Krauthammer V. Krauthammer At Ground Zero

Please Hammer don't hurt yourself.

Charles Krauthamer delivers a vigorous beatdown of President Obama's support for an Islamic Waffle House:

It's hard to be an Obama sycophant these days. Your hero delivers a Ramadan speech roundly supporting the building of a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York. Your heart swells and you're moved to declare this President Obama's finest hour, his act of greatest courage.

Alas, the next day, at a remove of 800 miles, Obama explains that he was only talking about the legality of the thing and not the wisdom -- upon which he does not make, and will not make, any judgment.

You're left looking like a fool because now Obama has said exactly nothing: No one disputes the right to build; the whole debate is about the propriety, the decency of doing so.

Yike - Obama sycophant (and fellow Postie) Greg Sargent's ears are burning.  If they are still attached.

However, The Hammer scored an "Own Thumb" with the claim that "No one disputes the right to build"; in fact, in an earlier column Mr. Krauthammer had clearly called for a government intervention curtailing that very right:

America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero.

Build it anywhere but there.

I have no problem with moral suasion, boycotts, protests, letter-writing campaigns, and the many types of private protest well known to the Community Organizer in Chief in the White House.  But bending the law to prevent the Ground Zero Mosque (which the AP can refer to as the Victory Mosque) would be wrong, as Mr. Krauthammer has belatedly acknowledged.

SHORTER SARGENT:  Greg Sargent responds.  His gist - yes, we should feel some passing empathy for the 9/11 families, but ultimately, we must be more worried abut giving offense to the Muslim world, since the 9/11 families won't blow us up and alienated Muslims might.

He wraps that in the Constitution, but still:

And the question here is not whether the wounds of 9/11 should be weighed as a factor. Rather, it's whether those senstitivities should ultimately dictate our position on whether the center should proceed.

The arguments in favor of the project have all been ably hashed out elsewhere by people who know far more about national security than I do. Allowing it to proceed is an important reaffirmation of American values that we must always support -- no matter what. Building it would send a strong signal about American democracy and religious tolerance to the Muslim world. Moving it would give terror recruiters a potent symbol to foment anti-American sentiment.

One American value is that different groups try to get along with mutual respect.  Mutual.

As to the national security argument, who knows?  I have said before that an Afghan village elder weighing his choice between Petraeus and the Taliban might blink at the notion that we have allowed what looks like a Victory Mosque in Manhattan.  If this elder infers that an America  that won't fight for itself at home probably won't fight for him in Afghanistan, then the job of Petraeus and his troops becomes more difficult.

In a similar vein, denying this mosque might not enrage moderate Muslims at all - it might strike them as utter common sense that we won't allow a Victory Mosque.

Comments

[Danube of Thought]

as Mr. Krauthammer has belatedly acknowledged

When, where and how?

[anduril]

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero.

I went into this recently. Auschwitz (now Oświęcim) was the site where huge numbers of Poles were exterminated like vermin--along with even huger numbers of Jews as well as less huge numbers of Gypsies and others. All treated like vermin by German Nazis. Could someone please explain how a convent of Polish nuns (dedicated to praying for all victims) near (not "at") the Auschwitz site offends "common decency"? (Btw, the convent was near Auschwitz I, where most of the victims were ethnic Poles.) And while you're at it, could you explain what Krauthammer's problem is.

[anduril]

Just to rehearse the Auschwitz numbers:

A larger study started later by Franciszek Piper used timetables of train arrivals combined with deportation records to calculate 960,000 Jewish deaths and 140,000-150,000 ethnic Polish victims, along with 23,000 Roma and Sinti (Gypsies),[53] a figure that has met with significant agreement from other scholars.

Where is the offense against "common decency?" What is Krauthammer's problem?

[anduril]

Per Byron York, h/t Powerline:

The question did not come out of nowhere. As Obama said, his grandfather was a Muslim. His father was raised a Muslim before becoming, by Obama's account, "a confirmed atheist." Obama's stepfather was a Muslim. His half-sister Maya told the New York Times that her "whole family was Muslim."

Obama spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia and later, in a conversation with the Times' Nicholas Kristof, described the Arabic call to prayer, the beginning of which he recited by heart, as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset." Given all that, it is entirely accurate and fair to describe Obama as having Muslim roots. ...

Eighteen months later, when President Obama traveled to Cairo for a long-awaited speech to the Muslim world, the White House was saying, and the press was reporting, the same thing Kerrey had to apologize for. "President Obama is now embracing his Muslim roots," ABC News' "Nightline" announced. "President Obama's speech ... was laced with references to the Quran and his Muslim roots," said USA Today. "Obama touched on his own Muslim roots," reported the Associated Press. ...

Since Smitty the barber first asked the question 25 years ago, Barack Obama has been reluctant to discuss his Muslim roots. Except, of course, when he's been eager to discuss his Muslim roots. And roots aside, to the outside observer, Obama sometimes doesn't appear to practice any faith at all. Put it all together, and is it any wonder the public is confused?

[anduril]

hey, hit, what are the percentages? what's your cutoff point anyway? can i declare victory now? (no, i won't be going away.)

[anduril]

oh, shoot, TM's still way ahead. back to work.

[narciso]

I've gotten to the point, that I do not want this anywhere, 'sam I am' not on Park Place,
Houston Street, Broadway, I guess that make me intolerant

[d-man]

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero.

Build it anywhere but there.

Is Krauthammer advocating that the law be bent, or that mosque builders voluntarily respect sacred ground?

I'm not sure the two columns contradict each other.

[Jane]

I see this thread has turned into all anduril, all the time. Yawn

[squaredance]

To stop this hideousness there is no act that would be wrong. Try to grasp the seriousness of this.

"Bend" the law? what does that mean? Correct manipulations of the law by the Left? Stop their incessant perversions of our Republican traditions in order to destroy it?

"Bend the Law" indeed. You heard the same sort of nonsense out of Nazi, Soviet and Maoist Communist, and Latin American Socialist and Peronist propagandists.

This sort of thing is straight out of Gramsci and Alinski. Pervert the meaning of the law, pretend this has not happened, and then throw the language of the law back in the face of the decent and the lawful. Have we forgotten the Cold War struggle so soon?

When will we learn? Look how they have completely turn the law against Christians. We need to understand that we are in a state of war with the Left, and it is total war.

Some of you people should travel to the EU and see what damage the Socialist/tranzis Muslim immigration front in their social warfare against the West has wrought. Europe is in big trouble because of it. Go to Rotterdam or Malmo. Just walk down the street in downtown Copenhagen or the East End in London.

This Mosque, no matter where it is built in Manhattan, will be used to funnel money through out the city and State of NY. It is a beachhead funded by our mortal enemies--and that is big international money; it is not some local group of "worshipers" (and here I am use the term as loosely as I use it charitably) who merely want a house of "worship". It is a front in a war. We must not allow the Left to do to the USA what they have done to Europe. We must not go down that path! (And be cautioned, if the peoples of the EU ever get control of the situation, there will be an "ethnic cleansing" over there that will be unlike anything the world has ever seen since the Golden Horde.)

Islam is at the level of Communism, Fascism, and National Socialism. It is a great and profound evil. It must be resisted.

Make no mistake, the Left seek to use Islam, along with Hispanic immigration to shatter America at all levels: Spiritually, politically, culturally, morally socially and yes, ethnically.

This is not conjecture: Witness Europe. The USA has no obligation whatsoever to become a Muslim nation, to be a haven for Muslims or to even have a significant Muslim population. When it approach any of these ends it approaches its own destruction. It is time to say this loud and clear.

They mean to spread chaos, disruption and despair. They sow the seeds of our destruction. Do not let them--we are running out of time.

It is absurd: You have the clearest indication of what the left is about since Vietnam, the biggest blunder in a generation, and you are still letting the Left "frame" things. Do not enter into their trap. Do not "reason" with them. Call them out. Expose them. Do not imagine that they have any morality whatsoever or the slightest legitimacy. They would eat your children if that is what it would take to reach their goals.

Establishment "conservative pundits" like Krauthamer continue to disappoint here.

This country needs to wake up and soon. Now is not the time to back down on the GMZ,

It is still NO, and hell NO! Do not give them an inch. Face down their sophistry.

Here is perhaps the most perfect chance to show the left's treason, depravity and moral bankruptcy.

Watch the establishment right blow it by letting the Left manipulate the laws and cynically sloganeer their way around it all.

Call them by their true names: Internal enemies and fifth Columnists. Traitors!

If this cannot turn the tide, then one is at a loss to imagine what would.

[bunkerbuster]

The self-indulgent sentimentality associated with opposition to the Park51 mosque is no less surprising than the resort to classic totalitarian “enemy of the state” reasoning. The Soviets typically dealt with dissenters by branding them as insane and thereby confining them to prison for “treatment.” The evidence of insanity was always at hand since, by definition, only the insane would dissent. And a dissenter who sought to defend himself with fact and logic was even more easily shown to be an enemy of the state, since only an insane and disloyal person would fail to accept the case-closing evidence that the dissent itself demonstrated. Catch 22.
Mosque opponents apply exactly the same logic. The mere fact that someone wants to build the mosque is evidence that they cannot be moderate and do not seek harmony between their faith and others, since, by definition, the mosque is provocative.
In any rational discussion where facts hold sway, the Soviet totalitarian logic was easily disarmed by noting the flaw in its initial premise that dissent equals insanity. The same goes for the anti-mosque logic. We can simply point to the fact that a mosque does not equal a provocation. Honest people can debate that point, but there is no honesty in the debate over whether a provocation by terrorists should or should not be allowed, given the lack of evidence that said mosque is in fact – not in sentiment or imagination – a provocation.

[caro]

If they can't build the Victory Mosque at Ground Zero,why bother?

Now 5.5 million Google hits

[Danube of Thought]

Seems to me that he is advocating that the zoning ordinance be changed so as to prohibit its being built, as MarkO has been advocating here. To me, it's a close call whether he's advocating a bending of the law: zoning laws routinely (and in every American city except Houston) impose huge restraints on the uses to which private property can be put. So it would appear that he's advocating the use of a procedure that passes constitutional muster.

Or does it? No question in my mind that if, shortly after 9/11/, NYC had passed a zoning ordinance that would have limited the sorts of uses to which property within X distance of Ground Zero could be put, and the limits would have precluded the mosque (among many other things), that would have settled the issue.

But if it were done now, I think a court might take a very hard look at the circumstances and conclude that it was an unconstitutional application of the zoning power.

But I don't know...

[Threadkiller]

--"The mere fact that someone wants to build the mosque have a law is evidence that they cannot be moderate and do not seek harmony between their faith view that immigration can be done legally and others, since, by definition, the mosque law that mirrors federal law is provocative.

[Extraneus]

Time for another faux pas by the Administration. This one's been milked pretty dry, and they're starting to use it for a smokescreen.

Record unemployment numbers, commie recess appointments and the like don't even register much of a blip anymore.

Maybe Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh will open up a new front today. (Do we have any other 4-Star generals in the VRWC these days?)

[Threadkiller]

How do I fix my italics goof?

[Extraneus]

Uh oh. Pretty early in the thread.

(I hopefully fixed it for IE, TK, but Firefox users will see it 'til the end. Of course, those are the same users who have the advantage of the narcisolator.)

[Comanche Voter]

Not to worry re time for another faux pas.

Obama should never wear metal spiked golf shoes, because he can reliably be expected to step on his membrum virile at least once a week. When the mosque is milked dry, he'll serve up another political meadow muffin for all of us to dissect. Trust me.

[Jane]

You can't threadkiller - at least in Firefox. Which sucks but we deal with it.

[narciso]

Well Tammy Bruce, is about at Col, rank, but she's not as well known. I would get angry
at 'otto' but he's too stupid to understand
the issues involved

[maryrose]

OT; From the other thread. Obama's grades and his using Affirmative action as he registered as an Indonesian is why those records are closed. Birth certificate issue is either a name change or some goofy business about his father or a dual cltizenship issue. The fact that he hides all this information is suspect. Advantages to him -originally he got some leverage but as more and more people see him as "the other" it hurts him and his brand. This religion issue about his being a muslim is pretty much baked in the cake and he and the WH. will be hard pressed to dis prove it.

[Threadkiller]

Thanks Extraneus. You fixed it! Since I believe I am a "high vlue" target of the narcisolator, this won't help my cause. Sorry everybody. For those who have me blocked, extraneus can tell you who the culprit was.

:-(

[Chubby]

you really need to go back to analogy school

the soviet power structure would equate to the state, the people in power, your side of the aisle, dontcha know, financing Rauf mosque fundraising tours

the protestors are the people who are challenging the Rauf mosque, with the support of a few power people (Reid, Dean) who are probably forming a house coup against the party head

the rest of your post is just a bunch of muddled up incoherent gibberish.

[Extraneus]

I doubt anyone's narcisolating you, TK.

Btw, the way to fix open tags is to post a closing tag or even a few of them in another comment. Just doesn't work for Firefox.

[Danube of Thought]

I'm on Firefox. I'm seeing the italics but it's no big deal.

[Danube of Thought]

"...the protestors are the people who are challenging the Rauf mosque, with the support of a few power people (Reid, Dean)..."

They also include a number of incumbent Dem. congressmen, a number of influential Mohammedans, and about 2/3 of the American public. All morally bankrupt, and manifestly a part of the insidious Soviet power structure, whose pervasive and sinister influence continues to this day...

[Ignatz]

--We can simply point to the fact that a mosque does not equal a provocation. Honest people can debate that point, but there is no honesty in the debate over whether a provocation by terrorists should or should not be allowed, given the lack of evidence that said mosque is in fact – not in sentiment or imagination – a provocation.--

I'm doubtful even you know what most of that mess meant, but it is quite obvious your assertion that a mosque is not a provocation is false on its face. A majority of Americans and New Yorkers are in fact provoked by it.
Equating that justifiable sense of provocation with the Soviet's abuse and sometimes murder of innocents in insane asylums is typical of your effortless passive-aggressive amorality and cheapness of thought.

[Extraneus]

Wait, it looks like the Administration is trying to change the subject, so maybe it's not quite time yet.

Just heard Hillary on the radio announcing some sort of formal request to "both sides" that the Middle East "peace process" be re-started.

Nothing like the ol' peace process for a breaking news headline. Sheesh. Does *anyone* buy that?

[squaredance]

BB: can't you go help mommy with the laundry or somethin'? I mean, you already living down there and all, right?

What a useful idiot. What an evil, ignorant, gullible child.

The self-indulgent sentimentality associated with opposition to the Park51 mosque is no less surprising than the resort to classic totalitarian “enemy of the state” reasoning.

This is pure drivel and wholly at odds with the facts on the ground and the history of the Left's aggression towards the west.

1) You have not the slightest idea of the internal motivations of actual adults are. You have not capable of grasp at even the most superficial level what good and decent American know, think, feel or believe. You have no legitimate vantage whatsoever to judge decent Americans. Remember too that you are talking about the vast majority of us , and if you think otherwise you have completely left all reason, sanity and common sense far behind. You are just reflexively spouting received agi-prop. You should feel deep shame, but you are such a moral cretin that the very notion of shame itself confuses you. Hint: it is not a "rhetorical technique".

2) It is the Left that are ramming this through the legal system. It is the left that is attempting to use the Government to silence opposition as "enemies of the state. We have the preposterous threat from Pelosi to "investigate dissenters". It is they that engage is "self-indulgent sentimentality". Here you indulge in projection.

2) You are damn right that Soviet tactic are being employed, but you are wrong about who is doing it. It is the Left, the students, epigones and the disciples of the Soviets, that are engaged in this, and it is they who deploy the state apparatus toward their ends.

This they always do. You are projecting here as well.

3) The USSR what full of useful idiots like you. Go pick up a real history of the era. Better yet, go talk to someone who lived actually lived through the Soviet Regime and is honest enough and decent enough to tell you the truth. He will set you straight on just who uses "Soviet Tactics" in the USA.

Your assertion is absurd on the face of it. Here not only to you yet again succumb to projection, here you engage in deep immorality and encourage great evil, all the while preening in moral posturing based on irrational, dishonest and unsupportable assertions. Immaturity, minor personality disorders or poor education is no excuse. These matters are not difficult to understand. They are most grave matters indeed.

Yet again you invert reality because your narcissism, your ideological programming and your moral failure in refusing to examine that programming has led you to moral depravity and intellectual bankruptcy. It is leading you toward treason.

Stop being used by your nations enemies. One day you will grow up and understand what you have been a part of. You will not think so much of yourself then.

[Terry Gain]

in fact, in an earlier column Mr. Krauthammer had clearly called for a government intervention curtailing that very right:

I don't think K's words justify yours, TM. So far as I'm aware I'm the only person who has said they (and they aren't even American Muslims) should not be allowed to erect a Victory Mosque on the ashes of 3,000 innocents masssacred in the name of Islam.

It is an act of war, which will serve as a recruiting tool. Declare the entire area a National Memorial and put an end to this outrage.

[Ignatz]

--How do I fix my italics goof?--

TK,
Just post anything, such as boris's "italiacto" with the open italics tag before it and at least one closed tag behind it. Sometimes one closed tag does not suffice so I put about three in a row.

[windansea]

British philospher Karl Popper

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them…. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade

[JamesH]

The proposed mosque is a provocation in a way that the other mosques in the area are not. The current closest mosque is the Manhattan Majid about 4 blocks from ground zero. It has been around for years and served the financial community. It lost members on 9/11 and the imam and congregants have spoken out clearly against terrorism. Nobody has a problem with the Manhattan Majid.

The Cordoba house mosque on the other hand is a new mosque to serve lower Manhattan. Was the location near ground zero chosen randomly? Hardly. Imam Faisal says he purposely chose the location and intends the mosque and community center to be a place to improve American-Islamic relations. Even if you take him at his word, his project has already failed. Beyond that, if you look into his background and the sources of funding, it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of his project.

Most churches, synagogues, temples, and other houses of worship in the US are funded by the congregation. In contrast, most mosques are at least partially funded by the Islamic Trust of North America, whose money mainly comes from the Persian Gulf region. Saudi Arabia is an officially Wahabi state and the 9/11 attackers were Wahabis. It's not unreasonable to wonder if Wahabi money is funding a place for the families of the attackers to come and look down on their relative's work

[boris]

</i></i></i></i>Italiacto!

The general error is to use 2 open tags instead of 1 of each. Therefore at least 2 are needed to close.

[Frau Steingehirn]

Why can't the jerks at the NYT and WaPo write as well as TM? ::smooch::

If the Victory Mosque is denied through zoning, how will St. Nicholas be re-built?

This administration is already branding critics and dissenters insane. Remember when dissent was patriotic?

[maryrose]

Mideast talks the last battleground for the feckless. I still remember Albright chasing down Arafat in her heels trying to bring him back to the table in the momentous Clinton years. Carter's only positive memory of his tenure. It's the "when all else fails" option. The fact that Hillary is announcing it is doubly ironic. Obama can't be bothered -he's on vacay,doncha know

[Frau Steingehirn]

Jane, did you get my email? I hesitate to phone because I know you are out nightly kicking rear and plotting with the troops.

[Clarice]

If they had fixed the zoning after 9/11

In fact the ashes were still smoldering when the credentialed morons put in charge of deciding the rebuilding were trying to build a tolerance museum on the site.

What is it with these people? Why not just go online and order up some of those latex s and m thingies and leave us alone?

[Obama is testing the limits of our tolerance.]

As W&S and KP point out, there are limits to tolerance. What kind of person tolerates anything?
=================

[Neo]

CBS Grade Obama Poll LUN

[Chubby]

((You are just reflexively spouting received agi-prop.))

my sense is that his status is similar to Wormwood's in The Screwtape Letters ...

an ambitious and aspiring junior, who in this case spends countless hours inventing arguments against the enemy that he hopes will catch the smiles of his bosses on his way down the ladder

I doubt his bosses are amused

[Jeff]

lest we all forget, Islam was founded by a bloodthirsty warlord with a taste for pre-teen girls ...

ROP :)

[squaredance]

windansea: There is in this also an (intended) ontological confusion about "tolerance". true tolerance does not imply the shirking of moral judgment or moral relativism.

"Tolerance" of evil is not a virtue, it is a vice.

This is all a part of sophistry of the Left: A misuse of language and a willful clouding of the metaphysics and ethics behind their assertions. They pervert discourse by masking their arguments in commonly understood language. As they have done to the words "progress", "liberal" and "discriminate" so have they done to the word "tolerance".

They are, of course, not interested in "tolerance" at all. They are interest is nihilistic destruction.

Tolerance, in and of itself, and so broadly defined as we use it today, is not a moral imperative or even necessarily a virtue.

When it is enforced by law, it is not tolerance at all: it is coercion.

[Extraneus]

God told him to do that stuff, Jeff.

[Where's Cecil?]

Luv ya' MaryRose. Teach those children well.
============

[Chubby]

((There is in this also an (intended) ontological confusion about "tolerance". true tolerance does not imply the shirking of moral judgment or moral relativism.

"Tolerance" of evil is not a virtue, it is a vice.))

but PC disallows use of the word "evil"

we really have to stop letting them steamroller us in the linguistic battle

[Steve Mosher and Tom Fuller wrote 'The CRUtape Letters' about the ClimateGate emails.]

Chubby, can't have CS Lewis on bb's reading list, now, can we?
=============

[windansea]

Feisal Abdul Rauf and the Sharia Index

http://bigpeace.com/cbrim/2010/08/17/ground-zero-mosques-hidden-websites-follow-the-shariah/

sooner or later this is going to come out

[Threadkiller]

Best I can find for the firefox screw up that I caused. The site is fixed for IE users already.

1. Get out of any blogs that you are posting on or get off the Internet altogether.

2. Clear your personal browsing history.

3. Start over.

I don't know if this works because I do not use firefox.

Option 2 would be waiting for BB to make this topic unbearable and exiting then.

[centralcal]

Option 2 would be waiting for BB to make this topic unbearable and exiting then.

OR, alternatively, A-----l

[Extraneus]

Well, it'll get fixed when the page turns, so the more comments the better.

So Mr. Big (Rush) isn't talking about the mosque today. Instead, he's hammering the question of Obama's religion. :-)

[Jane]

Jane, did you get my email? I hesitate to phone because I know you are out nightly kicking rear and plotting with the troops.

I just replied.

[I'd run a mile for a Turner comment.]

Hah, four minutes later he shows up on the other thread.
=============================

[bear1909]

The Enemies Within are driven by beliefs and, therefore, their minds are controlled by the ideas of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Gramsci, Alinsky, Mao and other killers.

The GZM is a big picture situation that plays Americans who happen to Muslim against Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindi, and other religious groups. Elimination of religion is the goal. However, having said that, a bankrupt West needs Islamic cash at the Globalist table to finance the "new economy".

read allahboutit: http://www.asmasociety.org/home/p_support.html

[Rick Ballard]

"So Mr. Big (Rush) isn't talking about the mosque today. Instead, he's hammering the question of Obama's religion."

He better watch out - Imam Chernobama is famous for his fatwas. Look at what he's doing to the Democrat Party.

[PD]

CBS Grade Obama Poll

Interesting that his two best grades are on Iraq and Afghanistan, probably because most of the work was already done for him by He Whose Eight Years of Failed Policies Must Not be Repeated.

[anduril]

The flaw in what Popper was saying is simply that "tolerance" is not an end, it is a means to an end, which is the preservation of a certain type of society. It is the substance or nature of that society that is the good that is sought, not blind, formal and substanceless tolerance.

Therefore, when an ideology attacks the good of the society that we seek to preserve--as Islam (and Marxism) assuredly attacks the good of all Western societies, the Western vision of what it means to be human--extending tolerance to that ideology violates the intent of tolerance as a means to an end, since tolerance then enables the destruction rather than the preservation of that society. The validity of any means to an end is limited by its usefulness in attaining that end. If it isn't useful to attaining the end then it not be clung to mindlessly, as if the means were itself the end.

This is the flaw of all formalist moralities.

[Danube of Thought]

That poll is seven months old.

[bgates]

"CBS Grade Obama Poll"

-is from January.

[daveinboca]

Thank you squaredance, for giving mamma's boy bb the advice to help her with the laundary, after soiling himself metaphorically on this thread....!

I am a State Dept. [ret'd] Arabist who served in 4 Arab countries and spent long periods of time in Pakistan, so when TM avers that "I have said before that an Afghan village elder weighing his choice between Petraeus and the Taliban might blink at the notion that we have allowed what looks like a Victory Mosque in Manhattan. If this elder infers that an America that won't fight for itself at home probably won't fight for him in Afghanistan, then the job of Petraeus and his troops becomes more difficult,". I cannot agree more. This is a victory monoment built by an Ikhwan {muslim brotherhood] affiliate in honor of the 911 murder of 3000 innocents by cowardly terrorists. Al-Rauf and the CAIR fifth column for Hamas are in league with the terror-enabling MSM in their drive to impose a Hate America Nest of Quislings Theme Park51 near Ground Zero.

Andy McCarthy spells it out in his new book The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

I hope bb folds those laundered clothes he soils so assiduously in trying to emulate an ink-stained wretch....!

And Karl Popper is being proved correct daily in his assessment: indeed, tolerance is usually understood as weakness in the minds of unevolved militarist autocrats of a theocratic stripe---of both the Sunni & Shi'ite variety.

[pagar]

"Mideast talks the last battleground for the feckless."

"And sources close to the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas quoted him as saying that direct talks with Israel were not in the offing because "a big military surprise awaits the Middle East.""

Doesn't sound like any peace is near, to me.

[Danube of Thought]

I have come to the point where I promptly tune out those who want to lecture us about what it is that we need to show to the Muslim world. I feel no need to show them anything more than a wine breath and the back of my hand. And maybe a strong horse.

[bunkerbuster]

The mosque is not a provocation because the Imam who is building it has chosen to include a memorial to 911 victims and has a lifelong record of advocating moderate Sufi Islam. So does his wife. They have both been very active in building bridges between the two communities.

The more we look at the facts and ignore innuendo and fabrication, the more the case for Imam Rauf's moderate record of bridge-building becomes overwhelming.
Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has said: ``As far as we're concerned, he is what he is, a moderate imam. He certainly has spoken out against some of the extremism in the Islamic world.”

The Imam not only offered to help the FBI track terrorists, but he is also on the State Department payroll. Why would an Imam who supports radical Islam HELP the U.S. expand its influence in the Middle East. Far more important, why would any radical Muslim trust Imam Rauf, let alone actively support his efforts, which so consistently and directly deny the validity of radical Islam?

The mosque is not actually a conventional religious facility, but is more accurately described as a community center. It includes a swimming pool, culinary school and 500 seat auditorium that will be open to men and women of all faiths. This is in no way consistent with the needs or philosophy of a radical Muslim, who would no doubt consider men and women swimming together in the same building as a mosque a dastardly provocation.

I oppose any mosque anywhere that represents terrorism. I really don't care if its in the slums of Dearborn, Michigan or the primest block of Manhattan. Religious freedom isn't subject to the emotional needs of anyone, nor is the fight against terrorism.

Daveinboca nails it! ``Tolerance is usually understood as weakness in the minds of unevolved militarist autocrats.''

Anduril confesses: ``The validity of any means to an end is limited by its usefulness in attaining that end.'' IOW: The end justifies the means when it's politically convenient.

The mosque is conceived as a monument to tolerance. The fact that it has provoked intolerance is a reflection of the values of its opponents, not of the mosque itself.

[bunkerbuster]

Blurring the distinction between the Islam of this particular mosque and that of the 911 attackers is no different than blurring the distinction between ordinary U.S. military personnel and the sadists who tortured people at Abu Ghraib.

[glasater]

Always have to get in the last word don't you bunkerbuster...