Putting The Brakes On The Ground Zero Mosque

Joe Lieberman thinks someone should put the brakes on the Ground Zero Mosque.  But the Landmarks Commission removed a final hurdle, so it looks as if we have a Sudden Vehicle Acceleration problem.

In a helpful contribution to the lefty faith-based initiative backing this project, Jeffrey Goldberg explains that "If He Could, Bin Laden Would Bomb the Cordoba Initiative", since Bin Laden is opposed to moderate Muslims.  Of course, it may be that Bin Laden and his family are building this project, since the developer won't tell us about his financial backers.  Would this project still be a tribute to tolerance if it were funded by Wahhabi money from Saudi Arabia mixed in with some neo-Nazi cash from Europe? 

Oh, well - the developer has promised it will be all right, so of course we have no worries:

Another contentious issue was how the center would raise the needed $100 million to finance the project, giving rise to speculation that the money could come from extremist groups.

Sharif El-Gamal dismissed such allegations, saying the money would come from a mix of equity, bonds, grants and contributions. He also called the building's proximity to the World Trade Center site accidental and said it was purchased to meet the needs of a growing Muslim community.

Accidental?  The building was damaged in the 9/11 attack, so its historic tie to Ground Zero is much stronger than mere "proximity". I'm not fuly up to speed on downtown Manhattan rel estate, but if radical Muslims wanted to buy property destroyed in the 9/11 attack and put up a Victory Mosque, this is might well be the only property.  I doubt even Bloomberg and the Times would agree to a mosque at Ground Zero itself.

WHEN ANALOGIES FAIL:  Peter Beinart went with the "be tolerant, not a bigot" defense of the mosque and kept typing long after his brain turned off:

The ADL’s rationale for opposing the Ground Zero mosque is that “building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain—unnecessarily—and that is not right.” Huh? What if white victims of African-American crime protested the building of a black church in their neighborhood? Or gentile victims of Bernie Madoff protested the building of a synagogue?

Hmm - I get the difference between building a mosque near Ground Zero and building a mosque at a respectful remove from Ground Zero; it's sort of like saying that I don't mind people dancing, but please, not on my grave.

However, I can't make the leap to Beinart's analogy of "victims of black crime".  Were the criminals motivated by religious extremism?  And can Beinart's victims associate some clear geographic region with the crimes, or would the idea be to ban black churches anywhere near anyone who has ever been victimized by black criminals?  That is absurd in a way that the Ground Zero issue is not.

Is there a Shinto Temple at Pearl Harbor? That would show our tolerance, as well as make a bit of amends for the Japanese internment during WWII and a couple of nukes we dropped.  But apparently the nearest temple is five miles away.  What kind of a country are we living in?

THE CARMELITE NUNS: The story of the Carmelite Nuns at Auschwitz is an interesting analogy.

In the 1980s, Carmelite nuns moved into an abandoned building on the edge of the former Nazi death camp to pray for the souls taken there. As with the dispute over the mosque near Ground Zero, the convent's presence escalated into a clash not only between different faiths but between competing historical narratives. As with today's clash too, it seemed intractable until the Polish pope stepped in.

For Jews, Auschwitz is a symbol of the Shoah, and the presence of a convent looked like an effort to Christianize a place of Jewish suffering. Suspicions were further aroused by a fundraising brochure from an outside Catholic group, which referred to the convent as a "guarantee of the conversion of strayed brothers." The protests mounted over the course of several years and various interfaith agreements, and pointed to the real strains that remained between Poles and Jews over a shared history with very different perspectives.

Many Catholics, not just in Poland, could not understand how nuns begging God's forgiveness and praying for the souls of the departed could possibly offend anyone. There was also a nationalist element. Many members of the Polish resistance had also been murdered at Auschwitz. And again like our present controversy at Ground Zero, intemperate reactions and statements from both sides only inflamed passions.

So what did Pope John Paul II do? He waited, and he counseled. And when he saw that the nuns were not budging—and that their presence was doing more harm than good—he asked the Carmelites to move. He acknowledged that his letter would probably be a trial to each of the sisters, but asked them to accept it while continuing to pursue their mission in that same city at another convent that had been built for them.

From contemporaneous NY Times reporting we see that Catholic nuns were not utterly out of place at Auschwitz:

As news of the drive spread, many Jewish groups in Europe issued statements demanding that Auschwitz be preserved as a monument to the mass killing of the Jews. The establishment of a convent, they said, insulted the memory of the Jews killed in Auschwitz. About 2 million to 2.25 million Jews and 1.25 million to 1.5 million non-Jews, mostly Polish Catholics, died at the camp, according to a spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

If I were splitting hairs, I would argue that the Jews were killed for being Jews; the Polish Catholics were killed for being Polish.

Comments

[boris]

Oh and BTW the 2nd amendment establishes a relationship between the necessary ability to organize a militia and the individual right to arms that is different than the relasionship between freedom of press and freedom of religion. Therefore an argument that the amendments should be worded in "parallel" fashion is also disposed (fubar).

[boris]

"It would be charitable to describe that sentence fragment as incoherent"

The argument that fragment attempts to paraphrase is what is incoherent. Recap:

Boris: The militia is not "necessary" for the right to bear arms, [it is a necessary option for the preservation of freedom.]

Danube: Then there was really no need to include that language.

That is an incoherent ridiculous non sequitur. Why the hell shouldn't it be included if it an existential necessity related to the individual right in question.

Pardon me if my wordcrafting skills are not quite up to proper mockery and laugh out loud derision.

"Neither the right to form a well-regulated militia nor the individual right to keep and bear arms shall be infringed."

Clearer to you maybe ... but it is not an accurate paraphrase of the 2nd. It does not establish the relationship. The militia is not so much asserted as a right as a necessary option to preserve freedom. Calling it a right is actually a downgrade, it's more than a right.

[Danube of Thought]

Therefore an argument that the amendments should be worded in "parallel" fashion is also disposed (fubar).

I didn't argue that they should be worded in parallel. I said that if they been, the ambiguity that has clouded the Second Amendment would have been avoided.

Had the right to organize militias and the right to keep and bear arms been separately stated, there would have been no necessity to establish a relationship between them, any more than there is a necessity to establish a relationship between the right not to have soldiers quartered in one's home and the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. This is not at all difficult, and I am at a loss to know why you are struggling with it, and why it seems to make you so angry.

[boris]

ISTM asserting the existential necessity for the option to organize an effective militia was not intended to be amendable.

Therefore your "clearer" paraphrase fails on at least two levels. Hence your assertion that a clearer paraphrase would have been a simple matter must certainly be false otherwise you would have accomplished it easily.

[boris]

"there would have been no necessity to establish a relationship"

But the 2nd includes the relationship and your paraphrase does not. That is an observalbe fact unaffected by your opinion of it's necessity.

[Ignatz]

--And If you truly believe that the actual wording is clear, then you have missed roughly a century of debate and a number of court cases.--

Not getting into any of the rest of this discussion but the number of SCOTUS cases dealing directly with what the second amendment means is extremely small.
Most consider Heller the first. Miller in 1938 took up the question of what type of weapons private citizens could own (ie could the feds ban or strictly regulate sawed off shotguns among others stemming from the National Firearms Act of 1934)
I don't think there were any, or at least no important, cases arising from the Gun Control Act of 1968.

[Danube of Thought]

ISTM asserting the existential necessity for the option to organize an effective militia was not intended to be amendable.

Wrong. There is no part of the constitution that is, or was intended to be, not susceptible to amendment.

Therefore your "clearer" paraphrase fails on at least two levels. Hence your assertion that a clearer paraphrase would have been a simple matter must certainly be false otherwise you would have accomplished it easily.

These two sentences are gibberish. I have no idea what point you are trying to make, and given what you have had to say thus far I am rapidly losing interest.

[boris]

"I have no idea what point you are trying to make"

That you have no idea what written text actually means, especially mine.

"There is no part of the constitution that is, or was intended to be, not susceptible to amendment."

Fine be that way. The 1st clause of 2A appears to be along the lines of "do not amend or infringe this amendment or freedom warranty will be voided ... no user servicable interpretations allowed".

[Danube of Thought]

the number of SCOTUS cases dealing directly with what the second amendment means is extremely small.

Absolutely true--it has long been thought that they have been avoiding it like the plague, and we are fortunate that they finally took it up with the Court as currently constituted.

But it has been the subject of a great deal of contention in the legal journals and in the lower federal courts. See, e.g., Silveira v. Lockyer (9th Circuit 2002), in which Judge Stephen Reinhardt rule that the Second Amendment guarantees a collective right but not an individual right to bear arms.

[Danube of Thought]

Here is what the constitution says about amending it:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. ”

Nowhere does it say that the Second Amendment is exempt.

Boris, I do not mean to be rude. It is now apparent to me that English is not your first language, and given the linguistic nuances involved in the constitution and its history and interpretations, I think I'll end my participation in this discussion at this point.

[boris]

"Nowhere does it say that the Second Amendment is exempt"

I did not claim it was exempt, just that it appears to include a warning against doing so.

[boris]

The wording of the 2nd Amendment establishes a relationship between the existential necessity for the option and ability to organize a militia and an individual right to arms making that possible ... so that the option and ability will be available when needed. The construction is also in the form of a warning that to tamper is to risk freedom.

The so called clarified paraphrases I've seen offered at first ignored the implied right to organize a militia, then granting that ignored the both relationship and the warning.

To include all features I read from the 2nd in a way that would be impossible to distort or misread seems to be more difficult than claimed.

Simplicity and elegance of (E = mc^2) should not be disparged on the basis that a wordy bloated formulation might be easier to understand ... in this case that is obviously not true. Neither the simple nor the wordy has worked.

[squaredance]

I cannot believe that for even one second some non-trolls here are earnestly putting forward the Left's big lie about the 2nd Amendment.

Rationally approached from formal linguistics, informal "American Philology", logic, philosophy, ethics, morality and law it is a wholly bogus construction and can be deftly disposed of in a matter of seconds to anyone possessing a reasonable mind not thoroughly corrupted by Marxist/"Liberal"/collectivist cant and sophistry. Moreover, in terms of the history of American ideals, traditions and understandings the truth of the matter is blindingly and unequivocally clear, and this equally applies to traditions political, legal and social. No American in the 19th Century with a brain in their head or one lick of common sense ever would have bought into this modern, leftist dodge around the clear meaning of the second amendment.

Such musings in this day and age on the sentence structure of the 2nd amendment or chin stroking about the "founders' intent", as if either were not blinding clear and outside of reasonable controversy, are as sophomoric as they are churlish. Anyone is not a Statist, Marxist or useful idiot should have understood this matter by the age of 25.

I said that it surprises me that JOMers go on this way about the 2nd amendment, but actually it does not. Again, JOMers are in large part not conservatives at all. Just listen to yourselves. The capacity for self deception around here is beyond belief. No wonder we are in such decline.

Goodness, some of you even support the morally hideous and social destructive notion of "gay marriage".

Stop calling yourselves conservatives. You do not know the meaning of the word. You are slightly left of center moderates who just do not like the size of your piece of the pie or how the hard left has outplayed you. Given the chance, you would do as much damage to your this nation and this civlization as they would.

[Ignatz]

--I cannot believe that for even one second some non-trolls here are earnestly putting forward the Left's big lie about the 2nd Amendment.--

Maybe you can't believe it because nobody did.

--Given the chance, you would do as much damage to your this nation and this civlization as they would.--

You don't specify precisely who "you" is but basically that's a load of horse shit.

[Larry Sheldon]

Has it occurred to anybody else that this Mosque thing is yet another too-little-too-late thing.

After the moslem memorial at the Flight 93 site is in progress is too late to worry about it.

After the mosquweis approved is too late.

Why was noting done by our side in Pennsylvania before the moslems got it?

Why can they finish a mosque by 9/11/2011 when we have nothing?