Posted on 09/12/2010 10:23:11 AM PDT by thecodont
For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”
Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?
This is one of those times that test our values, a bit like the shameful interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the disgraceful refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
It would have been natural for this test to have come right after 9/11, but it was forestalled because President George W. Bush pushed back at his conservative ranks and repeatedly warned Americans not to confuse Al Qaeda with Islam.
Now that Mr. Bush is no longer in the White House, nativists are back on the warpath. Some opponents of President Obama are circulating bald-faced lies about him that are also scurrilous attacks on Islam itself. One e-mail bouncing around falsely accuses Mr. Obama of lying and adds, “His Muslim faith says it’s okay to lie.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The blog post commie kristoff is bitching about was written by Martin Peretz, Algore’s bestest buddy and another bigtime leftie. The irony is delicious. I’d love to see these sissies in a slap-fight.
"It would have been natural for this test to have come right after 9/11, but it was forestalled because President George W. Bush pushed back at his conservative ranks and repeatedly warned Americans not to confuse Al Qaeda with Islam."
Ah, Peretz is an ueber-liberal. Rather than the predictable and tired slam at conservatives, the more interesting question is: 'What would bring a liberal's liberal like Martin Peretz to view Muslims as he described?'
The author's explanation is just an amorphous action that somehow our political atmosphere has become poisoned and degraded.
OK then, make your case, how did it come to this.
" He added: “The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace.” Did that assurance mean more to white Americans coming from someone who looked like them?"
Then I groaned "Oh, BROTHER" and closed the window.
I'm watching EL CID, coincidentally (seriously, I just grabbed something and put it on).
(Those who know the movie will understand why this is an interesting coincidence.)
there is one thing about it, when it goes down, people like that are going down with them
“Sons and Other Flammable Objects,”
Ahem...
Great post in a great thread.
For the left, thus is blasphemy of blasphemies. They immediately invoke the worst kinds of discrimination.
Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews?.
I don't recall non-Muslim blacks or Jews murdering 3000 Americans at a pop, and working hard to do it again.
How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?
As always for liberals, "feelings" trump all.
Who cares how muslims feel. They do not belong here in the USA with our republican constitutional form of government and freedoms. Their “religion” and level of civilization are rooted in a barbaric 9th century theistic social code. They skipped feudalism, revolution, reformation, renaissance, the enlightenment, the industrial age, and the information age. Muslims are completely unequipped to live peaceably in western society. I lived in Cairo for 3 years - my conclusion was that exposure to western culture makes muslims insane, due to the direct and extreme conflict with their social code. So, as you say, they blow shit up, abuse their women etc.
[words fail me]
I am surprised that The New Republic would publish an article in radical Islam which The New York Times would attak as intolerant. I admit that there are some non-political Muslims in the U.S. who or whose ancestors came here to escape the politicized Sharia of their homelands and who don’t support terrorism. But there are all too many here who do and wish to destroy us. We have to deal with that reality or that reality will deal with us, and ruthlessly.
If the NY Times is free, it’s still way overpriced.
"The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
"If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:548
"It is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere [in the propagation of religious teachings] when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order." --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:302, Papers 2:546
"Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth or permitted to the subject in the ordinary way cannot be forbidden to him for religious uses; and whatsoever is prejudicial to the Commonwealth in their ordinary uses and, therefore, prohibited by the laws, ought not to be permitted to churches in their sacred rites. For instance, it is unlawful in the ordinary course of things or in a private house to murder a child; it should not be permitted any sect then to sacrifice children. It is ordinarily lawful (or temporarily lawful) to kill calves or lambs; they may, therefore, be religiously sacrificed. But if the good of the State required a temporary suspension of killing lambs, as during a siege, sacrifices of them may then be rightfully suspended also. This is the true extent of toleration." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Religion, 1776. Papers 1:547
"Our wish... is, that the public efforts may be directed honestly to the public good, that peace be cultivated, civil and religious liberty unassailed, law and order preserved, equality of rights maintained, and that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry, or that of his fathers." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural, 1805. ME 3:382
The Founders did, however, recognize that the philosophical underpinnings of various nations influenced what they called "the laws of nations." An example of this recognition can be found in these excerpted paragraphs from President John Quincy's record of the history of the Republic as he delivered them in New York City on April 30, 1839, in his "Jubilee" Address.
“The motive for the Declaration of Independence was on its face avowed to be "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Its purpose to declare the causes which impelled the people of the English colonies on the continent of North America, to separate themselves from the political community of the British nation. They declare only, the causes of their separation, but they announce at the same time their assumption of the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, among the powers of the earth.
“Thus their first movement is to recognize and appeal to the laws of nature and to nature's God, for their right to assume the attributes of sovereign power as an independent nation.
“The causes of their necessary separation, for they begin and end by declaring it necessary, alleged in the Declaration, are all founded on the same laws of nature and of nature's God - and hence as preliminary to the enumeration of the causes of separation, they set forth as self-evident truths, the rights of individual man, by the laws of nature and of nature's God, to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness. That all men are created equal. That to secure the rights of life, liberty and the pursuits of happiness, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. All this is by the laws of nature and of nature's God, and of course presupposes the existence of a God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and of government. It avers, also, that governments are instituted to secure these rights of nature and of nature's God, and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of THE PEOPLE to alter, or to abolish it, and to institute a new government - to throw off a government degenerating into despotism, and to provide new guards for their future security. They proceed then to say that such was then the situation of the Colonies, and such the necessity which constrained them to alter their former systems of government.”
Adams continued:
____________________
“The Declaration of Independence recognized the European law of nations, as practiced among Christian nations, to be that by which they considered themselves bound, and of which they claimed the rights. This system is founded upon the principle, that the state of nature between men and between nations, is a state of peace."
He added:
"But there was a Mahometan law of nations, which considered the state of nature as a state of war - an Asiatic law of nations, which excluded all foreigners from admission within the territories of the state - a colonial law of nations, which excluded all foreigners from admission within the colonies - and a savage Indian law of nations, by which the Indian tribes within the bounds of the United States, were under their protection, though in a condition of undefined dependence upon the governments of the separate states. With all these different communities, the relations of the United States were from the time when they had become an independent nation, variously modified according to the operation of those various laws. It was the purpose of the Constitution of the United States to establish justice over them all."
Read the entire address, here.
Muslims are here for one reason, and it isn’t assimillation. It’s domination. They make up about 3% (at most) of the population and look how they already shape the agenda. They don’t belong here.
Thank you for the important historic quotes from our Founders.
Much of it is not an insult: It’s all espoused in the Holy Koran.
Hey, Nick, you hate America so much? Move!
The muzzies murder over 3000 innocent Americans on ONE DAY and Americans are the ones who are “venonmous”. All those years of doing recreational drugs are finally catching up with these people.
It may be the Muslims have learned to couch their activities in the forms of the Civil Rights Movement be certain equality is the last thing on their minds.
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Taqiyya (Lying in Islam IS formally and Religiously condoned.)
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Number of Muslims in the United States
"...Q. How many Muslims are in the United States?
A. According to an academic review of available survey-based data in 2001, informed by information provided by Muslim organizations and mosques, the highest reasonable total number of Muslims in the United States is 2.8 million.
A more realistic number, supported by statistically significant survey data comparable to what has been used to to calculate the sizes of other religious groups, is less than 2 million Muslims in the United States, or about 0.5% of the total population.
Estimates of the U.S. Muslim population of 6 million, 8 million, 10 million or more may indeed be correct, but are not supported by empirical data. Such numbers may best be understood as "spiritual (ie. BS) " numbers, rather than actual numbers..."
Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep farm. He should never have left.
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