This is a FLASHBACKto August of 2010 to a Time Magazine article titled, “Is America Islamophobic?” Michael challenges Mr. Ratnesar on many points in the article/society. This is a VIMEO recovery and meant for an old post I titled: “Discussing Mosques and Men” (https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/discussing-mosques-and-men/)
You’re all racists, homophobes, sexists, Islamophobic, heterosexist, speciesist, paternalistic, hate-filled, bigoted, uncompassionate, war-loving, theocratic, gun-toting, flag-waving, patriotic jerks! With that said, could we now deal with the mosque issue using common sense and logic? (TOWNHALL)
Big Peace (BREITBART) is highlighting some missed names and quotes in the mainstream media:
….Akbar Ahmed, Professor of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, says he sympathizes with those who object to the mosque’s planned proximity to Ground Zero. “For most Americans, 9/11 remains as an open wound, and anything associated with Islam, even for Americans who want to understand Islam – to have an Islamic center with so much publicity is like rubbing salt in open wounds,” Ahmed told AP.
The current Miss USA, Rami Fakih, who is the first Arab-American to wear the crown and is a practicing Muslim, agrees with the critics. She told CBS Inside Edition, “It shouldn’t be so close to the World Trade Center. We should be more concerned with the tragedy than religion.”
Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, told The Daily Caller that the Ground Zero mosque “is not a humble Islamic statement. A mosque such as this is actually a political structure that casts a shadow over a cemetery, over hallowed ground. 9/11 was the beginning of a kinetic war, it is not an opportunity for cultural exchange. It was the beginning of a conflict with those who want to destroy our way of life.” Jasser added, “I am in no way looking to infringe on First Amendment issues. I approach this as a Muslim that is dedicated to reform.”
Shi’ite Muslim Stephen Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, wrote an article called “A Muslim Case Against the Mosque” on his blog. In it, he argued that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s plan to build the Ground Zero center was not to promote reconciliation and understanding. Instead, says Schwartz, “the plan is obviously provocative and confrontational – and it’s hard to imagine that Rauf didn’t know that long before it became public.”
“That’s one big reason why American Muslims, like other Americans, should reject the project – particularly if they really want to adhere to traditional Islamic principles. I say that as a Muslim convert since 1997,” Schwartz wrote on August 3. “Traditional, moderate Islam teaches Muslims living in non-Muslim-majority societies to obey the laws and customs of the countries in which they reside. They must avoid conflict with their non-Muslim neighbors whenever possible.”
Schwartz isn’t for pushing the First Amendment to the point of antagonizing people – to him, the issue should be courtesy toward one’s neighbor. In this case, he seems to agree with non-Muslim conservative critics that the mosque near Ground Zero is insensitive to others.
Muslims from other countries are chiming in their support for the critics. “Building a mosque there will increase hatred between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West,” Gamal Awad, a professor at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, told the Los Angeles Times. “It will further connect Islam with a horrible event.”….
Like most political battles, the debate over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan is hampered by each side’s inability to recognize any legitimacy in the other’s positions.
Journalist Mary Jacoby explores this dynamic in a compelling essay on her site, MainJustice.com. The proposal’s defenders, she writes, fail to acknowledge that many American mosques are financed by foreign interests who meld a political agenda with their conservative religious beliefs, often squeezing out moderate Muslim voices.
Mainstream media outlets help perpetuate this dominance by ignoring the sullied histories of national Islamist groups who are treated as the voice of all American Muslims:
“If liberals would acknowledge the origins and nature of groups like the Islamic Society of North America, the International Institute of Islamic Thought and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, it would help diffuse the climate of intolerance that they deplore.
Conservatives wouldn’t be able to complain of a grand conspiracy of ignorance. And all Americans would become more sophisticated about distinguishing between Muslims who truly share values of religious freedom, and those who in some ways don’t – not to discriminate against anybody, but to more clearly define the debate.”
A recent CBS News poll found that 71 percent of respondents believe it is “not appropriate” to build the mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero, including a majority (57 percent) of Democrats. A Time poll found that 68 percent are following the issue “somewhat closely” or “very closely.”
When asked if they “support or oppose the proposal to build the Cordoba House,” New Yorkers said they oppose the facility, which is expected to cost $100 million, by a 63-27 percent margin. At the same time, by a 64-to-28 percent margin, New Yorkers say Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has the constitutional right to build it.
“A majority of every demographic group – by party, region, age, gender, political philosophy – agrees that there is a Constitutional right to proceed,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “Even a majority of those who oppose building the mosque agree by a margin of 51-42 percent that they have the right to build it.”
Flopping Aces posted a story (ultimately tracked to Atlas Shrugs) where hours of audio of the proposed Ground Zero Mosque Imam is showing his true colors:
The Mosque issue isn’t going away and it just got more interesting. Apparently Steve Emerson, Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism (a large storehouse of archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups), has unearthed hours of audio in which Imam Rauf sounds not so moderate after all. The audio hasn’t been released yet, nor the context, but from the sounds of it….the context won’t matter a whole lot:
Steve Emerson has unearthed 13 hours of audio tape of Imam Rauf. Emerson and his team of investigators has spent the past four weeks going through the newly found material. Rauf is a “radical extremist cleric who cloaks himself in sheep’s clothing.”
Among the shocking revelations Emerson’s team will reveal next week — they found Rauf:
Defending wahhabism – a puritanical version of Islam that governs Saudi Arabia
Calling for the elimination of Israel by claiming a one-nation state, meaning no more Jewish State.
Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project fact checks some of the positions in this radical audio, which some are positions the radical Left take as well. Audio of Emerson on the Bill Bennett show can be found here. Steve Emerson shows how Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf may have committed a felony. This is a growing story and my position that says this will bit the Dems in the ass is coming to fruition.
Daisy Khan, wife of Ground Zero Mosque developer Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, said on ABC News This Week that she’s worried about rampaging Islamophobia sweeping the United States.
“this is like a metastasized antisemitism… It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims.”
Syndicated radio talk show host Tammy Bruce, a pro-defense libertarian and gay rights activist responded with “Little Daisy Whines” on her blog TammyBruce.com:
Daisy Khan doesn’t seem to understand is that perhaps this isn’t about Muslims at all, but about Americans protecting and defending a site that is now precious to us. The malignant Narcissism of these people is astounding and so encompassing they, like the Obama admin in fact, cannot see beyond their own self-obsession. Little Daisy is loathsome–we didn’t start this, they did. We didn’t choose the location, they did. And the gall to claim opposition to the GZ mosque is “metastasized antisemitism” is the same as our own government calling Tea Party Patriots Nazis, UnAmerican, and the Mob. They’re all the same. There’s only one group of people who were mass murdered on 911 and that was Americans, not Muslims. And there has been only one group continuing to implement mass murder since then–Muslims. And there is one country that still calls for the mass extinction of Jews in the world, and it’s a Muslim country.
Thursday during the 1 p.m. hour, CNN’s “Newsroom,” this exchange took place between CNN reporter Ali Velshi andTime Magazine’s deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh:
VELSHI: The name Cordoba- some people are associating it with Muslim rule and bloody battles, when, in fact, Cordoba was one of the finest times in relations between the major religions.
GHOSH: Exactly right- in interfaith discourse-
VELSHI: Yeah-
GHOSH: And the great mosque of Cordoba that people are talking about and that Newt Gingrich was talking about- the man who built it, the Muslim prince who built it, bought it from a Christian group- paid money for it and bought it from a Christian group. And there was not a lot of alarm and anger raised then.
[….]
Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883), the great Orientalist scholar and Islamophile (i.e., by any objective standard, notwithstanding Ghosh’s uncontrolled spraying of the ridiculous charge of “Islamophobia”), wrote a four-volume magnum opus (published in 1861 and translated into English by Francis Griffin Stokes in 1913), Histoire des Musselmans d’Espagne (A History of the Muslims in Spain). Pace Ghosh’s distorted reportage, here is Dozy’s historical account of the mid-8th century “conversion” of a Cordovan cathedral to a mosque:
All the churches in that city [Cordova] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque. The [Muslim] Government having approved of the scheme, the Christians were compelled to hand over half of the edifice. This was clearly an act of spoliation, as well as an infraction of the treaty. Some years later, Abd-er Rahman I [i.e., the “Muslim prince” in Ghosh’s redacted narrative] requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral….
[….]
…the contemporary scholar J.M. Safran discusses an early codification of the rules of the marketplace (where Muslims and non-Muslims would be most likely to interact), written by al-Kinani (d. 901), a student of the Cordovan jurist Ibn Habib (d. 853), “…known as the scholar of Spain par excellence,” who was also one of the most ardent proponents of Maliki doctrine in Muslim Spain:
the problem arises of “the Jew or Christian who is discovered trying to belnd with the Muslims by not wearing the riqā [cloth patch, which might be required to have an emblem of an ape for a Jew, or a pig for a Christian] or zunnār [belt].” Kinani’s insistence that Jews and Christians wear the distinguishing piece of cloth or belt required of them is an instance of a legally defined sartorial differentiation being reconfirmed…His insistence may have had as much to do with concerns for ritual purity and food prohibitions as for the visible representation of social and political hierarchy, and it reinforced limits of intercommunal relations….
I enjoy political cartoons. One cartoonist whom tends to be moderate-left is John Cole. I comment here-and-there on his work. the most recent comments from me were on this particular drawing he did:
I wrote the following to John and others reading his comment section (I added some emphasis that I could not on his site):
This is something the people who support this particular mosque will be regretful for (well, maybe not regretful, I mean the Left is still proud they essentially killed millions in Vietnam by pulling out). There are already ties to bad money and some supremacist quotes and writings popping up from this Imam and his financial sources.
The funny thing is ~ I mean besides the idea that the people who supported the student uprising in Iran are now supporting the same people that squashed that uprising ~ the people that we want to support [truly moderate and reformational Muslims] WOULDN’T WANT to build a mosque here.
One other point [sorta]. The argument seems to be that if you oppose this mosque you are fomenting some prejudicial fear. This tactic of argument works for those who are The shallow thinkers making them as well as The shallow thinkers hearing them. It is similar to people telling me that being against same-sex marriage is somehow prejudicial, or homophobic. They are typically surprised to find out many homosexual persons are against this “same-sex marriage” movement. (https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/2010/06/joy-behar-vs-homosexuals-on-same-sex-marriage/) I never get an answer as to how these gay people are homophobic. Showing that these cards whipped from hip-high are vacuous and not thought through.
Just like the “if you are against [this mosque you are against] ‘freedom of religion’” argument. Many moderate Muslims are against the building of this mosque. Are they xenophobic or Islamaphobic? Do they hate the Muslim faith? OR, do they realize that supporting extremism IN THEIR OWN religion is anti-religious?
For those who do not get outside MSNBC type news, here are some interviews/articles with moderate Muslims:
So what is it? The anti-Islamic/anti-1st Amendment Right versus the pro-Islamic/pro-1st Amendment Left? OR, is it moderately minded/truly reformational/pro-Islamic/pro-1st Amendment Muslims against the Left and radical Islam (as proven by the Imam’s statements [more will be uncovered I am sure of it] and ties to “funny money”)??
I have gotten responses to this such as: “there are strip clubs, Burger Kings, bars at ground-zero… how can this be a sacred place?” To which I simply respond:
“Those were in place before 9/11, plus, 19 strippers didn’t fly planes into the Towers. (Non-sequitur: you proved my point, guys carrying Qur’ans not whips and chains or cherry flavored undies attacked us.) 3,000 people were killed by people doing it in the name of Islam. In fact, part of the reason they attacked was because of these gentlemen clubs, so I would rather have more of those and less of mosques to foment radical religion. So there should be — like other places where tragic events happen — a buffer zone for sensibilities. That building (besides being funded by “funny money” and being headed up by an Imam that said we were partly responsible for 9/11. There are other places for him to build a Mosque and for conservatives to bury Dems by their support of him as more quotes and radical positions come out. But a building where parts of human remains and pieces of jet were found, is unsupportable. Hell, even Howard Stern gets it.” (https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/2010/08/tearing-down-that-which-no-one-believes-the-left-and-the-ground-zero-mosque/)
Thank you for your visitors taking the time in reading this and for John being truly fair enough and freedom minded enough to allow shlubs like myself to challenge his lifeblood. For all the items I may disagree with him on, he shows that his work [a single frame drawing] can produce feelings and cause separate wills to clash. Which is why I absolutely love political cartoons. A Single frame can catch a whole idea that others would have to express in multiple paragraph’s [like myself].
SO, I do not wish to merely tear down, but build up: “John, keep up the ‘bad’ work” (tongue-in-cheek).
I wanted to build a bit off of that first sentence I wrote, “This is something the people who support this particular mosque will be regretful for.” Regretful because they are supporting a radically supremacist Imam and mosque, and so I confidently tell people that more and more quotes will be shown from this Imam and more and more terrorist ties will be revealed via donors. And so, here are the first compilations of some wacky stuff this Imam has said. I am sure more will be revealed soon.
Whilst the NY Times front page spins interfaith yarns into PR gold faster than Rumpelstiltskin and accords godlike status to Imam Faisal Rauf, new audio surfaces. Here are a couple of soundbites of tolerance: Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf: “We tend to forget, in the West, that it has blood on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US lead sanction against Iraq lead to the death of over half a million Iraqi children.”
No mention of the 270 million victims of over a millennium of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilation and enslavement. No mention of the recent slaughter by Muslims of Christians, Hindus, Jews, non-believers in Indonesia, Thailand, Ethiopia, Somalia, Philippines, Lebanon, Israel, Russia, China……………. no candor, no criticism of Islam. Imam Feisal: “The West needs to begin to see themselves through the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world, and when you do you will see the predicament that exists within the Muslim community.”
On the question of reforming Islam and expunging the texts of the threat doctrine and mandated violence and conquest: Imam Feisal: On the issue of the reformation, in terms of what is again intended by it, Islam does not need a reformation. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf: “So men will say: women, you know, they’re emotional, ….. whatever, whatever, and women will say: men, they’re brutes, insensitive, etcetera, and you have the beginning of a gender conflict. If gender is not what distinguishes us we’ll look at skin colouring and say: n***** or whities, or whatever”
Reverend Al Sharpton was unavailable for comment. Too busy endorsing the Islamic supremacist mosque. Imam Faisal: And when we observe terrorism, whether it was done by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or by al Qaida or whoever is behind the bombings in London or those in Madrid,
Note, when he says about the London and Madrid bombings,that was five days after the London attacks and over a year after Madrid. It was common knowledge who the perps were at that time.
In July 2005, Ground Zero Imam Rauf gave a public lecture, presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre/UniSA International and The Migrant Resource Centre, entitled, What does it take to change the relationship between the West and the Muslim world? His remarks were devastating.
This is a story that has been growing in the intelligence world (I am sure) for quite some time. I noted it here in an old post blogged in March of 2008 entitled, Obama and FARC. Gateway Pundit notes some interesting updates to this story. For some older background to this growing story, here is a Hannity look at it:
Here Gateway lists a few of the notable notables in regards to FARC and info gleaned from captured computers in 2008:
FARC connections with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa
Records of $300 million offerings from Hugo Chavez
Thank you notes from Hugo Chavez dating back to 1992
Uranium purchasing records
Admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria
Admit to planting a 2003 car bomb killing 36 at a Bogota upper crust club
Directions on how to make a Dirty Bomb
Information that led to the discovery of 60 pounds of uranium
Letter to Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi asking for cash to buy surface-to-air missiles
Meetings with “gringos” about Barack Obama
Information on Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout who was later captured
FARC funding Correa’s campaign
Cuban links to FARC
Links to US Democrats
$480,000 of FARC cash in Costa Rican safe house
$100,000 to President Correa’s campaign for election
Chavez attempts to buy arms for FARC through the Belarus regime
FARC branches in 17 countries including Germany and Switzerland
FARC terrorists expanded operations to 17 countries
FARC terrorists expanded operations to Germany and Switzerland
Continuing, Gateway begins to make his main point:
…The FARC Computers also contained documents that reportedly showed US Democrats were secretly reaching out to the FARC terrorists. Not only were the FARC terrorists of Colombia hoping Barack Obama would win the presidential election because he was most aligned with the Colombian Marxist group but the terrorists were also reportedly communicating with US Democrats on the sly…
This is the reason (actually, one of many) that makes me say confidently that we have a radical secularist in office. I will never, upon what I know to date, say Obama is a Muslim. I digress.
Venezuela has close ties to FARC. And Venezuela has close ties to Middle-Eastern terrorists. Here is a recent report on all these connections:
Who are these Democrats that side with Iran in the student uprising, support a supremacist Mosque at Ground-Zero, take over car companies, raise taxes and increase debt by massive stimulus programs and take over health-care? Whoever they are, let us throw them out in November! An aside: I can’t count the times, by-the-by, that I was told Bush was in bed with the Saudi’s, which is bad. Now building a Mosque with money from the Saudis and Iran is okay with he laft. Hmmmm.
Victor Davis Hanson, in his article, almost “gives in” to Obama’s consistency. Like a younger brother or cousin you tickle till he is gasping “uncle” almost peeing his pants. (In the case of my son who would hold off in habit to the very end, he would… love those dad moments. It was a teachable moment about not waiting to the last second to respond to your body’s call to nature.) In same fashion Victor pleads with Obama… Please, No More Teachable Moments. After getting his reader built up, Victor ends well with about the last third of his column:
….Where to start with all these teachable moments?
All these controversies involve issues addressed at the state and local level, with presidential action unnecessary. In such contentious matters, why intervene when Obama cannot do much other than polarize millions?
We have learned that President Obama has a bad habit of impugning the motives of those with whom he disagrees. In the Gates case, he rushed to condemn Crowley and the police. Arizonans were not to be seen as desperate citizens trying to enforce federal law, but instead derided as bigots who harass minorities when they go out to get ice cream. And in the mosque case, the president disingenuously implied that opponents of a Ground Zero mosque wanted to deny the legal right of Muslims to build religious centers.
Note that all three issues poll badly for the president, and belie his former image as a conciliator and healer.
Again, why does Obama go off message to sermonize about these seemingly minor things that so energize his opposition and make life difficult for his fellow Democrats?
First, off-the-cuff pontificating on extraneous issues is a lot easier than dealing with a bad economy, two wars and heightening tensions abroad. Sermonizing is a lot different than rounding up votes in Congress, fending off reporters at press conferences or dealing with aggressors abroad — and it can also turn our attention away from near 10 percent unemployment and a heavily indebted government.
Second, Obama has spent most of his life around academics, lawyers, journalists and organizers. That insular culture tends to pontificate and lecture others far more than do action-oriented business people, soldiers, doctors and farmers — the doers who are few and far between in this administration.
Third, as an Ivy League-trained lawyer and former Chicago community organizer, Obama embraces an overarching race/class/gender critique of the United States; the story of America is not so much about an exceptionally independent and prosperous people, a unique Constitution or a vibrant national past in promoting global freedom, but about how the majority oppressed various groups. Clearly, these local instances of purported grievances have excited the president — and almost automatically prompt his customary but unproven declarations that the majority or establishment in each case is biased or unfair….
Which brings me to the second Victor David Hanson article, which really is the precursor to the above one. By the way, to break away here, most major criminals have three names: guys who shot presidents, serial killers, and the like. Victor is doing all those things, just in pen against the Left. He is a great historian and columnist, to say the least. Okay, back on track. In this article he makes the point that there is a lot of ad homonym attacks that do nothing but try to steer the debate away from that, debate. I will post only his first half of his article that is entitled Everyone a Bigot?, but the whole thing is worth reading:
Anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-black — it is hard to keep track of all the recent charges of alleged bigotry.
State representatives in Arizona overwhelmingly passed an immigration law to popular acclaim — which the Obama administration for now has successfully blocked in federal court. Arizonans simply wanted the federal government to enforce its own laws. And yet they were quickly dubbed bigots and racists — more worried about profiling Hispanics than curtailing illegal immigration.
In California, a federal judge has just overturned Proposition 8 ensuring traditional marriage. Voters in November 2008 had amended the California constitution to recognize marriage only between a man and woman, while allowing civil unions between partners of the same sex.
Californians took that step in response to the state Supreme Court’s voiding of Proposition 22, a similar referendum on traditional marriage that California voters passed in 2000. Apparently, a stubborn majority of Californians still sees traditional marriage as it has been followed in some 2,500 years of Western custom and practice. In contrast, gay groups have framed the issue as one of civil rights, often charging prejudice on the part of their opponents.
Another controversy is brewing a mere 600 feet from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, site of the 9/11 attacks, where a Muslim group wishes to build a $100 million, 13-story mosque. Opponents feel this is hardly a way to build bridges across religious divides, but instead a provocative act that tarnishes the memory of the nearly 3,000 people who died at the hands of radical Islamic terrorists.
New York state residents poll in opposition to the project. Their unease reflects legitimate questions over the nature of the foreign funding for the project, and the disturbing writings and statements of the chief proponent of the plan, Feisal Abdul Rauf. They also worry that radical Islamists will use the mosque’s construction (it will probably rise before the World Trade Center complex is rebuilt) as a propaganda tool.
In response, once again the majority has been dubbed bigoted and prejudiced, this time against Muslims for asking for a more appropriate location, farther away from Ground Zero.
After lengthy investigation, Rep. Charles Rangel, former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is facing charges of unethical conduct. In response, Rangel has scoffed that a plea bargain offer was nothing more than an “English, Anglo-Saxon procedure.” The inference was that ongoing prejudice, not moral lapses, caused Rangel’s problems.
Rangel’s charges come at a time when Rep. Maxine Waters faces ethics questions for allegedly using her office to steer federal money to a bank that was associated with her husband. And since eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus have recently faced ethics inquiries, we are hearing that race, not unethical conduct, is the real reason for the investigations.
Dennis Prager has some great insights into why the Left uses such tactics and holds them over our heads in a professorially superior manner. They believe that anyone who disagrees with them isn’t just wrong, but evil. I would love to sit down with a liberal friend at Starbucks and talk for hours on this subject thinking that they are truly mistaken… but deep down they want whats best for the situation and outcome at hand. At most they are severely misguided because of their class-warfare outlook on life, in which case I would love to talk about how to view the world. In their eyes I am not wrong, but evil. Prager explains:
Dennis puts into words, better, the above, when he spoke of Harry Reid in 2006:
The highest-ranking Democrat in America, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, described the Senate bill making English the national language of the American people as “racist.” And the New York Times editorial page labeled the bill “xenophobic.”Welcome to the thoughtless world of contemporary liberalism. Beginning in the 1960s, liberalism, once the home of many deep thinkers, began to substitute feeling for thought and descended into superficiality.
One-word put-downs of opponents’ ideas and motives were substituted for thoughtful rebuttal. Though liberals regard themselves as intellectual — their views, after all, are those of nearly all university professors — liberal thought has almost died. Instead of feeling the need to thoughtfully consider an idea, most liberal minds today work on automatic. One-word reactions to most issues are the liberal norm.
This is easy to demonstrate.
Here is a list of terms liberals apply to virtually every idea or action with which they differ:
Racist
Sexist
Homophobic
Islamophobic
Imperialist
Bigoted
Intolerant
And here is the list of one-word descriptions of what liberals are for:
Peace
Fairness
Tolerance
The poor
The disenfranchised
The environment
These two lists serve contemporary liberals in at least three ways.
First, they attack the motives of non-liberals and thereby morally dismiss the non-liberal person.
Second, these words make it easy to be a liberal — essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal — they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.
Third, they make the liberal feel good about himself — by opposing conservative ideas and policies, he is automatically opposing racism, bigotry, imperialism, etc.
Examples could fill a book.
Harry Reid, as noted above, supplied a classic one. Instead of grappling with the enormously significant question of how to maintain American identity and values with tens of millions of non-Americans coming into America, the Democratic leader and others on the Left simply label attempts to keep English as a unifying language as “racist.”
Another classic example of liberal non-thought was the reaction to former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers’ mere question about whether the female and male brains were wired differently. Again, instead of grappling with the issue, Harvard and other liberals merely dismissed Summers as “sexist.”
A third example is the use of the term “racist” to end debate about race-based affirmative action or even to describe a Capitol police officer who stops a black congresswoman who has no ID badge.
“Phobic” is the current one-word favorite among liberal dismissals of ideological opponents. It combines instant moral dismissal with instant psychological analysis. If you do not support society redefining marriage to include members of the same sex you are “homophobic” — and further thought is unnecessary. If you articulate a concern about the moral state of Islam today, you are “Islamophobic” — and again further thought is unnecessary. And if you seek to retain English as America’s unifying language, you are not only racist, you are, as the New York Times editorial describes you, “xenophobic” and “Latinophobic,” the latest phobia uncovered by the Left.
There is a steep price paid for the liberal one-wording of complex ideas — the decline of liberal thought. But with more and more Americans graduating college and therefore taught the liberal list of one-word reactions instead of critical thinking, many liberals do not see any pressing need to think through issues. They therefore do not believe they have paid any price at all.
But American society is paying a steep price. Every car that has a bumper sticker declaring “War is not the answer” powerfully testifies to the intellectual decline of the well educated and to the devolution of “liberal thought” into an oxymoron.
Allowing the people behind the Park 51/Ground Zero mosque to build under the former shadow of the World Trade Center is akin to allowing the Westboro Baptist Church to build a campus next to Arlington National Cemetery: both might be exercises in religious freedom, but neither make proper use of liberty.
