Thursday, July 22, 2010

What I don't get ...

Well, I get it, but the rank, obvious hypocrisy of it just boggles the mind.

Opposition to the construction of mosques has skyrocketed in cities and towns across the country, scholars and advocates of Muslim culture tell The Upshot.

Public protests against three planned mosques have made news in the past week: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined others in opposing the building of a mosque a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. Hundreds demonstrated against a proposed mosque in a small town in Tennessee (pictured above). And some residents of Temecula, California, are opposing the local Muslim community's plan to build a bigger mosque, saying it could become a hotbed of radical Islam.

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Now, aren't these the same people who wrap themselves in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and all those other good documents the Founders turned out? Aren't they the ones who claim there has been a bias against Christianity in America?

And yet, assuming an answer of "affirmative" to those questions, they wish to deny the right of worship to their fellow Americans despite every admonishment within those documents.

I guess, what I don't get, is the fact regular folks who vote Republican (not the apparatchiks) can't make the reach, can't see they are protesting against every principle they supposedly stand for. It would be like me saying everyone I don't agree with should be silenced (one way or another), when the freedom of speech is something I hold most dear. While I wouldn't mind seeing the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and especially Breitbart spend some time in a hole in the deepest, darkest prison in Turkey, I won't deny them their right to say what they will provided they don't incite violence. What works for me should work for them, and vice versa.

The right to worship as you please, or not, or where you please, or not, is one of the things that makes us Americans. To deny a particular group that freedom is morally equivalent to denying them their freedom of speech. How people can support this discrimination is beyond me. It diminishes us* as a nation.

*And we've been diminshed enough in the last decade thanks to the conservatives.

Thanks to Dr. Attaturk for the link.


Update:

Seems I overlooked something:

...

So, just to clarify, apparently the only Amendment that means anything is the second half of the Second Amendment.


Silly me ...

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