delve into the history books. It’s much more instructive, and the carbon footprint is soooo much lower! You will conclude, after sufficient self-education, that you need to get just as fired up about defending the principles of Western Civilization as you get fired up about defending our own Constitution.
We won’t be able to save our own society if we are indebted to all the rest of them. Here’s part of the reason why we are going broke.
Before we can hope to buck the trend of Islamic assimilation (assuming that’s true), we need to halt our self-inflicted decline, This quote lays it out nicely:
The thing that has changed, it seems to me, is that the role that honor used to play in our society has been supplanted by greed. I see it as a side-effect of the social transformation wrought by marketing in my lifetime: today we no longer think of ourselves primarily as citizens of a society, with rights and responsibilities; instead, we have become consumers in an economy whose only purpose is getting and spending. You know: “This means war! Everybody go shopping!â€