Posted on 08/18/2010 6:30:21 AM PDT by detritus
It is hard to imagine that anything has gone unsaid about the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but an important point seems to be missing.
The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much. We don't need constitutional protections to be agreeable, after all.
This point surpasses even all the obvious reasons for allowing the mosque, principally that there's no law against it. Precluding any such law, we let people worship when and where they please. That it hurts some people's feelings is, well, irrelevant in a nation of laws. And, really, don't we want to keep it that way?...
...[T]he more compelling point is that mosque opponents may lose by winning. Radical Muslims have set cities afire because their feelings were hurt. When a Muslim murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, it was because his feelings were hurt. Ditto the Muslims who rioted about cartoons depicting the image of Muhammad and sent frightened doodlers into hiding...
This is why plans for the mosque near Ground Zero should be allowed to proceed, if that's what these Muslims want. We teach tolerance by being tolerant. We can't insist that our freedom of speech allows us to draw cartoons or produce plays that Muslims find offensive and then demand that they be more sensitive to our feelings....
Nobody ever said freedom would be easy. We are challenged every day to reconcile what is allowable and what is acceptable. Compromise, though sometimes maddening, is part of the bargain. We let the Ku Klux Klan march, not because we agree with them but because they have a right to display their hideous ignorance.
Ultimately, when sensitivity becomes a cudgel against lawful expressions of speech or religious belief--or disbelief--we all lose.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
May you hear the word “dhimmi” uttered at you as your face grows cold and your women scream in abject terror of the muslim aggressors.
I appreciate the kind word but respectfully disagree. If we don't uphold property rights in the highly-charged "outlier" cases, like this, those rights become less secure for all of us. In this respect, I agree with the great champion of liberty in the nineteenth century, William Graham Sumner, who said "The time when a maxim or principle is worth something is when you are tempted to violate it."
After reading of the small Christian Church that was destroyed on 9-11, the answer came to me. Let the muzzies build where they want and the size they want. Then on either side of their mosque, build a Christian Church and a Jewish Synagogue. Each should be twice as tall, twice as wide, and twice as deep as the mosque, in other words, eight times the cubic footage. Both should be constructed of black granite, plain, very fortress-like in architecture. Let’em look up to, and quake at the sight of, their moral superiors!
Quoted for truth.
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Wekkum yersel'
Kathleen Parker articles required pictures of hot guys in hot cars.
Nice room this month! Fitting, somewhat, it’s a Kathleen Parker thread....
Feel free to contribute pictures of cars, men, penguins, or Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Whoa!
That’s almost like having a project get an award! WOO-HOO!
*I like what you’ve done with the place!*
But he's not in the car, he's sitting on it! Is he hot? Is the car hot?
Happy kitteh! My kidz are homeschooled, except for Seaman Anoreth, who attends the School of Hard Knocks.
(Check your flights, Butterfly. Your grandmother sent a reminder email. And divert Hurricane Earl.)
*drool*
*swoon*
*thunk*
Glad you like it!
*hug*
Is that you, Pat? And of course he and the car are hot ... it’s Hawai’i!
Y’all have FReepmail.
Is this the birther thread?
Later, all. I don’t expect to be back before tomorrow night.
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