20% of Americans now believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. About 38% believe that he is Christian. Lutheran Surrealism offers a third possibility. President Obama is actually a ninja in the service of the Emperor of Japan!
This would make President Obama a Zen Buddhist.
134 comments:
He's not a ninja. He's a Shinto. They're like German Romantics. They revere nature and venerate ancestors.
Hey, this is great. Google has lifted its embargo on my comments. I can access my dashboard. Japan must have brokered some kind of deal with China and now I'm back on board. I can post on my blog again. They had me in quarantine for three months.
Google has been doing something new with passwords and such that I don't understand. I think there are also some fake messages from groups trying to get personal information. What's happening isn't clear to me, either, but I too have had some problems.
As for Shino and veneration of ancestors, maybe he's a ninja after all (Obama) because I don't think he venerated his ancestors. Do you remember when he threw his grandmother under the bus?
I don't think it would be normal to out your grandparents for racism within Japanese culture.
I think he's probably a Saul Alinsky type activist, but because he can't own up to that without his popularity rating falling through the floor he has to just go on and on with this stealth trick, hoping others won't notice, or won't care what he is, and hoping the race card will be enough to keep anyone from asking him a hard question.
I think for a while he thought he could shut down Fox News, but their ratings actually improved.
I think he's probably part of the quasi-Marxist academic establishment of the U. of Chicago. The same group as Martha Nussbaum.
Nussbaum has some good qualities. She's thin, for instance. She believes in universal human rights (for women, at least).
But I think it's anybody's guess what he is. He's at least as likely to be a Ninja as he is to be a Muslim.
Maybe he doesn't really know.
What Christianity he appears to have appears to be the Marxist Christianity of Reverend Wright's Liberation Theology.
He does feel quite comfortable with Marxists, and has many of them as his close friends. Not just Ayers and Dohrn, but Van Jones, who he invited to be on his staff, among others.
People do have ideological commitments. He does mention Saul Alinsky in his books. I think that's at least a big part of his package.
But he's a mystery. We don't even know anything about his past girlfriends, boyfriends, his medical record has been kept out of the public light, his birth certificate causes conniptions, his liaisons with real estate developers are shrouded in mystery.
Ninjas are secretive, and operate under cover of darkness. Obama passes bills in the middle of the night.
He smokes, but no one has ever seen him smoke. It's the strangest thing.
His grandma was from Kansas, like me. She spent much of her life in Everett, Washington a few blocks from where my dad had his private practice. She took up banking on Mercer Island and moved to Honolulu, where my wife and I now own a condo and plan to retire. I'd vote for his grandma if I could, but I'm still quite impressed with the work she did in raising her grandson. I felt nauseous the whole time Bush was in office.
I lived in Leschi in Seattle for many years and the house I lived in overlooked Mercer Island.
That's a fairly posh community.
When you say she was in banking do you mean she was a teller?
Brett, ok, we have the law in common.
It's funny but the whole time Obama has been in I've felt nauseous.
I trusted Bush. Something I sensed about him.
I sense on the other hand that Obama IS a plant of some kind. Maybe not a Muslim, maybe not a ninja actually in the pay of the emperor of Japan, but some kind of ninja. He's not being on the up and up about something.
The guy has giant secrets.
Whatever his secrets are, I suspect the Democratic press will release them the day he no longer has any real access to power, sort of the way they revealed the whole thing about Edwards' affair just after he was certain to no longer matter in the Democratic primary.
The Pew Research poll is cited in the Washington Post. It's actually 18%.
Only 34% think he's a Christian.
I think we should spread the rumor that he is a ninja in thrall to the emperor of Japan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/19/AR2010081905061.html
Stu is always getting on my case about prissy little facts and getting them right. I'm doing my best.
Facts do mean something, even when they largely support fantasy.
Craig, I don't know why the Philippines has to go through China and Japan.
Aren't those islands closer to Taipei?
Or couldn't they go through a logical country like Australia to get their service. Why does China hold up the Philippines?
why do you want to live in Hawaii?
Orange you tired of islands?
I can't stand islands.
I googled "Obama mama and Scoop Jackson". The number one hit is a blog called the Annals of Anthroman, a black blogger with a goatee and a bald pate whose schtick is all-racism all the time.
Close behind at number two is The God Blog at JewishJournal.com out of L.A., written for the vast majority of Jewish Americans who oppose AIPAC and the agenda of the neo-cons.
Why be a teller on Diamond Rock when you can go to Diamond Head and be an executive vice president?
Obama is not a ninja, they are too intense, and move to fast. You can't see them until it's too late. Obama is a djinni, and has granted at least one wish (universal health care), and maybe two (the stimulus). What will the third wish be?
Kirby, I do think that you need to realize that your impression of Obama is largely based on the contextualization that happens from the media outlets that you choose to trust-
This of course if true for every American on the planet right now, but it's best to be self-aware.
It's pretty amazing - a lot of people on the left think of Dick Cheney as some evil Sith because on lefty radio they'd play the imperial death march whenever they talked about him.
It's been going on forever, from both parties (Lincoln was portrayed as a monkey...)
I think, however, that you're smarter than that, and shouldn't place so much emphasis on your 'gut.'
That tends to ruin your ability to look at things with clear eyes.
Oh, and I need to correct you a little bit - it's not just you and I that have the law in common.
It's you and Obama.
Kirby,
There have been a number of polls on the question of whether Obama is a Muslim or Christian. Such polls are, of course, utterly uniformative about what he really is, because his religious commitments are not a function of polls, any more than yours or mine.
We do know that he was a member of Jeremiah Wright's congregation, a Christian congregation, albeit one focussed on the experience and faith of Black people in the United States. He was and is a Christian.
But we have lies being spread by people who have a political agenda that he is not, that he is a Muslim. And they are lies, Kirby. And the people who tell them are defiled by what comes out of their mouth (Matthew 15:18).
There is only one sin that the Bible says is eternal, that is says is unforgiveable, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (c.f., Matthew 12:31, Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10). I believe that those who deny that the Holy Spirit can change the heart of men are guilty of that sin. Those who are spreading lies about Obama's religion are perilously close to that line. It is your intention to join them? You claim you believe in the law. Bearing false witness against God and man is most definitely against the law. Who's Father, Kirby? Our Father...
I don't honestly know who BO is or what he stands for. I honestly have no idea. He waffles on everything, straddling every line.
There are the few off the record comments, the line about how some "cling to God," which indicate that he doesn't, the line where he said that he intended to "redistribute" joe the plumber's income.
He denied REv. Wright altogether. He denied his grandmother.
Of course, there were the disciples who denied being disciples, too. But I don't know if Obama is a disciple of Rev. Wright, or Saul Alinsky, or Ayers.
I'm fairly certain that he's not a Ninja under the tutelage of the Emperor of Japan. He'd have more facility with Japanese, and he'd have been a lot more careful to hide his affiliation.
kirbs
i don't know if this is any solace
but
obama doesn't know who you are either
he's not at all sure what you stand for
of course he probably doesn't care
but
he does care about education
in minnesota there's a huge push to override the implimentation of "no child left behind"
i think the rapture is nigh
to bed to rest
our president is a robot
controlled by NSA
cool thing is
they can make him do the
boogaloo
at the drop of a hat
watchit
jh
amen
jh
He didn't deny his grandmother, he used her as an example of someone he generally respected who also had some racist instincts based upon her upbringing.
To call this 'denying' is idiotic, and you're not stupid Kirby, so i don't know why you do it -
He said it as part of a very balanced and rather clear speech on race in 'merica...
He kinda did deny Wright...
But you need to stop parroting the righty talking points, because like most talking points they're usually wrong.
I'm actually intrigued that you haven't really brought up the Islamic center being installed a few blocks from Ground Zero...My instinct is that it's because you know the left is in the right (teehee) on this one, and so you're reluctant to address the issue.
Kirby,
I don't honestly know who BO is or what he stands for. I honestly have no idea. He waffles on everything, straddling every line.
If you don't know what he stands for, then you've not been paying attention. He's been very clear on this. But part of what he stands for is a belief in the integrity of our governmental system. In particular, he gives congress a great deal of latitude and he encourages debate.
There are the few off the record comments, the line about how some "cling to God," which indicate that he doesn't, the line where he said that he intended to "redistribute" joe the plumber's income.
The "cling to guns and religion" comment was made during a fundraiser, i.e., in a public setting. And if you'd look at the context, he was talking about how there are people in long-term bad economic situations, and how this has resulted in bitterness. He talked about how, as someone who is running on a message that more effective government can improve people's lives, his message was met with skepticism by some. In effect, he was saying that despair causes people to turn away from the belief that what they do can matter -- exactly the sort of ennui or fatigue that you've been complaining about recently -- but he was actually saying it with insight, sympathy, and compassion. This was not an anti-faith comment.
As for the word "redistribution" in the context of Joe the Plumber, I did not find a transcript in which Obama said this, instead, it is a word that the Fox commentators added to the discourse. I don't consider Obama's off-the-cuff remark about "spreading the wealth around" to have been his finest moment, but this has nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to do with religious belief. The range of discussion in this country over tax rates is essentially between the rates set by GHWB and GWB, and Obama has made no proposals outside of this window. I surely don't hear you questioning the faith of GHWB, which if this argument had any integrity, you'd be obligated to do.
He denied REv. Wright altogether.
You'll recall that the Wright-Obama relationship became a political pawn after video of Wright's "God damn America" came out. Obama carefully described his position then, disapproving of some of what Wright said, while giving him credit for bringing him to an active faith. But Wright, always one to see an opportunity, used this to ratchet up the rhetoric, and to take more extreme positions still. Obama, who was not willing to be used in this way, or tarnished by such extreme views, publicly broke off the relationship then. But did not break off his religion then.
He denied his grandmother.
I assume this is a reference to Madelyn Dunham, and a remark she made about fearing black men she didn't know whom she passed on the street. He emphatically did not deny his grandmother, but spoke of her with love and respect. Again, you're repeating the words of people who are twisting the truth, and I blame you for this, because the truth is so easily accessible, but you choose not to seek it, nor even to acknowledge it when others point it you. I guess you just prefer lies to truths, if those lies support your prior beliefs. It's not an uncommon failing of man in general, but scholars are supposed to have higher standards.
Are we talking about Obama the mytho-historic figure, or Obama the person?
He just seems a little aloof to me. Cheney seemed jolly, Bush petulant, particularly towards the end. How exciting is anyone?
"I don't honestly know who BO is or what he stands for."
Kirby,
For what current issue do you find it difficult to predict his position?
Do you mean some sort of meta-essence, like what he represents in a Bachofen-esk symbolic universe?
Kirby, I agree with stu that polls about what people believe about President Obama's spiritual beliefs seem pretty pointless. But your speculation that he might be a stealth ninja in service of the Japanese emperor I take as just a bit of harmless LS drollery. In any case, the President seems more likely to be a devotee of the "Church of Golf."
That's not to say, however, that speculation about presidential spiritual life isn't taken seriously. During President Bush's administration PBS ran an alarmist special called "The Jesus Factor" that attempted to link Bush's evangelical faith with his political policies. And more recently, another reliable liberal media tool, CNN, aired a bit called "A Brief History of Intolerance in America" that visually linked the opposition to the "Ground Zero Mosque" (now a term verboten by the Associated Press) with the anti-Semitism of Father Coughlin and race hatred of the KKK.
Brett,
Obama denounced his grandmother as a "typical white person" who is terrified of people she doesn't know. He also implied that all other races, and all other people, are totally accepting, as he is, and so, the implication was that if white people like his grandmother were destroyed, the world would be a better place. That's a second order implication, of course, but I do think it was there.
I thought it was itself one of the most horrifyingly racist comments I'd ever heard.
WRT the Mosque: one meme on right-wing radio is that Muslims build mosques at the site of sacred victories. If that is the case with the mosque near Ground Zero, I think it is mere appeasement to allow it to be built. Winston Churchill said that appeasement solves nothing.
I'm with Churchill.
Last night the wife of the imam said that she doesn't want to build the mosque unless there is a broad consensus. Two sides are spinning this, but so far I don't have any hard data on the imam whose central idea this is.
In one way, I'd like the mosque to be built over the dead bodies of our soldiers, citizens, firemen, and others, simply to make Americans wake up a bit. I'd like to see Bin Laden boast about it.
I think it would help move the country a bit further toward Huntington's thesis of the clash of civilizations, in which the Muslims have "bloody borders" wherever they coexist with any other population, and even within their own religion (shia and sunni).
On the other hand, I too would dearly like to believe in the Cat Stevens meme of a peace train coming. But then, Cat Stevens backed the death threat on Rushdie, and, so far as I know, still does, even though the fatwa has now been revoked.
I AM for freedom of speech. But if this is merely used by our enemies to make fools of us, then I'm not for it.
The left has this foolish idea that we should always be tolerant. I think there has to be limits to tolerance. I don't think smashing civilian airplanes into the twin towers is tolerable. If the imam in question is secretly planning to gloat over the destruction of those two towers and gloating over the deaths of 3000 plus unarmed citizens, then I don't think we should tolerate it.
One of the things I like about the right is that they want SOME limits. They want a wall against Mexico, and they want to enforce laws regarding illegals. They recognize that Islam is NOT a peaceful religion, but in fact has always been on the march since its inception and is in fact incredibly belligerent in almost all cases, and also, has a terrifying notion of law, that includes zero tolerance for outsiders (it is against the law to be Christian in Afghanistan, and the penalty for it is death).
The left are like the ostriches with their heads in the sand.
They are like Chamberlain before Hitler.
They are the fools who went along with the Bolshevik revolution, and were "useful idiots," in Lenin's terminology, and who continued to believe in the revolution even when they were sent to Siberia where most of them died in slave labor camps.
There is a certain kind of cowardice in the left.
The right stand for things, and will fight for them, and try hard to articulate clear principles.
I am reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali just now. That's a brave person, and I rather like what she has to say.
William, I'm talking about Obama the writer and speaker. He is vague, and shifts, and straddles ideas, and rarely takes a firm stand. When he does, it's a weird stand, and generally is in line with Rev. Wright. When he denounced the Cambridge police for acting stupidly, I think we saw the real Obama. When he denounced his grandmother for being white, again, I think we saw the real BO.
He's a racist down to the bone.
I tend to see the extreme bigotry of the left as something that they themselves are blind to. Rorty was one of the most bigoted men in human existence. But he thought he was enlightened.
One of the things I sometimes see in Obama is that his uncertainty means that he's trying hard to track his own bigotry. But when he does take a firm stand, it's there, and as plain as day.
I suppose we are going to see this with every public figure.
But it seems more glaring in the personage of BO. He thinks Sotomayor was more empathetic because she's from Puerto Rico.
It's just another kind of bigotry, and one that most people are too afraid to call it for what it is.
You see this in all the multiculturals. The Asians really hate white people in many cases (especially if they are Japanese). It's quite thoroughly apparent.
And they know they have grandparents and uncles and so on who are even more out front about their racism. If you actually get to know people from other races, they will just tell you this right up front.
But they would never out them on camera, the way that BO outed his grandma as a typical white person.
I think he is a typical one-sided academic bigot.
JADL,
That's not to say, however, that speculation about presidential spiritual life isn't taken seriously. During President Bush's administration PBS ran an alarmist special called "The Jesus Factor" that attempted to link Bush's evangelical faith with his political policies.
May I suggest that there is a significant distinction here? In the PBS case, there was an attempt to connect Mr. Bush's actions with his pronounced faith. There was no effort made, so far as I can tell, to present his religious beliefs as anything other than what they were. Whereas, in the Obama religious "controversy," the notion that Mr. Obama is Muslim is based on the slightest of facts (his father's religion, his four years in Indonesia), wild and irresponsible speculation, and in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary.
Let me suggest this. The PBS discussion of Mr. Bush's faith was not materially different from earlier discussions of JFK's faith. In both cases, the President was Christian, but with a particular denominational affiliation wasn't "mainstream Protestant." Thus, there were efforts to explore and understand their faith commitments, but as far as I can tell, there was not effort to materially misrepresent those commitments (well, maybe a bit with Kennedy), as is the case with Mr. Obama.
Indeed, consider the web page from the Frontline series you referred to: A President and his Faith. Can you point out any assertions in that or in the linked pages that are factually untrue, or which, even if true, try to make light of his faith?
And more recently, another reliable liberal media tool, CNN, aired a bit called "A Brief History of Intolerance in America" that visually linked the opposition to the "Ground Zero Mosque" (now a term verboten by the Associated Press) with the anti-Semitism of Father Coughlin and race hatred of the KKK.
Hmm. That you consider CNN to be a "reliable liberal media tool" speeks volumes, but anyway... (1) It is not a mosque. (2) It is not at the Ground Zero site, but rather a couple blocks away. (3) There is an existing mosque, which predates the 9/11 attacks, a mere four blocks away. (4) The US was founded in part on religious tolerance, and the religious intolerance of the right towards the Muslims conflicts with foundational national values, c.f., the US Constitution: the qualification clauses of Article IV, the First Amendment, etc.
This is nothing more than a political "wedge issue," yet one based on fear, hatred, and ignorance. Are you proud of that? As a Catholic, a member of a religious minority in this country that was once the target of great prejudice, are you now going to argue in favor of treating others as your ancestors were treated?
Kirby, I agree that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a courageous and articulate critic of Islamic supremacists. The Left routinely discounts her as an ex-Muslim. Nevertheless, there are moderate Muslims rightly opposed to the wisdom of the GZM project as an unnecessary provocation.
First, Dr Zuhdi Jasser (a former US naval officer) of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, in addressing President Obama's comments on the controversy:
"Mr. President this is not about religious freedom. It is about the importance of the World Trade Center site to the psyche of the American People. It is about a blatant attack on our sovereignty by people whose ideology ultimately demands the elimination of our way of life. While Imam Faisal Rauf may not share their violent tendencies he does seem to share a belief that Islamic structures are a political statement and even Ground Zero should be looked upon through the lens of political Islam and not a solely American one. … ‘Park 51’, ‘The Cordoba House’ or whatever they are calling it today should not be built, not because it is not their right to do it – but because it is not right to do it. Mr. President, your involvement in this issue is divisive not uniting. Your follow-up stating that ‘you will not speak to the wisdom of the construction of that mosque and center’ indicates a passive-aggressive meddling on your part that only marginalizes those Muslim and non-Muslim voices against it while pretending to understand both sides of the debate."
Next, Stephen Schwartz (a Sufi Muslim convert of 13 years ago) of The Center for Islamic Pluralism on the proposed mosque's impresario:
"Denunciation of crimes committed by Muslims, such as the 9/11 attacks, or the extremist affiliations of Muslims like Feisal Abdul Rauf, is not Islamophobia. Rather, such repudiation is urgently necessary for the health of American Islam as a faith community and should certainly come before any schemes for ambitious, overbearing mosques or Islamic cultural centers."
Add to these the views of another North American Muslim such as Raheel Raza of the Muslim Canadian Congress:
"... Mayor Bloomberg and bleeding heart white liberals like him
don't understand the battle we moderate Muslims are faced with
in terms of confronting radical Islam and Islamization,
and political Islam in North America,
which has only grown since 9-11
because of political correctness,
and people, because of their politically vested agendas,
not speaking out against issues like this."
Two other members of the Muslim Canadian Congress, both authors of books on Islam, may be added to the above moderate Muslim opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque: Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fatah.
James, it is wonderful of you to provide these links, of which I was not aware. Thanks so much. I look forward to exploring them. I have had an incredible attack of coughing for about ten days. Some say it's pollen. I tried a Sudafed, and am now getting it under control to some extent.
The Mosque issue has been circulating for some time, but because of this incredible cough (I tried sleeping it off for several days, but it only got worse as I think junk collected in my lungs), and then I tried exercise (I coughed really hard for forty minutes, but later felt I had broken it up some).
So I have been unable to follow the mosque story with the usual variety of sources. I've seen that CNN has been bellowing the 1st amendment line, as per their usual (they urged us to be sensitive with regard to the cartoons, but now that the shoe is on the other foot, they want us to be totally tolerant) -- but then I hate CNN.
Fox is more my cup of tea. But I can't trust their spin, especially when Hannity is at the helm. O'Reilly and Greta Van Sustern are more reliable, and more likely to get a variety of reasonable opinions.
Ann Coulter said build the mosque in Dubai, when she was talking with Geraldo last evening.
I do think there is a contradictory attitude when Moslems insist on first amendment rights inside America, but will kill anyone who turns Christian in their countries. If they allowed Christianity, of course, most of them would convert in a nano-second, as would also happen among the Communist Chinese and Vietnamese and among the crummy Buddhists of Myanmar.
Obviously, we have to allow the mosque. It's the law. But it isn't about peace. It's as much about peace as Cat Steven's Peace train, which turned out to be a death-camp-bound train for Salman Rushdie.
I'm still unable to articulate how a society that is open should deal with societies like the communists and the Islamics who are completely closed. Should we ban them, and become closed ourselves?
The universities have tried to move in this direction -- by banning any kind of hate speech. But it is unconstitutional, and they are losing every court battle. Besides, hate speech in all the gender studies and minorities studies programs is the norm. That's what they traffic in.
And you get glimpses of this kind of speech in Obama himself, when he condemns his "typically white" grandma, and consigns her to the dustbin of history.
I do think the mosque has to be allowed, just as we would have to allow a Nazi Studies Center in the same spot, if someone had the money and the building.
Stu,
It was putting religion in the same category as guns, "antipathy towards people who aren't like them", "anti-immigrant sentiment", and "anti-trade sentiment" that was suspiciously anti-religious or at least anti-theist. True, if you look as the whole comment Obama is saying small-town midwestern voters are difficult to persuade, not because they are simply racist,"everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ ", but because the failure of government to restore prosperity to them has made them bitter and to "cling" to the white American rural traditions that he specifies. Although he doesn't hold their resistance against them, in fact he is defending them in a way, there is obvious contempt for the traditions they choose to cling to.
I think Obama's tradition is fairly easy to identify and it is much the opposite of the small town midwesterners, who might be described as parochial traditional Americans, rather Obama's tradition can be described as a cosmopolitan progressive transnationalist. Here is how Obama describes his mother's tradition, "she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism." To me this just describes standard American progressivism. Obama though was raised in much more diverse environments than most Americans, and has been interested in exploring a lost (foreign to him) cultural identity as in "Dreams from my Father: a story of race and inheritance". I view his activism in Chicago as similar in nature to what his mother was doing in Indonesia. He is something of a progressive missionary to America.
I think William Barghest's comment here is good and is probably the sanest thing that's been said so far. But I want to up the ante, because I think there's something extra going on in Obama, and that many of us on the conservative side sense about him. I think he's a racial supremist.
It only comes out here and there.
But the remark about "typical white person" shows contempt for the white race even as it is found in his own grandmother.
I think he does deny his grandmother in this comment, even though she raised him. It's perhaps not as bad as when Judas denies Christ, but it's a similar lack of loyalty. But that's not the worst thing about it. It's how he condemns the white race when he says it, and by implication, argues that we should be destroyed in a genocide, so that only the good multicultural people would remain.
I think Sotomayor did something along these same lines when she put herself above the other white justices when she said that she had empathy that they didn't, because of her race and gender. It implied that if we could only destroy white males, there would be perfect peace upon the earth.
Obama's father wanted to get rid of anyone who wasn't a black Kenyan. He was the Patrick Mugabe of Kenya. He failed, but that was his intention.
My worry about Obama isn't that he is a progressive, but that just behind that progressive exterior is a stranger, meaner agenda -- which has to do with genocide and constituting a new master race.
It's plain to me that he views "typical white person(s)" with contempt bordering on malice. This is how he viewed Officer Crowley.
He tries to check it in himself, but that's his basic reaction.
I think that's why he warmed up to Reverend Wright, who also saw things in that black and white framework. Obama had to go Judas on his pastor in order to save his political future, but I don't think he really denies Reverend Wright's message.
Not, at least, in his heart.
Before he's done, we're going to see this again and again in his contempt for "typical white person(s)" like his grandmother, and his simultaneous exaltation of race supremists like Sotomayor.
I think Condoleeza Rice is a far more evolved human being, much more fair, much more universalist, much saner, than this president.
I think too this is why his poll numbers are sinking so low. theoretically, he offered hope and change. But down deep, he is not able to really see this. He is, in reality, far closer to Reverend Wright and Patrick Mugabe, and light years from ML King or Lincoln.
William,
I basically agree with your 3:19pm comments, with reservations about "obvious contempt," which I think is not quite right, but not entirely wrong either.
I see Obama as someone who believes that the brokenness of the present world can be repaired, and also someone who believes that collective action, e.g., through the government, through community organizations, etc., can be an effective means for progressing from brokenness to wholeness. Certainly, his experience and effectiveness as a community organizer would have tended to reinforce that point of view. And there is an implied criticism in Obama's remarks, which is that rather than organize themselves effectively, the people in these communities have tended to blame others, and have done less than they should have to help themselves.
I don't know Obama personally. But I do know people who know him, who are qualified to judge his religious beliefs, and they have no concerns about the authenticity of his faith, and they confirm his published claims that Wright turned his life around by bringing him to an active Christian faith.
So certainly Obama sees his values, faith together with action, as being superior to their values, which he viewed as faith reduced to a refuge, faith as a soporific. Clearly he wants to send a message that we don't have to accept the status quo, but if we want change, we have to be active agents of change ourselves. Quite contrary to how Kirby views him, his whole message is that we can act, that we can take responsibility, and that we must. He'll do what he can with the government, but we have to for ourselves, too. So here's what it comes down to: In a broken world, we need God's help and guidance. But we need to be God's hands in the world (if I might quote Teresa of Avila). Blaming others may dull our pain, but it is not going to improve our circumstances.
Let me draw out an obvious parallel. Marx criticized religion as "the opiate of the people." I see the Obama as making much the same criticism here, but with a key difference. Marx viewed religion as a human construct, and so "opiate" represented its full potential. Obama sees our faith as Jesus Christ in the world, and believes that God intends for it to be much more.
I very much like your view of Obama as "progressive missionary to America." This makes sense to me.
stu, my remarks in no way credit the President Obama as stealth Muslim myth. I don't know why there's a so much recent talk about and some recent polls on this issue, but I suspect the major media have some partisan interest in this in tarring conservatives as anti-Muslim bigots on the GZM issue.
But I agree with Kirby that President Obama's remark characterising his grandmother as a "typical white person" is revealing, if perhaps not so much about his esteemed grandmother, then certainly about what he thought "typical white people" think about African-Americans in general.
On former President Bush, I think he's a member of the United Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination in the country. I think Methodists traditionally since Wesleyan times have warned of the dangers of drink, and the young Bush credits his conversion with having helped overcome his decades-ago drinking problem. CNN seems to have seized upon the story of the young Bush's arrest for DUI in 1976, just a few days before the 2000 election. I suspect there'll be less media weight given to such early transgressions in future, given President Obama's revelations of his early drinking and illegal drug use.
I have to reject your characterisation of the right in general as religiously intolerant toward Muslims. Surely one can find reprehensible bigots on the right as well bigoted racists like Reverend Wright or contemptible extremists like Ayers and Dohrn on the left. But I think the words of Dr Jasser I quoted above pretty well describe my position on the GZM issue. And I deny that his views are based on fear, hatred, or ignorance.
It would be amazing to hear the conniptions of the media if Bush would have described someone as having the reactions of a "typical black person."
It's ok to see a "typical white person," but it's just as racist.
When he did this to his own grandmother I was shocked to the core at his lack of care for his own grandmother. I can't remember, but didn't she die just after he made that crack? Or did he desecrate her memory?
It's the weirdest thing, but in academia people are encouraged to out their families. It's part of the Maoism that got in during the 70s and continues to animate much of the vicious political correctness, in which everyone has to align themselves with the state.
One of the worst aspects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is that they asked children to tell about the foibles of their parents. Then, the children had to watch as the parents were battered to death by crowds of Red Guards.
That legacy is still very much alive in the left, and still very much alive in our president.
JADL,
my remarks in no way credit the President Obama as stealth Muslim myth
I did not think they had. Even so, thank you for acknowledging this accusation as myth.
I don't know why there's a so much recent talk about and some recent polls on this issue, but I suspect the major media have some partisan interest in this in tarring conservatives as anti-Muslim bigots on the GZM issue.
So why is Fox pushing the issue?
FOX: Polls show public unclear on Obama's faith
FOX: Obama's identity problem
There are more. Many more.
And if you read the poll, you'll find that the false belief that Obama is Muslim has "increased most sharply among Republicans, especially conservative Republicans." Do you dispute this factual assertion by Pew? If not, to what do you credit it?
But I agree with Kirby that President Obama's remark characterizing his grandmother as a "typical white person" is revealing, if perhaps not so much about his esteemed grandmother, then certainly about what he thought "typical white people" think about African-Americans in general.
Setting aside for the moment Obama as the person saying it, what do you think of the statement as a matter of fact? Is it true that "typical white people" fear unfamiliar black men that they encounter on the street? Or conversely? A relatively small proportion of the US population lives in safe integrated communities. Certainly Chicago, BHO's home town, is very segregated, although his home neighborhood, Hyde Park, is integrated. If BHO's comment is factually accurate, what's your beef? It seems to me to warrant criticism only in that the converse also holds, but was left unstated. Maybe he thought it was obvious enough that it didn't need to be said.
I have to reject your characterization of the right in general as religiously intolerant toward Muslims.
I believe that there are tolerant people on the left and right, and intolerant people on the left and right. I do not believe I characterized the right as intolerant. What I did say is that a political decision has been made to use the "Ground Zero Mosque" as a political wedge issue. Do you disagree? If so, how do you explain the rhetoric on the issue? Or that we're discussing this at all?
And I believe it is incontrovertable that the great majority of those trying to use the GMZ as a wedge issue are Republicans. Again, do you disagree? And yes, I'll acknowledge that a few in the Democratic Party are doing likewise, e.g., Harry Reid. On one hand, I see this as simple politics -- an election is a kind of negotiation, and his opponent is one of those trying to use the "Ground Zero Mosque" as a wedge issue. His position takes this away. On the other hand, I would not part with fundamental values in order to gain a political advantage, and it seems to me that he has.
Obama never called his grandmother 'typically white,' so it's disingenuous of you to use quotes...Here's what he said:
"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
You can call that 'denying' his grandmother, but then you'd be wrong.
Also, you consistently conflate Muslims with terrorists.
The proper analogy is not 'Nazis' but, instead, 'Germans,' or, perhaps, Catholics. It's way off-base to believe that 'Muslims' and 'Nazis' are similar...
Now, if AL QAEDA were building a center there, then the fervor would be important...but it ain't even the same sect of Islam - in fact, it's a sect that Al Qaeda really hates because they're more moderate and peaceful...
Muslims are not necessarily violent - one good thing about Bush was that he would get up there and say 'Islam is not the enemy, Muslims are peaceful people.' Now that he's out of the picture, conservatives have gone way crazy...They are conflating all over the place...
Judaism is full of really closed and rather severe laws - stoning homosexuals, not marrying outside of the tribe, etc.
In this sense, Islam and Judaism are analogous - there are parts of its laws that are heinous if literally followed, yet not all of their followers follow those laws...
the main difference is that Islam (perhaps because it's a younger religion) still has pockets of the world where its unenlightened form is still followed while Judaism has been liberalized basically everywhere, and the orthodoxy and strictness that are held onto tend to be in more harmless matters of cultural expression...
The solution isn't to stoop to the level of the backwards and start a war of cultures between Christians and Muslims, but rather to encourage moderate Islam over fundamentalist Islam. Fundamentalist Christians, however, seem unable to make this distinction, and it's farking with our political discourse.
You like clear definitions, Kirby, so here you should use them - you should note differences in sect and moderateness, you should not lump together as much as you are doing - it's against your stated aesthetic.
Stupid statements like "They can't build Mosques until we can build churches in Saudia Arabia" (Newt) degrade our nation's values and show a lack of understanding about what makes the American way of life better than the Saudi-Arabian way of life.
The anti-Muslim fervor in America is starting to get a wee bit frightening, with so much ignorance being bandied about. My head exploded with it as I was driving and listening to talk radio...
Y'all are smart, so you shouldn't pretend to be ignorant jus' because the loudest of your brethren-in-conservativity are...
I mean, the Mosque is being built by SUFI's, for God sakes, and they're being told they shouldn't build there because of what Al Qaeda did?
There's so much derp involved in this sometimes that it mangles ones mind to parse through it and get to something logical...
And yes Jacques - calling it 'the Mosque at Ground Zero' is not a good thing, since it's not at Ground Zero, and it's not a Mosque...
It's like the truth is truer than untruth or something?
". But that's not the worst thing about it. It's how he condemns the white race when he says it, and by implication, argues that we should be destroyed in a genocide, so that only the good multicultural people would remain."
Are you going to come out and admit that this entire blog is a troll now?
Ah: 'typical white person' was a phrase taken from a comment he made after the initial racespeech about the racespeech...
I rescind that part of my argument, though don't think it negates the overall point...
stu, after reading the pieces you linked to, it seems the Fox News reports only followed the most publicised polls in the dependably liberal "Time" (24%) and in the PEW poll (18%) in answer to the question about whether President Obama is a Muslim.
None of the Fox reporters or commentators gave any credit to the myth, and Steve Hayes of the conservative "Weekly Standard" mentioned other polls on myths like UFOs, ESP, astrology, etc. where one could obtain even higher belief results (30%). Hayes also referred to a 2006 lecturing Obama gave other progressives about the need for them to talk and to engage more in public about their faith. I didn't sense any "pushing" of the issue at all.
In my view, liberal media are ramping this faith allegiance issue up to try to score points against conservatives and Republicans by accusing them of "Islamophobia" (like cheap "race card" ploys) in the GZM issue especially. But several high profile Democrats other than Senator Reid want the mosque elsewhere, notably Howard Dean, and New York Governor Paterson actually aired an interview on a weekend conservative talk show (Monica Crowley's) to tout his proposal for an alternative site for the Islamic centre. Are they "wedging" as well?
However, your misguided view that hate and "Islamophobia" drive opposition to the GZM project IS shared by, well, Congressman Ron Paul.
Generalisations about "typical" persons identified by race may be of some useful credence to physical anthropologists, but hardly to politicians.
Finally, in answer to your following statement that
"I do not believe I characterized the right as intolerant,"
there's your earlier remark,
"The US was founded in part on religious tolerance, and the religious intolerance of the right towards the Muslims conflicts with foundational national values, c.f., the US Constitution: the qualification clauses of Article IV, the First Amendment, etc.,"
to which I responded.
Brett, I don't know very much about the mosque controversy. Have been incredibly sick for about a week and a half, so I'm behind the news cycle.
I saw last night a rather moderate fellow talking with one of the Fox newscasters. I forget this woman's name. She fills in for O'Reilly on Sunday evenings. She quoted the imam behind the mosque as saying that America deserved what it got on 9/11.
The moderate Islam fellow said you excerpted a sound bite from a man's whole life, and found that one quote, when his whole life has been devoted to moderation.
Ok, but there's that quote, the woman said.
And then the whole thing degenerated into them yelling at one another.
At any rate, you raised a lot of good points in the previous comment, but a lot of it was based on your not believing that Obama had called his grandmother a "typical white person." But then in a later post you said you had found the follow-up comment, in which BO did say that stinky slur not only on his grandma but on all white people.
His grandmother was apparently frightened upon occasion when she came across people of color that she didn't know. Aren't all people suspicious of anyone they don't know. Especially if they are women, and especially, older women?
Incarceration rates would suggest that not all black men are completely innocent of all crimes, so perhaps Obama's grandma had some sense is all (even if he hasn't got much).
He didn't give us a very clear example of exactly what his grandmother was wrong about.
But it does give the sense that there's something wrong with white people. And if they could just be expunged, then life would be perfect, (as it is in Zimbabwe, for example, or in North Korea).
The Maoism of the left urges them to call out their family (Maoism urged kids during the Cultural Revolution to rat out their parents). Kids during the Cultural Revolution did this in great numbers, thinking what they were doing was right, and then had to watch the Red Guards beat their mothers and fathers to death.
When Michelle Obama said that her husband stank in front of a mob of feminists it was something similar. The idea is that you show that your loyalty to your own family is very small compared to your loyalty to your political group.
It's a legacy of Maoism that is now enshrined throughout the left.
Most of them are not aware of it. It's part of their culture, like saying hello in the morning.
But it's also why their culture is so deeply disgusting to people with a drop of sense. And I think it does break up families. We never or rarely see Barack and Michelle all lovey dovey. This is because in the left the heterosexual married couple if considered a Neanderthal throwback to patriarchal culture.
W. and his wife WERE all lovey dovey. This is because in Republican culture, the family takes priority.
It's a big part of the reason that I've shifted to the right.
Most of the left's notions are creepsville, but most of the left aren't aware of what they are spouting, or why it's wrong. They don't have enough of a sense of history to see that they are "useful idiots."
This blog isn't a troll. It's a cult cracking service. I'm here to help people see the left for what it is, so that they can get on the right side, before it's too late.
JADL,
Finally, in answer to your following statement that
"I do not believe I characterized the right as intolerant,"
there's your earlier remark,
"The US was founded in part on religious tolerance, and the religious intolerance of the right towards the Muslims conflicts with foundational national values, c.f., the US Constitution: the qualification clauses of Article IV, the First Amendment, etc.,"
to which I responded.
Accepted. My initial statement tarred the innocent and guilty on the right alike. I apologize for this. There are some on the right who have spoken first and foremost in terms of our consititutional protections for religion, and so are opposed to politicizing the GMT -- you've mentioned Ron Paul, there are others.
Paul in this is an interesting character. He's driven entirely by principle, and seems not to have a pragmatic bone in his body. I consider the former a strength, the later a weakness. As for those who are making political hay out of the GZM, they seem to me to be polar opposites: people driven entirely by pragmatism informed only by their own self interest.
You mention Reid, Dean, and Patterson. Are they wedging too? Yes, in my opinion. Reid and Dean's positions are similar to one another, which is that while the developers have the right to build there, it would be unwise and counterproductive for them to do so. Of course, they put the emphasis on the second clause, and both seem to imply that they would advocate using the levers of goverment to impede this use. In this, they seem hardly distinguishable from Boehner. Patterson, on the other hand, actually advocates using state funds to subisidize construction of the facility elsewhere, which strikes me being both bizarre (think about the incentives it creates!) and unconstitutional.
Actually, the real motives for the blog were to open the possibility of Lutheranism as the central paradigm for surrealism.
That is, the surrealists looked at Marxism and others such as anarchism as the vehicle on which to drape an art movement.
I saw that Lutheranism was the perfect vehicle, as it had everything that Marxism lacked, and everything that anarchism lacked.
If the Democratic party were to suddenly become more Lutheran than the Republican party, we'd go further left once more. But now, the Republicans are much closer to Lutheranism, at least as I define it (Stu defines it so that it practically is the same thing as Democratic politics).
JADL: When your party's intellectual leaders (Newty on this occasion) directly compare Muslims to Nazis, I don't think the Islamophobia is media-created. It's there and it's real and it's the Republican spouting heads pushing it (I listen to talk radio. I know).
If you think that, somehow, comparing Muslims to Nazis ISN'T Islamophobia, then we will never, ever agree to the definition of the term, and your definition has no meaning.
Kirby, you need to watch the Daily Show. Not only do they make fun of the idiots in the media and the fecklessness of Democrats, they also point out the obvious contradictions in the Republican's talking points.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-16-2010/mosque-erade
Brett, I think Gingrich's glibness got the better of him on this occasion about the GZM project, though I don't know about the other Republican "leaders" whom you're insinuating make this claim. Sure (in deference to stu) there's some loose and absurd anti-Muslim talk out there, especially in the blogosphere, as there was a few years ago (Bush-Hitler, over 6 million Google references, Cheney-Hitler, about 7 million, US military personnel in Iraq-Nazis well over 4 million, Republicans-Nazis, 45 million, etc.).
On the other hand, of course the comparison is quite apt for the thousands upon thousands of genocidal jihadis, the political leaders in Iran, Sudan and elsewhere, the terrorist thugs of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.
On your side Christopher Hitchens ("Slate," Aug 23) seems to have altered a bit his assessment of the would-be GZM impresario, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. At any rate, Hitchens concludes:
"This is why the fake term Islamophobia is so dangerous: It insinuates that any reservations about Islam must ipso facto be 'phobic.' A phobia is an irrational fear or dislike. Islamic preaching very often manifests precisely this feature, which is why suspicion of it is by no means irrational." His whole essay is worth a read.
The President of Iran denies the Holocaust and Saddam Hussein openly admired ol' Adolf.
But the Taliban are far worse than the Nazis in terms of exploding the heads of girls for the crime of learning to read. That's a whole new world of evil that cannot even be understood with reference to the Nazis.
We tend to think of the Nazis as the last degree of evil.
But no Nazi would have shot a little girl for the crime of learning to read. Even Adolf would have pulled back in horror.
Mmmkay Kirby - blowing off girls heads vs. lampshades out of Jews - the comparison doesn't really matter, both are frakkin' evil.
The fact that all Muslims become equated with Al Qaeda is the issue.
Would be just like all Germans (or more broadly all Christans) being equated with Nazis.
Dumb logic.
Now, it's true that there are a few countries run theocratically that employ fundamentalist, Islamic religious practices in doling out punishments and organizing society.
Beyond the fact that this is a small minority of Muslims - and even Muslim societies - that engage in these sorts of medieval behaviors -
How becoming More like those societies is a victory for the U.S. way of life befuddles me.
Again- there are statements being thrown around by the right - 'Until we can have churches in Saudia Arabia, they shouldn't be able to build Mosques by ground Zero' etc.etc. (and by 'the right' I mean folks from rush to Hannity to Newt - the [perhaps unfortunately] standard-bearers of conservatism in this country)...
Afghanistan and all those dipshit nations need to get their heads out of their asses and have governments and leaders that believe in things that aren't reprehensible...
This doesn't make, say, a Sufi Islamic center EVIL.
We need distinctions, Kirby, like you Usually argue for...we need clarity. But the right, on this issue obscures (because it serves their political interests, the way lefties would obscure something if it served their political interest)
So regardless of what polls say, as someone who believes in the constitution, and believes that the first amendment was first for a reason, and that it doesn't have any grammatically-weird semicolons in it to make us question its application in the slightest....
I say a big 'stop being scaredycat bigots' to those who think it's OFFENSIVE to have an Islamic center near Ground Zero.
If you are offended by a Mosque, (a Sufi one at that) then you view Islam as being offensive...And if That is your view, and not that, say, Al Qaeda is offensive, or Iran's government is offensive...But that Islam Itself is, then you have a severe (and probably willful) ignorance of the state of that religion in the world today, the substance of that religion's documents as compared to Judeo-Christian texts, and the best way to liberalize those fundamental parts of the world that follow the caveman version of that religion.
The caveman version of Judaism and Christianity are also full of violence and evil... Of course we have all been perturbed in our lives by the hasty generalizations made by secularists about how evil Christianity is because a small minority of its followers have perpetrated evil, or because the old testament says things about supporting genocide, or dehumanizing women, or stoning gays, or those who wear the wrong clothing. We do not like it when they paint Christianity with those strokes because they're untrue. Such the analog is, and it's a valid one, and you're wrong if you disagree with it, because it's right---
You're wrong in your anger, you're wrongly motivated, and your minds have been skewed by propaganda.
Your views are not in line with the principles of this country...
So if 70% of the country is offended by a Mosque, does that mean 70% of the country is Islamophobic?
Basically...I'm sure there's a pretty significant percentage of that number that are ignorant because they listen to bad news sources...I'd be interested to see what the number was after people actually learned the facts on the issue...but whatever THAT number is? Yeah, those people are Islamophobic.
I'm sorry if it's true, but it is...
If a religion's building inherently gives you a sense of unease, you are necessarily afraid of that religion.
So either be proud of being Islamophobic, or STFU and GBTW:-)
And here we are again! Ridiculous Fox:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home
Brett, I can see why you wanted me to bring up the mosque. You have a clear point here, and it's a pretty good one. But obviously if they own the ground, and they want to build a mosque there (why do you keep saying it's a Sufi mosque? --- that's a story I haven't heard before), then obviously they have the right to build it. If they owned the Twin Towers' ground, they could build it right there even if it was mosque with Osama Bin Laden's head on the top grinning at America with his middle finger raised, they could still build it, in my opinion.
And I'm sure a huge swath of the left would think it was appropriate and that America had deserved this. It's not JUST Ward Churchill that thinks that "Amerikkka" is basically evil.
Ginsberg and his hordes of followers thought that.
All the people at Woodstock thought that, and those people are now in power.
Biker gangs, cultural studies people, Marxists, Greenpeace, at least a third of Democrats, believe that Amerikkka is basically evil.
Hannity and Beck and co. should realize that those people do have the right to speak, and that buildings can be built that endorse ideas contrary to their own love of an America that once stood as the light of the world, but is increasingly being viewed in the same way as the USSR was viewed by Reagan.
So take down those walls: and let us IN!
I first found the information here:
http://crooksandliars.com/media/play/wmv/17902/
(It was a link from fark.com...I don't know anything about 'crooks and liars,' it's just where I found the link to Fareed Zakaria...this seems to be from a CNN world broadcast, so it's not full of the Derp that the American station always has).
At a time when there's a lot of uncertainty around the country, and people are worried and have negative emotions and are trying to figure out where to direct them, I am honestly a bit worried because our politicians and pundits seem to be redirecting that anger and resentment toward a people-group...
It's not so much the intolerance that worries me - that does too - but the ignorance. Bush recognized that Islam is a religion of peace that, unfortunately, still has fundamentalists in the world who are holding down countries and attacking ours. He at least learned the difference between Sufis and Sunnis and Shias, and he told conservatives that the enemy was rogue fundamentalist Islam, not Islam.
Many righty talking heads are now pushing that Islam is something to be feared generally.
There are a few levels where distinctions are not being made, and it is truly worrisome.
Brett, that was a neat link. I like sufis. They place a huge emphasis on humor, which is what I think is missing in all the fundamentalist versions of religion.
I don't know what humor is, but I think when it's missing, you can find zealotry. I think humor implies wise perspective of a kind that is missing when someone is too earnest.
It's also possible to laugh too much or inappropriately, of course.
Caligula apparently laughed all day long.
There's something mad about that, too.
I'm not certain that because Zakeed Farasia or whatever his name is on CNN says that the imam is a sufi that he is a sufi.
CNN is a spin station that is at least as biased as FOX.
If there is no such thing as art that isn't propaganda, as Orwell says, and maybe that's true, then we should just go to the next level and say that there is no such thing as news that isn't propaganda.
I wish I had more time to weigh all these interpretations of the mosque. I cough all day long for some reason from some post-nasal drip. My doctor is scheduled solid for the next three weeks and I can't get in to figure out what's going on.
Maybe there's already a wiki page where I can at least figure out the names of the various players.
But, in terms of the freedom of speech issue, I do think that if you own the rights to the land, and have a building permit, you should be able to put up a mosque even if it has OBL's face on it, and he's sticking up his middle finger and laughing heartily every three minutes.
It's the American way.
Brett, since I couldn't receive the sound on the Zakaria piece you recommended, I scanned a recent
(8/11/2010) piece on the GMZ controversy by the "Crooks and Liars" site editor, John Amato. Short on argument, but quite long on hyperventilated screed, e.g., Tea partiers, Fox News, Republicans = xenophobic hate groups, right-wing smear machines, nativists, racist pigs, etc. Name-calling mostly.
That leaves still unanswered the voices (including Muslim ones)opposed to the mosque's location that I quoted or alluded to above. I might have added the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League (to which Zakaria recently returned an honour received by them in protest over their stance against the GZM project) to the growing list of liberal-left voices opposed to this project that amounts to an indecent provocation.
While I thought we'd laid the constitutional rights issue of Imam Rauf to build the mosque aside early in this discussion, I quoted Dr Jasser and others early on to dispute the claim that it is right to build it there.
One of the tests I think apt for judging Muslims' views and intentions is their attitude towards the implementation of Sharia law.
In any case, there's an interesting interview of an Arabic translator of Rauf and others, Walid Shoebat, on the GZM project, Imam Rauf, Sharia law, Muslim groups in the US, etc., here:
http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2010/08/14/video-ground-zero-mosque-imam-faisal-abdul-rauf-seeks-shariah-law-in-america/.
Kirby, I hope you'll get well soon. Summer's an awful time for allergies, I know.
Park51 as the project is now called, has a fairly good Wiki page. Lots and lots of Muslims are against the project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordoba_mosque
I think it's fine for everyone to express their first amendment rights.
I think the Islamic world needs to open up a bit, too.
At present, it's like the eye slits in the burkha.
They need to get those off and join the modern world in which freedom of discussion is for everyone.
I haven't read the piece you mention from Crooks and Liars - don't know much about the site, and not too interested in it, since its name and graphics imply a sort of stupidity that I'd rather not seek out...
Fareed's basic point was that the 'controversial imam' that Hannity et al. keep lambasting, and who is in charge of the cordoba center project, is a moderate Sufi that George Bush himself enlisted to help spread and promote moderate, reasonable forms of Islam... and that Al Qaeda is as much against Sufis as they are Americans, since Sufis are moderate, liberalized Muslims (I'm using liberalized in the non-American-political sense).
At some point the imam said one thing that echoed Glenn Beck's sentiments about America's role in the world, and now they're lambasting him for it...
Were you also not able to see the Daily Show piece where the Fox News folks are lambasting some vague negative evil person possibly behind the funding for the mosque, and that said dude is actually part-owner of Fox?
(Lamb bast).
JADL,
I quoted Dr Jasser and others early on to dispute the claim that it is right to build it there.
This remark is perhaps an unintentional example of how slippery our language can be, and I do not at all mean to imply by this that you intended anything the least bit slippery. I just want to focus a bit on language.
We're agreed, I believe, that the developers have a constitutional right to build their community center w/mosque on the site in question. That is to say, it is "a right," i.e., they are permitted under the laws of our country to build the community center w/mosque there if they wish, subject only to the laws (e.g., building codes) that apply to anyone who wanted to develop that site.
On the other hand, Jasser questions whether or not it is "right" (note the missing indefinite article "a") to do so, i.e., whether or not it is consistent with moral law (one might almost say, "natural law") for them to do so. A problem here is that while various perceptions of moral/natural law are usually similar, there are often important differences in the details.
E.g., one man's effort to build a community center w/mosque to promote reconciliation post-9/11 is another man's provocation. Indeed, one man's belief that the former World Trade Center site is sacred, seems sacrilegious to this man, as it manifests a confusion between the american civil religion and Christianity. I object to equating patriotism with faith, and raising our nation, good though it may be, to the level of a false god. For me, this is especially poignant as a Lutheran, because essentially the same analysis, albeit from a theological perspective, was at the root of Bonhoeffer's criticism of the Nazified Evangelical Church of his era.
I want to be very careful here, and cut off any confusion about what I'm saying. I am most definitely not equating Nazi Germany and the US, and I'd be grateful not be falsely accused of doing so. What I am saying, though, is that we often make essentially the same theological error that well-meaning Germans made in the 30's, an error that the Nazis exploited and which proved to be a significant enabler of their regime. We are fortunate that there is no Nazi-like criminal element that is exploiting our national folly in making the same error. But that said, we'd be well advised to recognize and root out the error before such an element does arise.
But if we recognize the error, and purge it, what is left of the debate? The former site of the WTC has real significance to us as a nation. Our post-Pearl Harbor promise to ourselves of "never again" proved illusory, as such promises so often do. Whomever we blame specifically, we either accept the notion that there was a failure of diligence on our part, or we give up the notion that we are sufficiently in control as to prevent such attacks. [These are not mutually exclusive.] We would do well to make the site a monument to our failure, much as we've done with Pearl Harbor, and thereby a goad to diligence in the future. But stripping away the erroneous "sacred" from the WTC site has a real impact on how we view its environs. Let me raise up Pearl Harbor again. We do not today prohibit Japanese civilians from buying property in Hawaii, which is to say, the environs of Pearl Harbor, and developing it in accordance with their wishes. There are Shinto shrines in Hawaii. In the long run, reconciliation wins. At the level of whether to Mosque or not to Mosque, the question really isn't whether, it is when.
It is necessarily Islamophobic to be offended by a mosque being built near ground zero. Unease about a Mosque stems necessarily and directly from a general unease about Muslims.
Those Muslims who disagree with building the Mosque near ground zero seem to place a greater emphasis on avoiding controversy and possible offense.
But when something inoffensive is taken as offensive by those who suffer from Islamophobia, it is, I believe, not wise to give in to the phobic. Appeasing the prejudiced has historically shown to be a poor course of action.
stu, I think in parsing the word "right" in Dr Jasser's quotation, you've correctly identified his point (substantively and rhetorically)that the exercise of a legal right does not necessarily confer moral or ethical rectitude on an action.
However, I'll grant to you (as I have to Brett) that there's some loose and contemptible anti-Muslim cant especially in the anonymous blogoshere fueled by this issue. But while your point that there are errors and dangers in too closely identifying patriotism with religion is a good one, I think for many opposed to the GMZ project that is not the case, e.g., for an aggressive atheist of the left like Christopher Hitchens as well as for some of the Muslim spokespersons I quoted or alluded to above. One needn't be a person of faith to hold in reverence the Lincoln Monument or the site at Pearl Harbor. For me as for others opposed to the project, the issue is still not whether or when but where.
And these issues are apart from growing concerns about the project's impresario, Imam Rauf, and some clearly anti-American statements he has made in the past (e.g., America has more blood on its hands than al-Qaeda--hardly a statement one could call moderate or patriotically dissenting). I trust the "failure" you mentioned that the GZM might commemorate doesn't mean the one Imam Rauf referred to in making that claim.
Brett, as for the term "Islamophobia" (like the bogus "homophobia," or the colloquial use of "paranoid" for "anxious") you and others seem so fond of invoking, I think it a mostly a pseudo-psychiatric concoction used to stigmatise opposition. Mostly, that is. On the other hand, perhaps it has some value, for as Mark Steyn points out:
"'Islamophobia' is not phony or even psychological but very literal - if you're a Dutch member of parliament or British novelist or Danish cartoonist in hiding under threat of death or a French schoolgirl in certain suburbs getting jeered at as an infidel whore, your Islamophobia is highly justified. [. . .] You'll recall that most Western media outlets declined to publish those Danish cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed. Thus, even as they were piously warning of a rise in bogus 'Islamophobia' - i.e., entirely justified concerns over Islamic terrorism and related issues - they were themselves suffering from genuine Islamophobia - i.e., a very real fear that, if they published those cartoons, an angry mob would storm their offices. It was a fine example of how the progressive mind's invented psychoses leave it without any words to describe real dangers."
Mark Steyn did a good job on this. I have been trying to put my finger on the problem with "Islamophobia," which seems to come out of the "homophobia," routine with which the left has had such a smashing success stigmatizing any group that doesn't way gay marriage, or doesn't want gay ordination.
But in the case of Islam, the bloody borders thesis of Huntington is quite real. Even Cat Stevens signed on to the fatwa against Rushdie.
Every day in the paper we see fresh explosions with dozens of innocents killed for some reason or another. Plus, we're fighting two wars with Islamic insurgents and neither one has been exactly a pushover.
Fresh plots keep getting discovered.
In Texas, there was the rampage by the Muslim shrink.
There was the bomb in Times Square. Just because these people are a bit low-tech doesn't mean that they can't occasionally connect the dots and kill 3000 people as they managed on 9/11.
Personally, after reviewing the case of the mosque (the left is relabelling it a prayer center for obvious reasons) I think the imam in charge of it is probably more or less a peace-loving fella, but for that reason, his mosque may get blown up by terrorists, same as the Sufi mosque in Pakistan was blown to ribbons a few days ago.
It's hard to keep all these incidents and people straight. Suffice it to say that Islamics aren't Quakers.
The worst you can fear from a Quaker is that they may decide to not talk to you for a year. Hardly enough to make you quake, but still a formidable weapon.
Suicide bombs and beheading, as it has happened in the west to the likes of Theo Van Gogh among others, is a much more grisly action. I suspect that many of our leftists are simply cowards who don't want it to happen to them, and so are squeaking anything that might make it seem like they are on the right side so they don't end up like Daniel Pearl.
Brett, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has written several books from within Islam, has quite a novel number of notions, most of which have been conveniently ignored by both left and right in this country (she doesn't like Marxists, and has publicly maligned as well as supported Christianity). She wrote originally in Dutch, but is now writing in English.
She was originally from Somalia or the Sudan, somewhere over there (east African, like Obama's dad, but from a Muslim country).
In the chapter Let Us Have a Voltaire, from The Caged Virgin, she writes,
"What, then, can Westerners do? At an international level, leaders such as Blair and Bush must stop saying that Islam is being held hostage by a terrorist minority. They are wrong. Islam is being held hostage by itself. It would be more useful if they confronted Saudi Arabia with that the fact that its repressive regime, its demographic pressure, and its biased religious education have created a breeding ground for extremists. Almost five years after 9/11, they have been addressed to only a small extent" ((33).
As I suspected, "Islam is a peaceful religion," is a cowardly meme put forward to deny the true nature of the problem, which Ayaan Hirsi Ali explores rather courageously in her volume.
"In the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, the native white majority can help the Islamic minority by not trivializing the seriousness of the present crisis in Islam... More pressure should be put on minorities to become fully integrated into local and state cultures... Democracies should foster the voices of dissent and sponor Muslim dissidents in the West, so that the one-sided, stultifying religious rhetoric to which millions of Muslims are subjected every day has a counterpoint... We would learn to feel responsible for our problems and the areas in which we lag behind. Let us have a Voltaire" (33).
This book isn't bad.
Ali sketches out a situation that isn't too different from the one from which we just emerged with the Soviet Union and its communist allies that totally blocked freedom of thought. Many of our dumb intellectuals believed that the dirty commies were right, and that we should join them. Solzhenitsyn and others put paid to that, often at tremendous cost, and only over the disbelief of our ridiculous intellectuals like Michael Berube, who still want Stalinism to triumph, but are too dumb even to realize that that's what they want.
Now we have many of our cretinous leftists who believe or want to believe that Islam is a peaceful religion. It's the same story over again. Fortunately, Islam is also producing its Solzhenitsyns and its Voltaires. Interestingly, many of them are women.
I'll quote the description of a clitorectomy later on, which might give at least one reason why the women are somewhat averse to thinking of Islam as peaceful.
Ali claims Islam is way-backwards due to the high price put on virginity. That the whole society is hell-bent on preserving the hymen, since that is the society's most precious resource. Men are excused in every instance for rape, so women and their families have to work overtime and draped under rags and burkhas to keep the men off. I wouldn't know if this is the case. I'm merely reporting.
"By far the most extreme method of safeguarding virginity is female circumcision. The process involves the cutting away of the girl's clitoris, the outer and inner labia, as well as the scraping of the walls of her vagina with a sharp object -- a fragment of glass, a razor blade, or a potato knife, and then the binding together of her legs, so that the walls of the vagina can grow together. This happens in more than thirty countries, including Egypt, Somalia, and Sudan. Although it is not prescribed in the Koran, for those Muslims who cannot do without the labor that girls perform outside the walls of their home, this originally tribal custom has practically become a religious duty, and is defended as such. Proponents point to the fact that the circumcision of women existed in the period before and during Muhammed's time, and that the Prophet Muhammad did not explicitly forbid it. The so-ca;;ed infibulation (literally 'stitching up') offers a guarantee over women and is implemented under the watchful eyes of mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and other female guardians" (15).
Women who don't make the grade are often murdered by their own families for dishonoring them, even if they were forcibly raped, or gang-raped. It's always the girl's fault.
You'd think western feminists would say something and depart from the vast lie about how Islam is such a peaceful religion. There is probably a peep here or there, but not from the better-known feminists currently extant.
But this is not my main area of research by any means. Brett brought up this mosque, and so I thought I'd read this Ayaan Hirsi ali book and get going on what she thinks.
She probably has offered an opinion about the 9/11 mosque somewhere, too, but I haven't found it. A quick google would probably produce something.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Caged Virgin, (New York: Free Press, 2006), originally published in Dutch in 2003.
One small fact that she cites: only about 300 books a year are published in Arabic, and most of it is twaddle, she says. So, how do you reach that enormous public?
Internet, probably.
Her first chapter deliberately compares the situation of that vast group of people to the situation of the former Soviet Union. Her first chapter is entitled, "Breaking Through the Islamic Curtain."
First we have to break through all the twaddle of our left, that always circles reflexively around any third-world lie, and calls it the truth.
Kirby, thanks for including some incisive excerpts from the Ayaan Hirsi Ali book, "The Caged Virgin"; just today I put on library hold her latest one, "Nomad: from Islam to America--a personal journey through the clash of civilizations." (2010)
And I agree that snotty American leftists like Berube (Broob) only seem interested in the issue in order to mock Republicans and conservatives opposed to the project's location (as his recent "wounded snake" attempts at satire in the leftist "Crooked Timber" site show). Perhaps he fancies he's providing a liberal Aristotelian alternative to the volcanic buffoonery of Matthews, Schultz, Olbermann et al on MSNBC. Or like other academic aficionados of the "fair play for Marxism" bent (true examples of "crooked timber"), perhaps (like Byron is said to have done) he just likes dabbling in evil to make himself look interesting.
An engaging short essay by another academic and self-professed "reformist Muslim," Irshad Manji, appeared in today's WSJ that takes issue with both those she calls "antimosque crusaders" and "warriors for tolerance." Although she is personally offended by the proposed location of the project, she wonders if it is built, whether gender apartheid would be enforced and other faiths would be permitted to hold devotional services there. She thinks possibily it could serve as an example of liberal reformed Islam and could be carefully scrutinised by this measure due to the controversy about it. Nevertheless, she has some strong words for Imam Rauf:
"I am also disappointed that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf—who is not an Islamist—has nonetheless played crass politics unbecoming of a man of dialogue. So far, the imam has rebuffed accusations of insensitivity. Yet he made those very accusations about the Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. In a February 2006 press release, Imam Rauf announced that he was 'appalled' by the drawings. He called it 'willful fomentation' and 'gratuitous' to republish them throughout Europe. In the following weeks, almost no U.S. newspaper printed the caricatures.
Three years later, it is the imam who the majority of Americans believe is engaging in 'willful fomentation.' Yet his retinue has not publicly acknowledged that the feelings of these 'appalled' Americans parallel how moderate Muslims such as Imam Rauf felt during the cartoon debacle."
Y'all smart folks should realize that 'phobia' necessarily means 'unnecessary fear of' or 'unreasonable fear of.'
I think the slipping of language that happens is that 'unreasonable fear' and 'unreasonable hatred' get mixed up.
What word would be good to describe 'unreasonable hatred?'
If you watch the video of the construction worker walking through the teapartyish crowd at the GZM demonstration, that's 'unreasonable hatred' more than 'unreasonable fear,' but the word that comes to mind would be 'islamophobia.'
I think the left uses it when they mean 'hatred' instead of 'fear,' because it cuts more to the insecurities of righties - they like to be Tough, and not afraid of anything!!!
So being afraid is a more biting dig... It's also based on the assumption that hatred always comes from fear...which is sometimes true, but not often enough to use phobia to mean unreasonable-hatred all the time..
There are times when labeling certain righties as unreasonably hateful makes more sense than labeling them unreasonably fearful.
What's the best word for this? Then I'll use That when it makes sense...
It's logical to be uneasy about Al Qaeda.
It's not logical to be uneasy about this Sufi prayer center. It would be like protesting the building of a Swedish church because it's in a place that was attacked by Russians.
Unreasonable unease...whether that unease is fear or hatred based probably depends on the person.
I have yet to find an argument against the mosque that does not have, at its core, either
a) the belief that something Muslim desecrates sacred ground...
or
b) the belief that since other people believe something Muslim desecrates sacred ground and will cause a ruckus, something Muslim shouldn't be on sacred ground.
or
c) the belief that Muslims are necessarily extreme fundamentalist evil people.
Thus, the prejudiced, phobic or hatefulic win out. I don't like that.
Look, there are a great number of Muslims who practice or live under ass-backwards, evil modes of thinking...
Conflating moderate Muslims with extremist Muslims harms our ability to promote the modernization of Islam, a path Bush wisely pursued. The more moderate we can make the Muslims who are not now moderate, the better off we are -
The theory that Muslims Can't be moderate is false, per the evidence around the globe (look at communities in, say, India, or America).
We're still feeling the negative effects of an idiotic news media and a conflating government that doesn't see distinctions.
If you lump the moderate in with the extreme, you do know favors to America.
Build the Sufi prayer center, with its mission of moderation of Islamic beliefs, and we're on our way to a better world.
I have a friend, Fred, who had a girlfriend that he ended up dumping who once said 'Those Habibs are all the same.'
That idea is at the heart of the opposition to the Sufi prayer center.
Do sufis practise clitorectomy on their women? Can they marry more than one woman?
Sufi men seem like a lot of fun.
What are sufi women like?
They don't appear in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book.
I wonder if Brett has a sentimentalized version of Sufis.
I mean, none of us are Sufis. How many sufis do we know between all of us here?
I would think it's zero.
Met some Sufis in India, and I know how t' read...
weeee!
JADL,
And these issues are apart from growing concerns about the project's impresario, Imam Rauf, and some clearly anti-American statements he has made in the past (e.g., America has more blood on its hands than al-Qaeda--hardly a statement one could call moderate or patriotically dissenting). I trust the "failure" you mentioned that the GZM might commemorate doesn't mean the one Imam Rauf referred to in making that claim.
Well, I was pretty clear about referring to failures of diligence. That said, what's your argument with Rauf? It seems to me that all he did was mention an inconvenient (albeit irrelevant) truth.
Does the phrase "physics package" mean anything to you? How about "the Trail of Tears." Ever hear of Dresden, or Tokyo? Get off your high horse. We're a decent country as countries go, but we have acquired a superpower's share of blood on our hands.
Al Qaida is a small terrorist group of relatively recent history. The US is a powerful nation-state with a long history, an involvement in several brutal wars, and force projections outside of war. Al Qaida has killed, what, 6K innocents? The examples above amount to what? Half a million innocent KIA, give or take? And this is hardly an exhaustive list, and I've steered away from more recent controversies like excess civilian deaths in Iraq consequent to the second Gulf war.
And if you guys like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and credit her as an Islamic critic of Islam, what do you have to say about Anne Rice? If the mere presence of an "internal" critic is so damning, it seems to me that we have more serious problems with our own positions. Right?
Since I don't think a woman has commented on the passage Kirby quoted from The Caged Virgin, I thought I might have a go.
I've known about Ms. Ali's life story for some years now, and I've watched her in interviews both in Dutch and in English. She really inspires me. She's so courageous, having to be under constant guard so she doesn't get murdered for the sin of apostasy and for speaking out against the more oppressive forms of Islam.
When she first came out of Islam, she went to the extreme of atheism and euro-style socialism. She's come back from that a bit. But no matter her personal religious views, she's always held that Western Christians need to do more to address those Muslims (women especially) in our midst to provide a counter-point to the possible oppression they feel at home and at mosque.
Clitorectomies make my face turn purple. There's no reason on God's green Earth, no excuse whatsoever be it cultural, religious, just because it is Friday, whatever, for this to continue in the 21st century. Feminists piss me off. They really do. It's not enough to get abortion on demand, but they want taxpayers to pay for them. They don't just want pay equality in the workplace, they want affirmative action pay.
It's so stupid the stuff they waste their time on. They're fussing about the frame when the canvas remains unpainted and is on fire.
Boys, you keep your 10c an hour more in pay, we feminists are gonna sort out the Neanderthals who think it's ok to cut the genitals off a little girl, to rape her if she's not veiled, then stone her to death afterwards.
There's female infanticide all over the world, organized gang rapes in Sudan, clitorectomies and genital mutilation in Africa, female slavery and illiteracy in dozens of countries, and our biggest priority is making sure that an American woman (one of the freest women in the world) retains the right to an abortion, even if that means the "aborted" baby is left to die, unattended, in a supply closet because that was "mommy's" intention.
You know what? Sometimes I despair. I really do.
I also despair of some people's determination to cling to partisan prejudice in the face of fact.
Americans who do not support the building of a Mosque/Community Center/Cultural Center/Prayer Center/Whatever-PC-Crap-They're-Gonna-Call-it-Tomorrow within the blast radius of Ground Zero are not one of three choices:
*Bigoted
*Bigoted and Racist
*Bigoted, Racist, and Ignorant.
There might be a couple hundred bigoted, racist ignoramuses out there who reject the notion of a mosque going up anywhere at all, but is one really willing to believe that a full 68% of Americans object to a mosque AT GROUND ZERO because we’re bigoted, racist ignoramuses? I’d be happy to think that the 54% of democrats polled who think the mosque should not be built at the site of a terrorist attack were really just ignorant bigots and racists, but that flies in the face of reason!
That a man should think so little of his countrymen is saddening.
One ventures to guess the same man was over the moon when America elected his favored candidate for the Presidency, elated that they had finally cast off the ghastly shroud of bigotry and racism once and for all. So, a majority of Americans were “enlightened” enough to elect Obama—a tragic mistake, in my opinion—yet the same Americans are now bigoted hicks.
Thanks for playing. Try again. Nothing human is ever that simple.
stu, pointing out differences in casualty counts between a fairly recently-formed terrorist menace and the US during a near-global war for survival seems a pretty pointless exercise. In any case, Imam Feisal's remark referred to the casualties claimed during peacetime UN sanctions on Saddam Hussein's brutal regime that even many Muslim countries observed.
As I mentioned earlier, Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems a courageous and articulate ex-Muslim critic of Islam. I'm thankful that here she has the freedom to tell her story, unlike in a number of "death of the author" Muslim countries (and even non-Muslim ones), where she would likely be murdered for apostacy.
As for the author Anne Rice, I'm sorry she left the faith recently but consoled that she has the freedom to follow her conscience. Perhaps her conscience might someday lead her back to the fold. But again, a pretty tenuous point, I think.
Emmy,
Nice post. A few quick notes.
Clitorectomies make my face turn purple. There's no reason on God's green Earth, no excuse whatsoever be it cultural, religious, just because it is Friday, whatever, for this to continue in the 21st century.
Affirmed. I believe that clitorectomies are a legitimate social justice concern, and moreover I believe this is also a generally held position by the feminist community (which is hardly as monolithic as you've made it out to be). As for the question of priorities that you raise (i.e., that most feminists are more concerned about abortion rights here than clitorectomies in Africa), I'd ascribe two causes. First, there is a natural tendancy to focus on issue that affect you or your neighbors (however you define them). Clitorectomies are outside of the experience of the vast majority of western women, and not perceived as risk to them or their daughters. Unwanted pregnancies, however, are. Second, in prioritizing social justice concerns, one also needs to consider the probable efficacy of action. It is plausible to a feminist that education and local action will impact the debate on abortion in this country. But it's a lot harder to see how to affect cultures that are so different, both geographically and philosophically.
Americans who do not support the building of a Mosque/Community Center/Cultural Center/Prayer Center/Whatever-PC-Crap-They're-Gonna-Call-it-Tomorrow within the blast radius of Ground Zero are not one of three choices:
*Bigoted
*Bigoted and Racist
*Bigoted, Racist, and Ignorant.
Well, not all ;-). But they are all putting a higher priority on their individual moral sense (or political calculations) than on bedrock rights enshrined by our constitution. Many of these are people who have been shouting "Constitution, Constitution!" because they favor second amendment rights or because their reading of the text proscribes certain governmental activites that they disapprove of. For these same people to suddenly and silently choose to ignore the constitution on this issue is telling.
JADL,
pointing out differences in casualty counts between a fairly recently-formed terrorist menace and the US during a near-global war for survival seems a pretty pointless exercise
Exactly the point of my "irrelevant," as emphasized later by my "Al Qaida is a small terrorist group of relatively recent history. The US is a powerful nation-state with a long history, an involvement in several brutal wars, and force projections outside of war."
My grumpiness here is that I see nothing anti-American or immoderate (as you characterized them) about factual statements that point out where our behavior has not been consistent with our self-understanding. There is a tendency for Americans to judge our actions according to informal perceptions of moral law (without explicit acknowledgement of the role of self-interest, even to ourselves), while holding other nations to the letter of international law. This leads us to sloppy thinking and to setting all kinds of terrible precedents. I see this tendency as a consequence of the false god of patriotism, a dangerous failing indeed.
Imam Feisal's remark referred to the casualties claimed during peacetime UN sanctions on Saddam Hussein's brutal regime that even many Muslim countries observed.
I didn't know this, but still he has a point. The sanctions regime was probably our best strategy, but it came with significant "collateral" damage to vulnerable Iraqis. The practical lesson here is that sometimes our best option as a nation involves shedding innocent blood. The trap is in believing we have a right to do so. Morally, we are culpable for our actions, even when they're the best possible.
The same sort of reasoning applies to the use of the atomic bomb against Japan. Even if only Japanese lives are accounted, the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb was a better choice that the mass starvation that would have been a consequence of a prolonged war. We're still responsible for those deaths, even if the alternative was worse. What I find much more morally troubling was the decision to drop the Nagasaki bomb.
This is a fallen world. We're responsible for our sins, even when we've no other choice.
You're strawmanning your way through this here Emmy...
Those aren't the only three choices, Emmy, and be defining them as such you are doing a disservice to my nuance and brilliance!
To put it simply, though, those opposed are one (or more) of the following:
a)uneasy about Islam
b)ignorant
or
c) appeasers.
And yes, I believe that Americans are ignorant...what percentage of Americans do you think know that Sufis are building this mosque? What percentage do you think are aware of the differences between sunni, shia, and sufi?
There have been a lot of times in America's history when 70% of the populace has been wrong...
This is one of those times. And it's based, mostly, on ignorance and misdirected anger.
Tell me again why a Sufi Mosque devoted to interfaith dialog should not be built near a 'sacred' site?
I really haven't gotten a clear, moderate answer to that question - if you've stated one, restate, because it didn't make it into my dumb brain.
The right is selling that a possibly-Iranian-funded Mosque started by those who follow the beliefs of Al Qaeda is being built...If that actually were the case, then the 'they have the right to do it, but is it right to do?' line of thinking would have some teeth.
Since that's Not the reality, then I am really having a hard time seeing how there isn't necessarily a hasty generalizing of all Muslims based upon the extremist form of Islam preached by those who attacked us... The Sufis are our friends...it is exactly this kind of community that we need to align with...Instead, we're shoving them away...
why?
There are only about 2 million Sufis and about 1.2 billion of the other kind of Islamics: sunni and shi'a.
But sufis have also been in on jihad. It's hard to get clear information on whether or not sufis have clitorectomies.
Pamela Geller has a website called Atlas Shrugs that is clearly a biased viewpoint -- she's Jewish, and I think many on the left will immediately denounce her for that alone. She has denounced feminism because of its association with Marxist-Leninist doctrines.
She was the associate publisher of a New York newspaper called the NY Observor for some time.
At any rate, here is a few of her explosive relevation wrt the "Sufi" mosque:
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/12/giving-thanks.html
I don't know if any hard news has developed in WSJ. I've been under the weather for about three weeks due to a horrific allergy that has started to turn into a cold, I think. I'm only awake 12 hours, and am a pretty dim bulb during those hours.
Surely, someone can figure out if Sufis do the clitorectomy thing.
Brett wanted the mosque issue on the dock, and so here it is.
Sufis seem to be a relatively playful sect. But that may be propaganda. According to Orwell, everything is propaganda.
If the new propaganda is saying that sufis are some kind of good and playful sect that is basically more like us in the west (freedom of information, freedom for women, freedom from terror, etc.), then we ought to look to see if this mosque is 100% Sufi, or whether some of its funding sources will in fact originate in Wahhabi or Iranian Islam (who pays calls the tune, and there may be layers upon layers of funding, which use the Sufi layer as propaganda, but there could be another agenda entirely just beneath this).
The Burlington Coat Factory which once stood on the site was destroyed by part of a jet landing gear that punctured the building, and made it uninhabitable on 9/11. Pamela has a photo of the landing gear on her site.
How credible is she? How credible is anyone?
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/12/giving-thanks.html
They're like the quakers of Islam - (maybe:-) )
Don't know if the entire Mosque is Sufi, or just the head of it that the right has wrongly painted like he's a terr'rist.
Ron Paul on the Mosque:
The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque ....
It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty.
The outcry over the building of the mosque, near ground zero, implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to those who are condemning the building of the mosque, the nineteen suicide terrorists on 9/11 spoke for all Muslims. This is like blaming all Christians for the wars of aggression and occupation because some Christians supported the neo-conservative’s aggressive wars.
And here's the very-not-terrorist funding list:
http://www.asmasociety.org/home/p_support.html
And here's the very-not-terrorist list of board members and staff members...
http://www.asmasociety.org/home/p_people.html
All the staff bios are broken, but you can google 'em! I know you wouldn't trust the bios on that site anyway...
Interesting how most of the leaders are women...and all of them involved in interfaith organizations - one of 'em even works at a church.
Brett, it's pretty clear that 100 million dollars can be spent on the building, and average Americans might not like it, but legally, no one can say anything, or do anything, about it.
Your point is that we should all like it.
the right's point, if they have one, is that there are probably shadowy figures, and not so clear lines or demarcation, between the people who blew up the twin towers and the people who want to erect this victory mosque.
It will take years before any truth on this emerges.
some of the people who are arguing against the Mosque are Israeli Jews (Geller, for instance). Are you saying it's crazy for an Israeli Jew to have some misgivings with regard to Hamas, or the leader of Iran, or with regard to Muslims in general?
It's more or less a peripheral issue for me.
Are you getting the mileage out of this that you hoped for?
I think all of us here at LS think the mosque can be built. Whether it should be built is another question, and one that I for one don't have enough information on to put up any kind of substantial fight.
Why did Obama indicate that he wasn't certain it was such a good idea.
Sufis apparently DO WAGE jihad, so they aren't Quakers.
What Obama was doing was either a) waffling because he's a waffler, or b) making a distinction in terms of his role as president - it's his job to protect the constitution and say 'it is legal for them to build here,' but perhaps he does not view it as his job to make a moral judgement about the rightness of it being built...
"Are you saying it's crazy for an Israeli Jew to have some misgivings with regard to Hamas, or the leader of Iran, or with regard to Muslims in general?"
I think it's totally expected and fine and understandable and right for an Israeli Jew to have some misgivings with regard to Hamas or Iran...
With regard to Muslims in general, I can Understand a certain amount of trepidation, though that trepidation would have to be followed up by some investigation -
It's rather clear that the people involved with this Mosque are so far from the viewpoint and networks of the people who attacked us that conflating the two is unreasonable.
Simply the fact that the majority of the people in charge of the building are women should be enough of a sign... But there are lots of others to, including that the funding is coming mostly from Western sources, and that every member's biography includes extensive work in building 'interfaith dialog,' a phrase that doesn't really exist in the worldviews of Al Qaeda and holocaust-denying dictators...
Stu, thank you for your response! We haven't talked for awhile, and I appreciate your coming forth with some good points.
Yes, I understand that people are inevitably going to be more interested in the state of their own affairs (household, local, state, and national), than they are of the state of affairs in other countries, or mere regions of other countries.
However, when one considers the "scope" of feminism--that it claims to fight for equal protection and equal rights for the full 50%+ of the population that is female, we're talking about an enormous constituency.
One does not have to be American to be female, and one does not have to be a Westerner to deserve some of the benefits of feminism. My criticism of American feminism is that it is entirely too nearsighted.
My right, to use a frivolous example, to paint my toenails scarlet ought not to be more important to me than a Somali woman's right to coporeal integrity.
Women in America have it SO GOOD. I wish more of us would realize it. We reap both the benefits of chivalry alongside the "equality" that our mothers and grandmothers have demanded, in addition to "rights" we've plucked out of the air for ourselves and forced the male population to accept.
I know that if you were to confront a committed feminist with the question of clitorectomies in Africa she would invariably be on the side of the angels, to that extent you are right. I believe, however, that since women here have achieved so much we're obligated to pass the flame of liberty on to the next sister who has not had the benefit of being born in the West.
It breaks my heart that it ought to be considered a luxury, if not outright sinful, to teach a young girl to read and write in many corners of the world. That's the basic recipe for the attainment of the ability to discern, to reason, to understand that some of the strict customs these girls live under are unjust. The reason so many girls are kept ignorant is so that men in their society might easily take advantage, i.e. marriage at a ridiculously early age.
Remember another culture that prohibited the teaching of reading and writing to a subservient population? American slavery. Women were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement prior to and during the civil war, and ran major stations along the underground railway.
I wish that contemporary women, with all the benefits they enjoy, could bring themselves to devote more time and energy to advocating for the oppressed in foreign lands.
You know that fashionable bumper sticker slogan "Live Simply So Others May Simply Live?" I feel that this sentiment applies as legitimately to the rights of women abroad as it does to ecology.
So, Brett,
To use your own words, "the prejudiced, phobic or hateful win out."
I thought I summarized that quite well with my three catagories. Not all people against the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero are ignorant, bigoted, and racist.
When you say "the caveman version of Judaism and Christianity are also full of violence and evil..."
Yes, there are portions of the Jewish Bible/Old Testament that are quite grisly. I am truly glad that my God has a kinder, gentler face than that shown in the Old Testament!
The difference is, when we're talking about Islam, is that the "peace and love" exhortations of the brotherhood of man were written chronologically before those of kill all the infidels, pour molten lead down their throats, and rape their women.
In Christianity, chronology doesn't matter deeply. The principles remain, and that is what we are treated to at Sunday service.
In Koranic tradition, as many Islamic scholars will testify, that statements written earlier chronologically speaking in the Koran, and contradicted later are nullified since the Koran itself is divinely dictated, and therefore intrinsically consistent (i.e., live in peace with the people of the book was written before kill the infidels wherever you find them, so the second command is law). This is accepted doctrine in Islam.
Just in case you were wondering, this division in the text with regards to "love and mercy" vs. "kill and maim" occurred when Mohammed gained enough followers to maintain his own military. His rhetoric became hotter and more violent after he didn't have to "co-exist" with fellow peoples of the book anymore.
The "kill and maim" bits of the Old Testament occurred BEFORE the "peace and love" bits.
Just a point worth making.
Stu,
You're right when you say that many conservatives invoke the constitution in debates over government power. For conservatives, the constitution is the only legitimate arbiter of disputes at the federal level.
The federal constitution obtains at the federal level, not at the state level. What one really should be doing is examining the state constitution of New York. That will give one more accurate guidance as to what is acceptable under the laws written by representatives of the people of that state.
I assume the federal constitutional provision you are referring to is that federal "congress shall make no law" regarding the establishment of a state religion or the free practice thereof.
No one disputes that it is legal under federal law for a religious entity to establish a house of worship where they choose--local and state regulations notwithstanding. That's because our federal government is not permitted to make a law restricting the free practice of religion.
Every conservative agrees with this.
The question is, is the construction of a mosque desirable at the site of a place where several hundred Americans, and people of foreign nations, perished as their attackers yelled allahu akbar?
"The question is, is the construction of a mosque desirable at the site of a place where several hundred Americans, and people of foreign nations, perished as their attackers yelled allahu akbar?"
Yes, it is. Having a Sufi-run prayer center devoted to interfaith dialog that is led by mostly women? I think that's a very good thing to have at the site where people who have a caveman view of Islam yelled allahu akbar and killed thousands of people. A church near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building would be good too.
__________
And I was probably unclear when I wrote that the 'phobic, hateful' will win out - The appeasers are not phobic or hateful...and neither are, necessarily, the ignorant... But the decision is being driven by those who conflate different types of Islam, and thus is a 'victory' for the 'phobic' and 'hateful.'
___________
wrt Islamic scripture vs. Judeo-Christian, it depends which Muslim you ask which lines of scripture they prioritize... And while noting that the peace/love stuff in Christianity comes After is true, it's still possible to say a) well, Jesus claimed loudly that he did not come to abandon the law, so the OT still stands. b) that hasn't prohibited Christians in the West from using scripture as a tool for evil...see slavery, salem witch trials, et al. c) That doesn't give any cover to Judaism, a religion I know you like a lot more than Islam...
Brett, I like the humor I've seen in the Mullah Nasruddin (Sufi) tradition, and have read several books on the humor of the Sufis.
I don't see a lot of humor in many of the Muslim extremists.
But humor is often the first casualty among extremist sects.
There are 1.5 billion Muslims give or take a half a billion.
There are 2 million sufis.
I find the sufis rather pleasant. I don't know what their relationship with women is. I don't like the way the vast majority treat the women. It's matriarchal survival of a bizarre cult of power that is holding the whole Muslim world back, according to Ali.
Emmy,
Women in America have it SO GOOD. I wish more of us would realize it. We reap both the benefits of chivalry alongside the "equality" that our mothers and grandmothers have demanded, in addition to "rights" we've plucked out of the air for ourselves and forced the male population to accept.
Let me take a mildly contrarian position. I believe you're right in arguing that women in the US today have more rights, and are less imposed upon, than many of their forebearers. At the same time, the notion that women enjoy full equality in this country is a stretch. If you look at politics, it is overwhelmingly a man's game. So too, the upper echelons of business. This isn't to say that there are no exceptions, but rather the very fact that we need to speak of women at this level as exceptions is evidence of work yet to be done.
It's also the case that the rights that women have gained in this country are under constant attack. I tend to view the battle over abortion rights (and even contraception rights) in this country from this perspective, although I know you do not. And you don't need to look further than this blog to find a backlash against having women appointed to the SCOTUS, framed very much in gender-political terms, while accusing the opposition of doing so. [After all, the appointment of qualified male jurists is perfectly neutral, whereas the appointment of qualified female jurists is nothing but the basest form of gender politics, at least in the eyes of some.]
Feminists today believe that they need to continue to fight just to maintain their status quo. I believe that they're correct.
I believe, however, that since women here have achieved so much we're obligated to pass the flame of liberty on to the next sister who has not had the benefit of being born in the West.
I think you're assuming that American women don't do so. But let me suggest a sampling error. The feminists you run into are the ones who have chosen to remain. There are women who have made other choices, and may be less visible to you because of it. My congregation, to take one example that I know of, supported a woman missionary in Argentina. The woman who recently served as our intern, and is now a staff professional pending the final steps before ordination and call as our Associate Pastor, worked in Tanzania with her husband, and her children were born there. The daughter of a congregation member works for the USAID, and is currently in Pakistan. And this doesn't count members who serve in the US military on active deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which are women. If one, smallish congregation in suburban Chicago, is connected to this much activity of this sort, I have to believe that the national effort is substantial, and that you're mistaken to dismiss it.
To the extent I think about abortion (it's more or less a closed case for me) I think about it from the viewpoint of the children. I think the little squirts deserve to live, and shouldn't have to meet the death panels before they've even seen daylight!
I think women should have rights, obviously, but I think rights MUST BE reciprocal. That is, if you have the freedom of speech, you have to grant it to others. If you don't, your freedom should be rescinded.
As for the SCOTUS appointees of BO, I would have rejected them because they hogged rights to themselves that they denied to others. One thought she had more empathy because of the color of her skin and her gender.
I thought this was simply atrocious.
The other I didn't bother to get to know. I just assumed she was out of the same mold as the first one, like most of BO's appointees and friends.
I have more or less gotten to know BO through his appointees and the ways in whch he's voted (100% against the kids, since they can't vote).
For the killer-moms, since they can.
All in the name of empathy, a cover story for will to power.
Stu,
Thank you again for your comments, and your helpfully presented opposition.
I agree with you that Americans in general, not only feminists, must remain vigilant or they run the risk of seeing their most cherished freedoms undermined. Though my most cherished freedoms don't involve the killing of unborn children, I am willing to understand how the ability to do so might be of some importance to some women.
In terms of a male-favoured lopsidedness in high ranking positions in business and politics, you fail to take into account the desire of many women not to take part in what they might feel is "cut-throat" and "dog-eat-dog" activities.
Obviously there are many women who are not only well-suited to these positions, but also desire them. These women should receive equal consideration with their male counterparts.
I think, though, that women's "right to choose" has now translated into a desire for a more relaxed atmosphere that allows for more leisure time and more quality time with their families. Clearly I am generalizing. There are many women who would be much happier in a boardroom than going to the zoo with their children and nieces and nephews on a Saturday. Even so, I think there are probably a statistically significant portion of the female population who would gladly choose less remunerative positions in exchange for more flexibility.
Many of my generation were brought up on the idea that we could have it all, career, family, independence, etc. Many of us don't just want to have a well-balanced life, but we also want the time to enjoy it.
It is interesting that you brought up the appointment of jurists and Justices. I think the difficulties that certain women before Congress have suffered in getting approval has more to do with ideology and experience than it does gender.
It bothered me, as a woman, that one of our court justices thought she was supremely qualified for her position because she gained wisdom from having more melanin in her skin, and being born with an additional X chromosome.
It also bothers me that a justice deemed "eminently qualified" by those on the left had never actually served as a judge. Not as a district judge, a federal judge, an appeals judge, a circuit judge, nada!
That these two persons happened to be female is of no consequence to me whatsoever.
*Continued next...*
Stu,
Thank you again for your comments, and your helpfully presented opposition.
I agree with you that Americans in general, not only feminists, must remain vigilant or they run the risk of seeing their most cherished freedoms undermined. Though my most cherished freedoms don't involve the killing of unborn children, I am willing to understand how the ability to do so might be of some importance to some women.
In terms of a male-favoured lopsidedness in high ranking positions in business and politics, you fail to take into account the desire of many women not to take part in what they might feel is "cut-throat" and "dog-eat-dog" activities.
Obviously there are many women who are not only well-suited to these positions, but also desire them. These women should receive equal consideration with their male counterparts.
I think, though, that women's "right to choose" has now translated into a desire for a more relaxed atmosphere that allows for more leisure time and more quality time with their families. Clearly I am generalizing. There are many women who would be much happier in a boardroom than going to the zoo with their children and nieces and nephews on a Saturday. Even so, I think there are probably a statistically significant portion of the female population who would gladly choose less remunerative positions in exchange for more flexibility.
Many of my generation were brought up on the idea that we could have it all, career, family, independence, etc. Many of us don't just want to have a well-balanced life, but we also want the time to enjoy it.
It is interesting that you brought up the appointment of jurists and Justices. I think the difficulties that certain women before Congress have suffered in getting approval has more to do with ideology and experience than it does gender.
It bothered me, as a woman, that one of our court justices thought she was supremely qualified for her position because she gained wisdom from having more melanin in her skin, and being born with an additional X chromosome.
It also bothers me that a justice deemed "eminently qualified" by those on the left had never actually served as a judge. Not as a district judge, a federal judge, an appeals judge, a circuit judge, nada!
That these two persons happened to be female is of no consequence to me whatsoever.
*Continued next...*
Brett,
Yes, Christ came to fulfil the law, not to abolish it.
The difference lies in the fact that Islam DOES abolish its previous law, declaring that any later revelation negates a prior revelation.
Previous revelation: Love the peoples of the book as your brothers and sisters and live peaceably among them
Later revelation: Kill the infidels wherever you find them.
The latter is thereby official Islamic doctrine.
Now obviously not all Muslims have a seething rage and hatred for all infidels, and these folks will not take literally the command to kill them [the infidel] wherever they are found.
But there remain many Muslims who take the latter revelation as the exact, infallible, word of Allah, and are willing to act accordingly.
These are the guys who saw fit to slaughter Americans, Brits, Israelis, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, etc, with impunity.
If you support the building of the mosque at ground zero solely as an exercise in tolerance, I would ask you, have American civilians not shown enough tolerance? How much tolerance is enough? We've bent over backwards to appease those who hate us, under the wise guidance of the Great Leader (may peace be upon him).
The developers and the financial backers of the Mosque at Ground Zero were offered a large, desirable plot of state land upon which to build. They refused. Apparently, that the Mosque be located at Ground Zero is a matter of great importance to the people involved in its construction. That sets off a few yellow-alert bells in my head, at the very least.
This leads me to believe that the LOCATION of the Mosque is more important than the Mosque itself, and that's troubling.
The developers, though in posession of the land upon which the Mosque is to be built, are in arrears with their property taxes.
If they can't manage the $200,000 in property taxes for the land where the Mosque is supposed to go, where are they going to find 100 million?
Last I heard, they'd only managed to scrape up $16,000 from domestic donors and investors. Granted, this was a week and a half ago.
The whole thing seems uber fishy to me.
And, yes, I like Jews.
Brett,
Yes, Christ came to fulfil the law, not to abolish it.
The difference lies in the fact that Islam DOES abolish its previous law, declaring that any later revelation negates a prior revelation.
Previous revelation: Love the peoples of the book as your brothers and sisters and live peaceably among them
Later revelation: Kill the infidels wherever you find them.
The latter is thereby official Islamic doctrine.
Now obviously not all Muslims have a seething rage and hatred for all infidels, and these folks will not take literally the command to kill them [the infidel] wherever they are found.
But there remain many Muslims who take the latter revelation as the exact, infallible, word of Allah, and are willing to act accordingly.
These are the guys who saw fit to slaughter Americans, Brits, Israelis, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, etc, with impunity.
If you support the building of the mosque at ground zero solely as an exercise in tolerance, I would ask you, have American civilians not shown enough tolerance? How much tolerance is enough? We've bent over backwards to appease those who hate us, under the wise guidance of the Great Leader (may peace be upon him).
The developers and the financial backers of the Mosque at Ground Zero were offered a large, desirable plot of state land upon which to build. They refused. Apparently, that the Mosque be located at Ground Zero is a matter of great importance to the people involved in its construction. That sets off a few yellow-alert bells in my head, at the very least.
This leads me to believe that the LOCATION of the Mosque is more important than the Mosque itself, and that's troubling.
The developers, though in posession of the land upon which the Mosque is to be built, are in arrears with their property taxes.
If they can't manage the $200,000 in property taxes for the land where the Mosque is supposed to go, where are they going to find 100 million?
Last I heard, they'd only managed to scrape up $16,000 from domestic donors and investors. Granted, this was a week and a half ago.
The whole thing seems uber fishy to me.
And, yes, I like Jews.
Stu, continued...
I concede that there are many feminist women who are making an enormous difference in the world at large. I feel that the average feminist might show more active concern. As I said before, if asked directly, the average feminist will be on the side of the angels and in favor of equal rights for women across the globe, but for many feminists that does not translate into advocacy.
Both our samples of the feminist population are not enormous, as you, yourself, readily admit. I was a part of a class called "feminist theory in modern literature." There was one male in a class of about 30-35 women. The reading list was almost entirely Western feminists, airing their grievances about exclusively Western problems--lesbian marriage, 75c to the dollar, abortion on demand, etc.
It was disappointing. It seemed to me that the women most in need of feminism were being neglected. Of course, I'm not referring to women missionaries, women with the Red Cross, or other charitable aid organizations or women in the armed forces. I am referring to the proud, card-carrying member of NOW or NARAL who can't see past her nose. The woman who will fight to the death for your daughter to kill your granddaughter, but won't lift a finger in any meaningful way (beyond superficial commiseration) to aid our sisters most in need, and most oppressed.
It's a huge topic, one with many facets, and you and I have just scratched the surface. But in the end, I find myself on the side of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. There's so much more that we Westerners can do, blessed as we are, to contribute to the enlightenment of those disadvantaged women across the world.
"But there remain many Muslims who take the latter revelation as the exact, infallible, word of Allah, and are willing to act accordingly."
Never will I dispute this - and, in fact, my entire approach to thinking about Islam is to think about the best approach to lessening the number of Muslims who fall under that category...
Setting this up as a war against Islam is not, imho, the way to do this.
Being unable to make distinctions between sufi, shia, sunni, moderate, and extreme, is not the way to do this...
Much less being unable to make distinctions between terrorists and non-terrorists.
The Sufi-run interfaith center's location is of importance, since its goal is to create interfaith dialog and be a representation of moderate Islam near the place where Fundamentalist Islam inspired a tragedy...
It's troublesome to me that when they open such interfaith dialog, the right says 'gtfo.'
I don't think this is the right approach to making our country safer, spreading Western values, and defeating the fundamentalists.
ymmv.
(At this point, it's really not about tolerance, but about distinctions... I wouldn't tolerate an Al Qaeda shrine near ground zero...but this ain't that, and an Islamic center is not necessarily a representation of terrorism or violence against the west or the oppression of women...This center, run mostly by women, is definitely and obviously not so. That the right thinks/sells that it is is a misrepresentation of reality.)
Emmy,
In terms of a male-favoured lopsidedness in high ranking positions in business and politics, you fail to take into account the desire of many women not to take part in what they might feel is "cut-throat" and "dog-eat-dog" activities.
There are also many men who would also not choose to take part in cut-throat and dog-eat-dog activities. It is not that I failed to account for this, as much as it is that I consider the hypothesis to be grossly inadequate to explain the observed discrepency. Female representation in the house constitutes 17.2% of the total. If your hypothesis is adequate to explain the discrepancy, and if we further assume that women and men are equally suited to serve, then even under the most favorable hypotheses, it would take 79.2% of all women disqualifying themselves from these jobs to explain the discrepancy in the distribution.
I think, though, that women's "right to choose" has now translated into a desire for a more relaxed atmosphere that allows for more leisure time and more quality time with their families. Clearly I am generalizing. There are many women who would be much happier in a boardroom than going to the zoo with their children and nieces and nephews on a Saturday. Even so, I think there are probably a statistically significant portion of the female population who would gladly choose less remunerative positions in exchange for more flexibility.
Again, while I don't doubt this, I think you're neglecting the extent to which the same is also true of men, and also the extent to which any remaining discrepancy is the result of social rather than biological imperatives.
It is interesting that you brought up the appointment of jurists and Justices. I think the difficulties that certain women before Congress have suffered in getting approval has more to do with ideology and experience than it does gender.
There is some truth to this, but in effect you're granting my point by saying "more to do with" than "entirely to do with." We currently have a senate which is ideologically divided, and therefore any candidate is going to run into ideological resistance. Consider, for example, the Alito and Roberts appointments, which were hardly models of comity either.
It bothered me, as a woman, that one of our court justices thought she was supremely qualified for her position because she gained wisdom from having more melanin in her skin, and being born with an additional X chromosome.
This is a gross misrepresenting of Sotomayor's intent. Clearly, "a wise latina" was intended to be self-referential, i.e., an oblique and polite reference to herself personally.
It also bothers me that a justice deemed "eminently qualified" by those on the left had never actually served as a judge. Not as a district judge, a federal judge, an appeals judge, a circuit judge, nada!
Rehnquist was also appointed to the SCOTUS without prior judicial experience. You guys really need to consider your own precedents before assembling your talkig points. Indeed, the early Roberts court was unusual in not having a member whose first judicial appointment was to the SCOTUS. As for the "eminently qualified" part, that came from the Bar Association's rating of the candidates.
(continued...)
(part 2/2)
Both our samples of the feminist population are not enormous, as you, yourself, readily admit. I was a part of a class called "feminist theory in modern literature." There was one male in a class of about 30-35 women. The reading list was almost entirely Western feminists, airing their grievances about exclusively Western problems--lesbian marriage, 75c to the dollar, abortion on demand, etc.
Your argument ought to be with your professor. There is a sampling problem here. As you point out, women from the most cultures which have the most extreme views of women don't have the education or freedom of action to write the kind of book you'd have liked to have written. But there are some. I'd point to "Reading Lolita in Tehran" as a contemporary work of non-fiction, and also "The Handmaiden's Tale" as a contemporary work of fiction that could be starting points for interesting discussions. And I don't doubt that there are better works -- this is just what I'm aware of.
Let me ask you this. Did you make your complain know to your professor. If so, did he/she adjust the syllabus for the following year to meet your concern?
Stu, if Sotomayor was referring to herself PERSONALLY as a "wise Latina" I'd consider this far worse than if she were elevating herself through race and gender to a position of wisdom. To brag that one has personal wisdom is grotesque, more grotesque than to argue that one is part of a race and gender that, through suffering, has arisen to a supreme level of empathetic understanding with the downtrodden of the world. That's bad enough!
Stu, you made the case that only 17% of the representatives are female.
What do you make of the fact that no Protestants are on the bench? At present, there are no Protestants on the SCOTUS.
There are very few if any practicing Protestants through the American university system, which is a gulag Archipelago in reverse: so many Marxists!
In a country where at least 50% of the people claim to be Protestants, why don't we have a representative on the SCOTUS? Why so few in the humanities?
You'd think THAT would be an issue that you'd want to bring up with regard to Title VII:
* Employers may not treat employees or applicants more or less favorably because of their religious beliefs or practices - except to the extent a religious accommodation is warranted. For example, an employer may not refuse to hire individuals of a certain religion, may not impose stricter promotion requirements for persons of a certain religion, and may not impose more or different work requirements on an employee because of that employee's religious beliefs or practices.
* Employers must permit employees to engage in religious expression, unless the religious expression would impose an undue hardship on the employer. Generally, an employer may not place more restrictions on religious expression than on other forms of expression that have a comparable effect on workplace efficiency.
* Employers must take steps to prevent religious harassment of their employees. An employer can reduce the chance that employees will engage unlawful religious harassment by implementing an anti-harassment policy and having an effective procedure for reporting, investigating and correcting harassing conduct.
You'd think the Supreme Court would be more reflective of our country's actual population. At present, it's a bunch of Catholics opposite a bunch of secularists.
What happened to the Protestants?
Kirby,
To brag that one has personal wisdom is grotesque, more grotesque than to argue that one is part of a race and gender that, through suffering, has arisen to a supreme level of empathetic understanding with the downtrodden of the world.
Really? It seems to me that confidence in one's own judgement is essential for both judges and umpires (recalling Robert's quote about "calling balls and strikes"). Moreover, the entire quote did suggest that someone with her background would be bringing something new and important to the court's discussions.
It is worth noting that the court does not consist of a single jurist, but rather nine under present statute. The purpose behind having a multi-person court is to bring different ideas and values to the cases, and then to have them tested by some of the best legal minds our country has to offer before a judgement is made. Certainly, the provision of a life-time term was intended to foster judicial independence, but also through the inevitable swings in political fortune of the contesting parties, to provide some balance in ideological representation as well.
Kirby,
What do you make of the fact that no Protestants are on the bench? At present, there are no Protestants on the SCOTUS.
First, I'd note that it is not possible to balance the court along all possible axes of division. That said, of the appointees on the current court, four were made by Democratic Presidents (three Jewish, one Catholic) and five by Republican Presidents (five Catholic). It seems to me that the primary driver of the religous structure of the SCOTUS has been the Republican's desire to obtain reliable pro-life votes nominating only Catholic jurists. Do you see this differently?
There are very few if any practicing Protestants through the American university system, which is a gulag Archipelago in reverse: so many Marxists!
I see several distinct issues here. First, University faculties are somewhat less religiously inclined than the population generally. In part, this is because various church bodies have embarrassed themselves over issues that scholars care about, e.g., evolution. There are voices on both the scholarly side and on the religious side that say that you can't be both faithful and a scholar. Is it remarkable, given this unanimity of ignorance on the part of the fringes of both sides, that some are mislead, and that worthy relgious scholars feel that they must choose, and that they sometimes make the religious rather than the scholarly choice? Second, there are a few subcultures (the Jews come to mind) in which scholarship has a long history and is deeply valued. These groups tend to be more highly represented than you would predict given the first item. Third, there are broad strands of protestantism (I'm thinking here of fundamentalist, evangelical, and pentacostal) in which any education beyond religous and trade is viewed negatively (c.f., the discourse on the first item). I don't believe, e.g., that mainstream Protestants are especially underrepresented in academia, but clearly evangelicals and pentacostals are.
You'd think the Supreme Court would be more reflective of our country's actual population. At present, it's a bunch of Catholics opposite a bunch of secularists.
What happened to the Protestants?
I blame the abortion wars, but also of the fact that this is a relatively small body and so is subject to large statistical fluctuations. If you grant my point that the R's will only appoint Catholics, then you're left with four seats that are potentially open to Protestants. Interestingly enough, it seems that Democrats view Jewish jurists as reliably pro-choice.
BTW, your equating of Jewish with secular seems parochial at best. Since you obviously intend it as a slur, are you prepared to justify your claim that none of Breyer, Ginsberg, and Kagan believes in the one Lord God?
Stu, the only slur intended here is yours that I'm an anti-Semite.
Nice try!
I don't know about the Kagan truth, any more than I know about the Obama truth. I assume that much of what those folks are doing is using cover stories to step around any kind of real hassle as they push their agenda.
I think Kagan is a feminist first, a socialist second, and maybe somewhere after socialist, has some residual affection for Judaism.
Breyer and Ginsburg are also somewhat difficult to decide.
Souter is officially Episcopalian. Does it mean anything in terms of his decisions?
Basically what I was doing was slicing the pie differently than the way you did, in terms of pushing the notion that women are not represented in the Congress and thus this is a sign of some kind of bad intention among the electorate.
But suddenly it isn't when it comes to the Supreme Court.
We did have one Lutheran on the SCOTUS -- Rehnquist. This is less than one percent, if you think of all the different justices (I think there have been more than a hundred since the commencement of the court, but I'll leave it to the mathematicians on board to count em up, and determine the percentages).
We make up more than 5% of the electorate (although we are shrinking).
This numerical matching only matters to the left when they can claim they are not well-represented by their numbers. Whenever anyone else tries the same logic, this is suddenly bad logic, and pooh-poohed.
If abortion is the litmus test then Catholics will be against abortion. And yet, I assume that Sotomayor is for it, which means that her truest allegiance is to feminist thought.
If you put the women first, then you have to be for abortion, even though half of the babies to be murdered would eventually have become women, if they had had half a chance.
Kirby,
Stu, the only slur intended here is yours that I'm an anti-Semite.
I characterized your remarks as "parochial," not as anti-Semitic. You're trying to control the debate by throwing around laden terms without justification.
Now, if you don't intend "secular" as a slur, then explain why you chose to minimize their self-described religious convictions? I'm not letting you off the hook that easily. Breyer, Ginsberg, and Kagan are all self-described as Jewish. Your doubts about the sincerity of their belief does not constitute evidence, any more than polls on Obama's religious faith determine his. Absent real evidence that they are not Jewish, your identification of them as secular is irresponsible.
FWIW, I'm not claiming that your an anti-Semite, merely that you refuse to grant people whose views differ from yours the honestly of their convictions. Such a narrow attitude forecloses debate, and invites criticism.
Souter is officially Episcopalian.
Souter is retired. Sotomayor filled his vacancy.
This numerical matching only matters to the left when they can claim they are not well-represented by their numbers. Whenever anyone else tries the same logic, this is suddenly bad logic, and pooh-poohed.
On the contrary, the fact that there are no Protestants on the court is an abberation, and one that is certainly worth understanding. That said, it seems to me that if you look at the actual appointments that have been made, the R's are far more responsible for the dearth of Protestants than the D's are. Both sides have had their ideological agendas, and both have made the appointments that they believe will best serve those agendas. Both sides believe that following their agendas is in the country's best interest.
Do I believe that the court would be better served by having Protestant representation? Yes. But I'd get rid of one of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito to do it. Clearly, you'd make other choices.
As for bad logic, I don't see your argument as exemplifying bad logic as much as bad judgment. After all, you've said nothing to contradict my thesis that the driver of the religious structure of the SCOTUS has been Republican nominations of reliably pro-life Catholics. So the blame for the issue you raise falls largely on your party. I'll grant that point, but where do we go next?
Oh, and if Obama's next appointee is Protestant, I expect that you'll note that you favor such an appointment...
Stu, you said that Democrats now think of Jews as votes certain for abortion. If that is the litmus test, then these "Jews" aren't Jews. Well, it's hard to say what constitutes a Jew. Kagan's Wiki page says that she's a conservative Jew. But conservative Jews are against abortion except when the woman's life is in danger. So I think she's really a secular feminist.
You can look up the opinions of conservative Jews on abortion and see if you find differently. But abortion within conservative Judaism is only acceptable when the mother will die without an abortion. Here's some more (note that for very liberal Jews, even the notion of a mother's mental health can be the reason to slaughter the baby, but if you're a conservative Jew, it's only physical health:
"Pregnancy should occur only within marital sexual relations. If and when a pregnancy threatens the life of the expecting mother - from the earliest known moment of pregnancy through literally as the foetus may emerge - the life of the mother comes first. Some very liberal Scholars, including even a few Orthodox Scholars, interpret "threat" to mean against the emotional health of the mother, not only her physical health.
While abortion is permitted under these medical or medical-psychological conditions, Judaism does not permit abortion as a method of birth control, family planning, avoidance of certain possible birth defects (e.g. Downs Syndrome).
I hope that this is helpful. Check "abortion" in the Encyclopedia Judaica in the library as a start and the classic outstanding work, Birth Control in Jewish Law: Marital Relations, Contraception, and Abortion As Set Forth in the Classic Texts of Jewish Law by Rabbi David M."
This is from a web consultation called Ask the Rabbi and was signed by Rabbi Tov.
at any rate, it's at least not part of family planning. All Jews, Tov says, are agreed on that, that you can't off babies because they weren't the gender you wanted, or because you now have one too many, or you don't think the eyes are beautiful enough.
So, at any rate, when you said that these "Jewish" justices support abortion (under any circumstances?), my only response is then they are not Jews.
My understanding has been that Jews (faithful Jews) do NOT support abortion (except in very special circumstances). So if someone does, they are not a Jew.
My logic was perhaps too all-inclusive (I thought Jews were always against abortion, but they do allow it when the mother's life is in danger right up until the baby's head appears -- woe be to the kid whose feet appear first!!).
My ignorance has no boundaries. I had no idea you could do it right up until the head appears so long as the mom's health is in danger.
But you can't off a Down baby just to get rid of a Down baby under Jewish guidelines.
Are all three of the Jewish justices kosher with regard to these guidelines? If not, then they're not Jews. They're something else, but not Jews.
Stu,
I appreciate that you are used to dealing with people who regurgitate talking points. Please know that I brought up the fact of Justice Kagan's lack of judicial experience in good faith. I would appreciate if you took my argument in good faith, as I do yours. I would have concerns about any high court judicial nominee who had never before been a judge. Such a person, be he a Renquist or be she a Kagan would need to have demonstrated exceptionally strong powers of discernment and a judicious temperament. You believe Kagan demonstrated this. I believe she didn't, and that is merely a difference of opinion.
Sotomayor referred to herself as a wise Latina, as Kirby so helpfully expounded upon. What a bizarre way of recommending oneself to a life-long high court appointment! That’s like Clarence Thomas saying “because when I was a child I didn’t have shoes, that makes me specially qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. That experience has made me a wise black man.”
So women make up only 17% of elected representatives. Our discussion so far has revealed an immense number of economic, social, personal, and psychological factors that might contribute to this number. I highly doubt that we will ever see proportional representation in the houses of the legislature. Women will probably never make up 51%-52% of the body.
Is that a problem? Does that mean that society itself is ganging up to keep the sisters well and truly below the glass ceiling? I submit that no, it does not. There are fewer than a handful of Asian Americans in the legislature. Is this a product of racism?
I found a very interesting survey this morning--the 2000 National Survey of Marriage and Family Life. In it, we get some very interesting numbers. One that popped out at me as being strikingly high was that 74% of married working (full-time) women with children would rather work part time or not at all. Only 18% of married mothers prefer working full-time (only one percentage point higher than the percentage of women in congress--not that the two figures are in any way connected, obviously, just making a comparison).
I think you will find the number of married fathers who prefer working full-time is significantly higher than 18%. With this preference comes more years of experience in a given occupation, and a resulting disproportionate representation in promotions and therefore positions of higher responsibility.
Of course I know that there are many men who would prefer to do part-time work, or to do no work at all! That much is obvious. I am merely attempting to tease out the variety of factors at play that might account for the male/female discrepancy that do not assume a sexist societal conspiracy.
Continued...
Continued...to Stu,
I'm sure that there are women who have been turned down for positions for which they were qualified because of sexism. This is wrong. I'm equally sure that thousands of women were considered preferentially over similarly qualified men for the positions they've acquired due to their sex. This, to me, is also wrong.
The point of my bringing up that particular course at Uni was to demonstrate the concentration Western feminism devotes to contemplating its own existence, and the self-congratulation that goes along with it. I thought that lived experience was useful here as a tool to get closer to the truth. Your dismissive attitude toward my lived experience is not deeply appreciated; “Your argument ought to be with your professor,” in other words, your classroom observations have no place in THIS argument? Please correct me if I am wrong or have misunderstood you.
There will always be a sampling error, as you so precisely put it, with regards to talking about Western Feminism because Western Feminism tends to be concerned, primarily, with itself. I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with American feminists of all ages and races. Many of them came from middle class to upper class backgrounds, but to hear them talk, it’s as if they’ve been wearing chains all their lives, toiling for The Man!
Instead of using their advantaged upbringing and education to help other women who were less fortunate, some women choose to spend much of their energy on resentfulness and self-absorption. Much of this is generational or derivative of individual psychology, I readily admit. But it surprised me how many young women resented the advantages they were blessed with in this supposed repressive patriarchal society.
Unfortunately in my acquaintance with a diverse group of feminists, the above was not a rare sentiment at all. Help a woman out; you’re a raging patriarchal misogynist. Leave her to fend for herself; you’re a raging patriarchal misogynist.
I did ask on the first day when we were reviewing the syllabus as a class, why the reading list was dominated by American feminists. I think I might have said something wrong. People looked at me, and the professor waited more than a beat to answer. Maybe there was some insider knowledge I wasn’t privy to. Her answer was that these are the most influential and well-recognized feminist theorists. That they happen to be American is a coincidence. The syllabus was not changed the next year to allow for more diversity of opinion.
I suppose since the course was focused on literary theory, that might explain the dearth of contributors from non-English speaking cultures. I do love books on women’s experiences in foreign cultures, however, and I am eager to read them whenever I have a moment. Have you seen Persepolis? It’s a graphic novel, but the film is quite wonderful (I bet Brett has seen it and enjoyed it)—it’s about a young girl who is growing up in Iran at the time of the revolution and struggles to find herself in a society that consistently devalues women, and her experiences in Western Europe as a refugee. Another book I thoroughly enjoyed is “Lipstick Jihad.”
Their life stories are so much more valuable to me as an individual than the rantings of an upper class princess suffering at the hands of patriarchal oppression when daddy bought her her first pony. Yes, I did meet a woman like that in the feminist theory class. No, we didn't become friends.
Brett,
This Rauf character is a sufi, so what?
He refuses to renounce Hamas, an organization FOUNDED on the principle of the destruction of Israel. He openly advocates Sharia law. He was a part of the group of people who funded the flotilla meant to provoke Israel into a confrontation.
In general, I think sufis are pretty cool. I worry about this particular sufi. He's shady as all get-out, but that doesn't seem to bother you. Why not?
This elevation of tolerance over all other virtues is a virus, I swear.
Someone slaps you in the face, you turn the other cheek, of course! But if someone swears to destroy you, kill everyone you love, raze your home to the ground, salt the land and poison your well, I think you'd be well advised not to get your cheek blown off with an IED.
[REQUIRED DISCLAIMER SAVED ON CUT AND PASTE FUNCTION TO SAVE TIME]
Not all muslims are violent, muslims come in all varieties, shapes and colors, most of them are peaceful and some of them have anal sex...yadda yadda yadda.
But seriously, with the above questions about the sainted and peaceable light-bearing sufi hero of tolerance brought to light...are you sure you still have no reservations about this project?
Any at all?
See, the difference between us is that I can see your point of view without calling you a dhimmi tool of the dar al-Islam. You cannot see my point without calling me (indirectly, admittedly) a bigot and a racist.
I have to ask, though, is there a single reason that you can think of--think REALLY hard, I know it hurts, but it'll be over in a minute--why an American might take offense to a mosque being built at ground zero OTHER than racism, bigotry or general ignorance?
If you can think of a single reason, I'll be VERY pleased. If you can think of three possible reasons (even if you don't agree with them or think they're illegitimate) I'll apologize for thinking your opinion is informed more by your low opinion of your fellow Americans and a desire to be seen as somehow "better" than us rather than your burning desire to see a mosque go up at ground zero.
One reason, you get my praise. Three reasons you get a public apology.
That is your mission, should you choose to accept it.
Emmy,
Thanks for your note.
I appreciate that you are used to dealing with people who regurgitate talking points. Please know that I brought up the fact of Justice Kagan's lack of judicial experience in good faith. I would appreciate if you took my argument in good faith, as I do yours.
I do. But I also think the Rehnquist appointment is relevant in this discussion. There is ample precedent for initial judicial appointments to the SCOTUS, by both parties. Lack of qualifications (including prior judicial experience) was a key issue in the failed Miers appointment. The distinction between the two is that Miers did not have Kagan's academic record, which provides insight into her judicial thinking comparable to a judicial record. In this, Rehnquist was much more like Miers in this than like Kagan for his initial appointment as Associate Justice.
Sotomayor referred to herself as a wise Latina, as Kirby so helpfully expounded upon. What a bizarre way of recommending oneself to a life-long high court appointment! That’s like Clarence Thomas saying “because when I was a child I didn’t have shoes, that makes me specially qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. That experience has made me a wise black man.”
Well, digging around for Clarence Thomas quotes brings up some interesting grist too. How about this: "I've been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self help teachings." Good thing for him he's a conservative, or this would be an issue of real contention. IOKIYAR, I guess.
Of course I know that there are many men who would prefer to do part-time work, or to do no work at all! That much is obvious. I am merely attempting to tease out the variety of factors at play that might account for the male/female discrepancy that do not assume a sexist societal conspiracy.
The point behind the 79.2% figure was to indicate how large a hill you had to climb. Anecdotal evidence won't do it. As for the 2000 Survey you cite, I believe that society teaches women that their responsibility to the family is best discharged through home and hearth, while it teaches men that their responsibility is best discharged through bread-winning. So surveys are going to be biased by the responders saying what they think the questioner expects them to say. It's a well known effect, and hard to beat. What seems more relevant to me, therefore, isn't what people say, it is what they actually do. A quick googling found that in '04, 73.3% of men were employed, while 59.2% of women were. The page I found didn't distinguish between full and part time, and I'd be glad to base my analysis on better statistics. But if we accept these as a starting point, we'd expect 44% of the legislature to be female. Not 17%.
I thought that lived experience was useful here as a tool to get closer to the truth. Your dismissive attitude toward my lived experience is not deeply appreciated; “Your argument ought to be with your professor,” in other words, your classroom observations have no place in THIS argument? Please correct me if I am wrong or have misunderstood you.
I believe you have misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to dismiss your observation, which seemed well worth making. But just as feminists here aren't going to have much impact on Somali's attitudes towards women, neither are you going to impact the feminist agenda by complaining about your courses on this blog. You did right to take it up with your prof, and FWIW, I believe that your thoughts deserved better than they got.
Help a woman out; you’re a raging patriarchal misogynist. Leave her to fend for herself; you’re a raging patriarchal misogynist.
I've run into some of this. Indeed, this sort of silliness is what I'm beating Kirby up over now ;-). I.e., if you're a liberal, it's given that your acting in bad faith. It's a crock no matter who's doing it.
I've said 'appeasement' over and over again, Emmy -
So that's one. (People who value peacefulness over principle who say that because people will object and cause a ruckus we should not do it)
Beyond that, though, looking at the facts and believing that this center will cause .. what again are we afraid of? ... is unreasonable...and a 'fear' so yeah
Kirby, perhaps the race, sex, and religion of SCOTUS judges can be over-emphasised as incidentals to their legal philosophies and judicial experience.
But incidentally, President Bush's first nominee to replace retiring Judge O'Connor was a Protestant, Harriet Miers (Church of Christ), an evangelical who often attended Episcopal services (so much for stu's erroneous claim for "the Republican's desire to obtain reliable pro-life votes nominating only Catholic jurists").
Though I don't know her religious affiliation, another candidate briefly considered at the time was US Court of Appeals Judge Janis Rogers Brown, who would have been the Supreme Court's first African-American woman justice. Daughter of a sharecropper, worked her way through law school as a single mother, but these incidentals of experience were of little help to her in the earlier court of appeals process that Senate Democrats tried to block for ideological reasons, that is, her conservative and libertarian (translation for liberals and leftists: "extreme right-wing") views she expressed outside her office as judge.
Similarly, Miguel Estrada faced then minority Democrats' blocking tactics in 2001 in the contest over his nomination for the same appeals court position Judge Brown holds today. Again, too conservative, too close to a SCOTUIS nomination--first case of a filibuster where a clear majority favoured confirmation. Again incidentally, he thought Justice Kagan qualified for her current position, and she him.
James, I love the minutiae of your and Stu's knowledge of the court and the politics thereof.
I confess I only have broad impressions in many political areas.
Thanks for bringing me up to speed.
Outside of humor studies, my knowledge is incredibly weak.
But the only way to learn is to march into new areas of interest, and to hope to learn.
JADL,
But incidentally, President Bush's first nominee to replace retiring Judge O'Connor was a Protestant, Harriet Miers (Church of Christ), an evangelical who often attended Episcopal services (so much for stu's erroneous claim for "the Republican's desire to obtain reliable pro-life votes nominating only Catholic jurists").
So let me amend my claim to include those who are reliably pro-life for strong religious reasons. This clearly includes many evangelicals, and also clearly does not include all Catholics (although I consider Sotomayor to be a cipher on this issue).
Similarly, Miguel Estrada faced then minority Democrats' blocking tactics in 2001 in the contest over his nomination for the same appeals court position Judge Brown holds today. Again, too conservative, too close to a SCOTUIS nomination--first case of a filibuster where a clear majority favoured confirmation.
Abe Fortas, 1968. But you knew that, and are trying to hide behind "clear majority." Nice try. Isn't it clear that you only filibuster when you expect to lose?
There is nothing in your criticisms of the Democratic minority blocking of judges that isn't equally true for the Republicans...
And it was largely righties who dissed on Harriet Myers... And it really doesn't do any actual harm to Stu's claim that the Repubs had more to do with the protestantlessness of the court than the Dems...
Brett, a new Quinnipiac Poll:
"65-25 % of Democrats say that Cuomo should look into the mosque’s financing."
Just thought you'd want to know it isn't all Repubs.
It's one thing to question the Mosque's funding - I actually think that's a good idea, since getting and presenting a clear picture of the people in charge of the Islamic center is something the media should actually be doing much more of instead of just reporting on the arguing (easier, draws more eyes, gross...)
It's another to hold up a chalkboard that says IRAN? Al Qaeda? etc.etc.
It's still Another to say that there's a good chance the funding is coming from the bad man at the head of some organization...without mentioning that sad bad-man is part-owner of the news organization you're reporting from...
intriiiiiiiguing.
All the hysteria from fundarighties calling Islam a religion of violence and equating all Muslims with terrorists (it's happenin', y'all, just watch Fox or listen to the radio waves...) is spilling over into violence.
Worrisome.
The premise that Islam is a religion of peace is obviously false, if you think of the Quakers, for instance, as a pacifist group. There are no factions of Islam that have foresworn violence (even the Sufis are violent, and can go to war).
The premise that Islam is a religion of war, and nothing but war, as Huntington stated in his classic "bloody borders" image, may also be tendentious, as there might be somewhere a group of Muslims that hasn't been at war for a week or two at a time.
Ali says the greatest thing you can do as a Muslim is kill yourself while slaying non-believers. That doesn't sound to me like a religion of peace.
The basic premises of the argument are shaky, but I think actual experience leads us to side more with the Huntington thesis.
Can we also say, "Any female born a Muslim is in for a life of misery?" as Ali's implication suggests?
Should we put on rose-colored glasses and just see a few nice sunsets?
It's very hard to see this group in their entirety, not only in terms of the static appreciation of the present, but in terms of their historical background.
When they got rid of knowledge-seeking ca. 1260 AD things seem to have taken a turn for the worse.
Still, I think that even if a group of head-hunting cannibals wants to put up a building in NYC, they would be LEGALLY entitled to do so. Call it The Jeffrey Dahmer Building.
Brett, I agree with you that funding for Imam Rauf's project (should he ever acquire it) ought to be carefully investigated, considering the number of ostensible Muslim charities that have turned out to be fronts for terrorist groups like al-Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, etc.
Imam Rauf's choice of site developer, Sharif al-Gamal, seems anything but a "man of peace," but rather, a cheap thug who nevertheless claims he's reformed after arrests for and convictions of disorderly conduct in 1990,
1994, 1998, and 1999, DWI in 1994, attempted petty larceny in 1993, and an arrest in 1994 for patronising a prostitute. He avers that the terrorist 9/11 attack helped change his life toward a religious awakening and a turn to Islam, though he was arrested again in 2005, this time for assault, a case he settled in civil court. Apparently he owes 227K in back taxes on the site at present.
I love hearing all the news and gossip about the mosque.
I like to keep track of sources for all new info, so give a backtrack where you can so that the Johnny come latelies like myself can source the information ourselves and taste the tendencies of each new bit.
The mosque is just one thing too many for me at this point, and because the question of LEGALITY doesn't seem to be at issue, all the rest seems moot to an extent.
Still, if this is another front for Hamas or some other such group, it's better to know now.
A giant women's studies center should be put right next to the mosque.
Islam is peaceful.
Islam is violent.
These do not seem to me to be entirely true.
The truth is mixed.
The mosque is a good thing.
The mosque is a bad thing.
The truth, again, is mixed.
The variables we're missing are who is going to fund it, and who exactly is this specific leader?
Also, why does it have to be built right there?
All this information is missing.
Now the mayor of New York City (Bloomberg) says it's wrong to want to have any more information on the financial backing of the mosque.
Even if it's from Iran, he's asked.
Yes, even if it's from Iran, he answers.
I think we should know everything we can about Iran and its assets in the US.
Kirby,
Islam is peaceful.
Islam is violent.
Islam is law cast as religion. God as understood by Islam is a distant and terrible judge, not a present and loving father.
The law can be a means of peace, the law can be a means of violence. We expect the law to order society for our benefit. But Jesus was judged and executed under the law, and we too are judged by it, and stand under our own sentences of death. You, who have so often praised the law, should understand this, if nothing else.
Stu, are you equating Iranian and American law?
I couldn't understand your point.
Are you saying that all law is the same law?
Is communist law under Stalin the same thing as law under the present US system?
You have created confusion in my mind, which is very easy to do.
Kirby,
Stu, are you equating Iranian and American law?
Equating is too strong. Drawing an analogy, albeit a deep analogy. Islam views the Hebrew Scriptures (the OT) as canonical, as we do. Islamic law is founded, as is as our law, on the ten commandments. But the point derives from a comment that Phil Hefner made in a class I took from him: Theology is a specifically Christian enterprise. Judaism raises up textual scholars; Islam raises up legal scholars.
Consider specifically the notion of a fatwah, which is a legal opinion regarding Islamic law published by an Islamic scholar. Let me draw two points of comparison/contrast in the west: a papal pronouncement, a published opinion of an appellate court.
The parallel to a papal announcement probably commends itself to you, but this is the weaker of the two. Islam is not hierarchal in the same way that the Catholic Church is. There is no "Islamic Pope." Islam is far more collegial/distributed, much like Protestantism in polity. In particular, the authority of a fatwah depends on the authority of the individual who publishes it, rather than the authority of the office they hold. So fatwahs are subject to review by other scholars, who may well issue dissenting opinions, meaning that the interpretation of Islamic law may differ in various jurisdictions. The same sort of phenomenon holds w.r.t. federal appellate rulings, which are binding only in the jurisdiction of that circuit. But most significantly, fatwahs are legal opinions, not moral or doctrinal pronouncements.
One significant parallel to papal pronouncements is that fatwahs are issued within the structure of Islam as a religion, and so convey religious as well as civil authority. Indeed, Islam does not distinguish between the two. So the notion of a theocracy, i.e., religious government, is the Islamic norm. But it is also the norm of much of Christendom: consider specifically pre-reformation Europe. The western, indeed specifically Lutheran (referring to the man, not the denomination) view of distinct civil and religious spheres, is almost certainly a minority view within Christianity.
A natural question at this point might be whether or not Islam, a system that does not distinguish religious from civil life, is compatible with US representative democracy, and the view of our founding fathers (still prevalent, but hardly universal, c.f., the Texas Board of Education) that a secular civil goverment is a prerequisite for religious freedom. Consider the Roman Catholic Church, its role in our society, the very similar questions and concerns that were raised during the nativist 19th century, and more recently in the 1960 Presidential election. The RCC has found ways to function effectively within the US political system, in part by setting its system of canon law up in a parallel to the US legal system, albeit with only the authority that its members give it. This is perhaps most apparent in the distinction between civil divorce and canonical annulment. I would expect Islamic law in the US to function the same way, and with about as much relevance to non-Muslims as Catholic canon law has to Lutherans.
As for terrorism... Islamic terrorism is real, but I think that money is what drives its impact on the rest of us, not the specific character of Islamic religious belief. The existence of huge amounts of money, a consequence of the oil-riches of Arabia, is both a disincentive to compromise, and an incentive to escalation. FWIW, I believe that if Ireland had Saudi Arabia's oil riches, then the Catholic and Protestant terrorism that characterized "the troubles" would have had the same sort of world-wide impact that Islamic terrorism has today.
I don't know enough about the Islamic side of these questions to respond.
I think in some ways this very good comment could also go with today's new post, and the problem of REASON vs. BLIND FAITH, which has interesting parallels in the two religions as well.
Plus, while you broke up Christian faiths quite well (I'm not certain how restricted the two kingdoms notion is within Christianity -- there appears to be something similar in Calvinist thought) we still have the problem of representing ALL of Islam as one monolithic entity.
Bin Laden's crew doesn't accept the Sufis, for instance, although they both lay claim to Islam.
The scholars I listened to on C-Span the other night claimed that Islam IS DEMOCRATIC (Aziza Al-Hibri, who is a Muslim law professor at the U. of Virginia claims that Jefferson got significant ideas for his own democratic vision OUT OF THE KORAN).
Yours was a good difficult post, Stu. Thanks!
Although I haven't read Robert R Reilly's book, "The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis," I read a recent interview he gave here:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/aug/10081608.html
Reilly, former director of The Voice of America and now on the board of The Center for International Relations describes the ascendancy and domination of the Ash'arite theological school of Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) in
"reject[ing] the primacy of reason in favor of the primacy of pure will and power, and this is why constitutional democratic rule did not develop indigenously in the Islamic world." While the works of al-Ghazali seem quite complex and varied, Reilly instead concentrates on the lasting influence he thinks this revered Muslim thinker has both in integrating Sufism with Sharia law and in banishing the Greek rationalist tradition from Islamic thought and jurisprudence. An interesting and informative read.
Kirby,
Some questions I would have for Dr. Aziza Al-Hibri is 1.) Does democracy entail equal protection under the law?
2.) If so, and if Islam is democratic, how does one explain that, according to Koranic tradition, a woman's testimony is worth one half that of a man's? This tradition is law in many countries.
3.) If Islam is an institution that considers itself democratic, why are men the only people permitted to pray on the main floor of the mosque? Women are shuttered up in balconies, or put off to the side behind a screen.
4.) Why is it that al Qaida, who claim to be proponents of fundemental Islam find it acceptable to reimburse the families of Arab suicide bombers double that of black African suicide bombers?
(I mean, obviously, al Qaida can't be taken as representative, but still! I think this is an interesting question).
5.) If Islam is democratic, why are non-Mulims living in Muslim dominated countries forced to pay prohibitive taxes solely because of their "infidel" status? Or does Islam only extend the benefits of its "democratic" umbrella to other Muslims of the same sect?
Aziza Al-Hibri believes that Jefferson was a Muslim, and that he had gotten it all right, and the others have it all wrong.
She claims that because he owned a Koran, he must have read it. Having read it, he must have felt its force. Having felt its force, it must have guided his thinking. Having guided his thinking, the Constitution is actually based on the Koran. Since that is so, America is actually a Muslim country, not a country based on Locke, the Scottish Enlightenment, or anything else.
She never says this things quite as explicitly as I am stating them, but I think she implied them in her remarks that appeared on C-span under the title of The Image of Islam, a nonsensical show that was almost pure propaganda (there were no resisting voices, and people were only allowed to ask nice questions -- otherwise there was going to be terror.)
I found the show to be a joke. There were no real questions about the role of women in Islam. No questions about stoning, chopping off heads and hands, no questions about whipping, or other legal remedies that can easily be found in Farnoosh Moshiri's novel The Bathhouse.
Afshin Ellian in Holland -- who witnessed these atrocities in the Iranian Revolution -- asks questions similar to yours.
Suffice it to say that you would be considered impolite.
It's like the crummy stupid Marxists who say -- don't look at Myanmar or N. Korea as examples of Marxism in PRAXIS. Jefferson is our idea of Marx! And Jefferson may have preceded Marx by a century, but Marx was a Jeffersonian.
The poet Ezra Pound did this with Mussolini. Mussolini is actually Jefferson!
It's a fairly common trick among people who don't want to face the truth about their commitments. That said, Aziza seemed like she might have more to say about all this than what she stuffed into a ten-minute presentation followed by Q and A on C-Span.
Emmy - I don't think it makes sense to give a political label to a religion, necessarily...
That's where the err begins.
Is democracy the necessary outcome of Christianity?
It wasn't for the first, oh, 17 or 1800 years of the religion's existence...
It seems that many of the negative realities of life under Fundaislamists were also the case in Christian societies in the past...
The belief on the left is that Islam is necessarily peaceful (well, actually, the left doesn't believe this phrase as it's put, but you get the drift...)
The belief on the right is that Islam is necessarily violent...
Neither is right!
It depends on edumcation and liberalization and ideas like tolerance!
(which the FundaIslamists don't have...)
weeee!
Brett,
"I don't think it makes sense to give a political label to a religion, necessarily..."
That's exactly what I'm saying. It's silly to ascribe a way of political thought to a religion, unless the political thought IS the religion i.e. Juche in North Korea or leader worship.
The exception I would make are the 'politicized' versions of certain religions, Wiccans who conduct eco-terrorism, Islamo-fascists who blow up kids in roller rinks, Christians who bomb abortion clinics. These radical religiously held viewpoints are typically shown up for what they are--a ridiculous misinterpretation of scripture, political manipulation of legitimate faiths, or just outright intolerance cloaked in religious sentiment.
Difference is, as I see it, whether or not it is interpreted as such by an individual practitioner, there is only one world religion that teaches wholesale slaughter of the infidel in the PRESENT TENSE IMPERATIVE.
That being said, post-ancient Greek democracy did not arise within an Islamic framework, a Shinto framework, a Buddhist framework, or a Flying Purple People Eater framework. It arose in a Christian framework.
There is nothing in Christianity antithetical to monarchy, in my opinion, neither is there anything in Islam antithetical to democracy.
I think you'll find more Muslims around the world who think violent jihad against Christians and Jews is a morally acceptable tenant of their religion than you will find Christians who believe that the bombing of Planned Parenthood is justifiable under Biblical exhortation.
Go to Northern Pakistan with your liberalization, your edumukation and your tolerance. It won't get you very far. At least, not as far as it would in, say, Northern Minnesota. Western "tolerance", in the way you use the word--trying in every way possible to appease violent Neanderthals who seek our destruction--is considered a sign of decadent weakness in some quarters.
That's why Obama's foreign policy strategy of "bash Israel and give them everything they want and maybe they'll leave us alone" isn't going to be as effective as you anticipate.
Kirby,
I'm constantly astounded by people in those days. They were so widely read! I mean, look at Ben Franklin! These guys knew multiple language, religious philosophy, political science, natural science--did you know that Thomas Jefferson was also an amateur botanist and vinologist, and an architect, in addition to playing the violin, speaking French and reading Latin?
These dudes were effing HOT! Kinda like my husband, but anyway...
So as far as Aziza's claim goes, I suppose it is possible for Jefferson to have read the Koran in English (the first English translation came out in 1734) or in French (1649).
But you know, we didn't have very many intellectual dealings with the East. Our only physical dealings with Eastern Muslims came in the form of northern African piracy, and caused the formation of our Marines.
I'm sure he thought there was enough good ideas in Western thought that he wouldn't need to delve into Taoism.
Jefferson stated in front of congress (a rare event, because although he was a great writer, he hated speaking in front of crowds--he even had his State of the Union delivered by proxy) at the beginning of the "Barbary" war:
"The ambassador answered us that [the right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise."
Sound familiar? Jefferson would have abhorred the idea of a religion that makes a point of submission on pain of death. My guess would be that Jefferson procured a Koran to better understand the threat to our shipping security in the Med since he'd been informed that the "Mussulman's" religion influenced almost every aspect of Muslim society. That included trade, social relationships, respect for national borders (or lack thereof), acceptable attack strategies, etc.
Seems like a good enough reason to me to go out and buy the Penguin edition of their Holy Book!
For example, he would learn that paying extortion money and being a good dhimmi in exchange for "protection" was really just a racket. At one point, the pirates wanted 1/7th of our National Budget for their "protection"!
I think Jefferson learned that the only language these marauding barbarians speak is force, and that's the only form of conflict resolution they respect.
I'm sure I would seem "impolite" to Aziza. Quite frankly, I'm not bothered! Her assertions are laughable. Though Islam nominally is supposed to embrace religious tolerance, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc, why are these values so incredibly rare in the Muslim world? I mean...MAYBE Indonesia, and MAYBE parts of Turkey (as long as you don't bad-mouth Ataturk).
Why isn't there an Islamic nation on this Earth that is a model of tolerance? In how many of them may a Jew or a Christian live in equality with the Muslim majority, with the same right to worship, assemble, and speak?
Emmy - I think you largely misread, or misunderstand, what I said -
I agree that there are more Muslims that live under/follow extreme fundamentalist versions of their religion than Christians -
This does not, however, equate to all Muslims being necessarily violent, or even a majority...
And I really think you missed the mark when I talked about tolerance and liberalization - you Don't want extremist Muslims to be more tolerant? To become more liberalized? You think that FundaIslamists should remain backwards and hateful?
I didn't say that We should show 'tolerance' to FundaIslamists...
We should be smart enough to make distinctions between kinds and quality of Muslims, and we should promote and support more liberalized, tolerant versions of Islam.
The right, however, is out there busy equating all Muslims with terrorists, which would be like calling all Germans Nazis.
Squares and rectangles, and many the leaders of the right are willfully confusing their followers for political purposes...
(Hannity and Newt are those to whom I am directly referring).
And everyone - can we make it a practice that if you ascribes a quote/idea to the Qoran, you cite it? Just so we can see for ourselves the phrasing and the context ...
Brett, Hannity and Newt don't constitute the right any more than OBL represents Muslims.
The right is a long old established way of thinking going back at least as far as Aristotle, through more recent folks such as Chesterton, Belloc, Hayek, but also includes less contained individuals such as Ann Coulter, and Hannity and Newt.
But these last three don't speak for everyone.
Many claim that Ayn Rand's "egoism" is what the right is about. I can't read Ayn Rand. I did see a movie based on the Fountainhead. It was a good movie (at least I didn't have to deal with her dead prose), because it represented her as an egoist who believed in the Nietzschean brilliance of a few geniuses, and the rest of us are supposedly just idiots who should bow down to these wunderkind.
If that's the right, and people often say it is, I don't want any part of it.
I personally don't take Newt or Hannity very seriously.
I do like the Wall Street Journal guys who are on Fox, and do listen carefully to them.
But I see Hannity as fundamentally no different than Madcow and Doberman on MSNBC. They try to whip the listening audience into a frenzy.
The left goes back very far -- at least as far as to Plato and up through the likes of Pelagius, and certain aspects of Anabaptism, and Socinius, and so on.
But there are all these splits.
There's a right Hegel and a left Hegel.
Sade is another strange dude who has his leftist side, and his rightist side (some surrealists liked what he was saying, and so did some fascists). I have read maybe ten of his books, but don't particularly like what he was saying, nor do I like many of the people on either side who get such a thrill out of him (I don't like Bataille very much -- in either his right-wing or leftwing approaches to culture, nor do I like any of the Italians who get such a kick out of Sade).
Newt no longer has any actual power, and will never get anywhere in the political race at the national level. I hate to see this, but his face is too wide. He looks a bit porcine. Hannity, likewise, has a porcine aspect.
Neither one has much control over the American mind.
Doberman and Madcow, likewise, are ugly people. No one listens to ugly people, at least if they are on TV. They are not particularly telegenic, and I think they are too strenuously one-sided.
The next round will feature Romney and Palin, to some degree, perhaps in combination.
They are telegenic, and softer spoken than most. Palin infuriates the left, and is prone to making blunders, but because she is a woman, many women on the left like her.
The NY Post today has an interesting article about how the building that was sold for the mosque had another bidder bidding 18 million. It's mysterious that the owners didn't take this money, and instead opted to take the less than five million. Or was it billion?
Numbers that high confuse me.
"Brett, Hannity and Newt don't constitute the right any more than OBL represents Muslims."
At the present, this is a false analogy - Hannity and Newt do, unfortunately, constitute a big part of the mindset of the right...
Limbaugh moreso. The guy has 20 million listeners... Very few others have that sort of audience.
The left has our madcows and Dobermans, it's true - but we don't follow them as much.
It's why Fox and Limbaugh rule the airwaves - the right has a lot more listeners who actually follow the loud dunderheads.
And Newt is an intellectual leader of your party...The man who, in '94, set the course for the next few decades of republican politics and is still looked to as the smart Republican who just can't get elected because of his sordid past.
I mean, you can trace what you define as 'right' and 'left' as far back as you want, but that doesn't really affect the makeup of the parties at the present.
Brett, most of the news organizations are leftist, or sympathetic to liberalism which can easily segue into leftism.
Fox is the only conservative news organization that has national television coverage. It competes with CNN, BBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and all the others. But because it is the only conservative news station, if you're a conservative, you watch it.
Newt is fairly intelligent. He writes well. He's on Fox once or twice a week, as is Rove (who I like better) but these guys are like Carville for the left. They are in the wings. Newt may want to be president, but he won't make it.
Conservatives are so hated by the left that it requires someone with a very tough and aggressive nature to stand up to the uniformity demanded by the hostile and vicious left.
If it became more socially acceptable to be conservative, you'd find quieter more thoughtful representatives willing to speak in public forums. But even the women at this point are attacked in public forums. Ann Coulter has been hit in the face with pies. She's called terrible words.
This is why you won't get a thoughtful person like Condoleeza Rice running in a national campaign. She'd be trashed. She's be called the n-word, and anything else the left could throw at her to make her leave the stage.
So what you get are people who can take a beating, and maybe dish it back. Sarah Palin. O'Reilly. Etc. These are very tough people.
But there are quieter people who are also conservative. Shakespeare is a conservative. Jane Austen. T.S. Eliot. Marianne Moore.
And there are some very peculiar conservatives starting to come from Islam: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the most fascinating. She's very soft and feminist, but has an extremely piercing intelligence. We've never seen anyone like this before. I hope there are more to come.
Your theory - conservatives in media are loud and obnoxious because they're the only ones who can stand up to the vicious attacks from the left...
My theory - conservatives in media are loud and obnoxious because that's what sells to conservative listeners.
Any reasonable way to test which theory is correct?
Good question, I think, Brett.
It may also be that we experience people who think in a different way from us as loud and obnoxious.
I don't think of Rush as loud and obnoxious.
I do think of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann as loud and obnoxious.
So this may be a subjective thing.
I find Rush simply to be a rush. I find him charming and congenial and oftimes completely hilarious.
I DO find Hannity off-putting when he won't listen to his guests, and attempts to shut them up by screaming his viewpoint over and over.
I much prefer O'Reilly who often ends his dialogues by saying,"I'll give you the last word."
O'Reilly is a lot better in that regard.
I often agree with Hannity on substance, but not on style.
I often agree with Newt, too, on substance, but I think he takes things too far. Glenn Beck gets overly emotional for me. He hooks me, but I tend to turn him off after a minute or two.
But a guy who strikes me as just plain obnoxious is Anderson Cooper. I don't like how he stares into the camera. I find it creepy and offputting.
And I don't like how he won't think about any real hard questions.
He strikes me as insipid.
I don't trust any newscasters. I think they are all professional politicians now, and have all the downfalls of same. They are all propaganda, all the time.
I don't expect much else. What I like about Rush is that he's so funny about it, so over the top. Loud, yes, obnoxious, no.
Olbermann is obnoxious to me in every sense, even in the clothes he chooses to wear.
Could this all be purely subjective?
Is there a particular newscaster that you actually like to listen to? I find them all repugnant.
But the ones who at least are funny, and open about their hatreds, I at least find emotionally honest. So I like the righties somewhat better due to that.
I can't stand it when people try to hide their subjectivity behind a facade of objectivity. I just think it smells of hypocrisy.
Ah, so you don't believe in Journalism then Kirbster...
I suppose it used to be that you could inform without focusing on being entertaining...now that is not the case.
So you have to take a side, and if you pretend not to, you're even worse?
Whatevs.
Being objective is not possible - trying to be is. Wish we could get back there, but the corporeal pigs in charge of the media don't care about anything but their pocket books.
*sigh*
O'Reilly does try to be, even though he confesses that he isn't. Hannity doesn't even try. Maddow pretends to be objective, but is violently biased, as is Olbermann. Anderson cooper is the worst, because I think he passes as objective, but is incredibly biased on every front, and even rolls his eyes and squints if someone has a perspective he doesn't like. He gets facial tics, and goes into conniptions, and his face turns red.
He was talking with the goof who wants to burn Korans this weekend and he was going apoplectic, and trying to change the pastor's viewpoint, and couldn't, and was about ready to just start screaming, but I think most people watching him probably thought he was being objective.
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