| I only found this out because TJ the right winger who I had been e-mailing with sent his final reply (I told him we weren't communicating so it is was not worth it to keep sending nasty grams back and forth) and in it was a link to the article. He says that he is not the one that pointed it out to Newsbusters blogger, Tim Graham. For what it is worth, I believe him. Thanks TJ, if you're reading this, for all that we are in complete disagreement with each other, I didn't even for a second think that you were the one.
It is interesting to see what Mr. Graham has to say about the posts. In the first one he took exception with my comparison of the 9/11 terrorist and the Christian terrorists who kill abortion doctors. From the July 31st post:
Isn't there a fraction of a difference between anti-abortion killers of a handful of doctors, and the murderers of 9/11?
The answer to this question is, the difference is only in the scale of the number of people that were murdered to make a political point. There is no doubt that there was and is more suffering caused by cowardly terrorists of 9/11, however, the fact remains that at their base both the 9/11 terrorists and the anti-abortion terrorists did what they did out a desire to influence policy in their favor by killing people. That the goals of one group were different from the goals of the other make them no less terrorists. The killing of Dr. Tiller was a terrorist act designed to intimidate other doctors into not performing legal services. So, no, there isn't a fraction of difference, other than scale and viability of the 9/11 attacks.
Yesterday (not even the day after the article!) talking about the Radical Rights thinking we are at war with all of Islam the criticism is about the way I talked about why they are so spun up about 9/11. From Mr. Grahams post:
The blogger known as "Something the Dog Said" dropped this jaw-dropping paragraph Thursday morning about fear of Muslims:
Given that they are such a small minority in this nation, it is odd that so many of our fellow citizens see them as such a threat. Yes, the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they were more about optics than actual harm. The economy was already taking a hit before the Twin Towers fell. The reaction of the nation to seeing two major buildings in New York fall on T.V. has boosted the attack out of proportion. While the loss of even a single life is to be condemned and the devastation these deaths caused the families of those killed, more than this number of teens are killed every year in car crashes. These are also tragic losses but we do not make the kind of high profile issue of it that the 9/11 attacks are.
This blogger obviously can't tell the difference in political meaning between a collection of teen car accidents and an intentional, ideological mass murder
Mr. Graham misses the point. The Radical Right is upset about the Community Center because somehow the area around the site of the Twin Towers is now sacred because of the deaths that occurred there. TJ used this quite a lot in our back and forth. It was not until yesterday that he told me he had a friend on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon that day. I am very sorry for his loss, there is nothing that can be said to fill the whole that such a death leaves.
Still it is the point that people died in horrible tragic deaths which makes the argument resonate for many folks. The point that I was making was and is that while it is horrible, and there can be no denying how horrible, that people died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the fact of the deaths themselves can not be enough to throw away 1st Amendment protections. Even if we were truly in a war with all of Islam, with tens of thousands on both sides dying, it would not be enough for us to warp our Constitution.
Those on the Radical Right are making a big deal about the fact that polls are finding that majorities of Americans are not in favor of the community center being built two blocks from the site of a terrorist attack that was nine years ago. To me that is a sad fact, one which until I saw the polling I would not have believed. Still it does not matter. You do not have rights in this country because the majority says so. You have rights because we all have them and they are written into our Constitution and supported by 200 years of case law.
I expect that I am in for some interesting times. I will not back down from my position that the mosque associated with the community center has ever right to build where they please, just as a Catholic church or a Buddhist temple would. I will also not back down from calling out the hysterical fear the Radical Right is stoking against our fellow citizens who are practitioners of Islam.
In the end I find this really kind of sad. I had a five e-mail back and forth with TJ and we could not find a smidge of common ground. I listened to his points, but they were based on fear and skewed news sources, like National Review Online, Fox and Newsbusters. They were based on false memes that the Radical Right has been pushing all along and the macho attitude that we are going to kick some ass. Now one of the asses they want to kick is mine. I wish I had any confidence that the folks who commented on these posts read all of both of my articles.
It would have pissed them off, but that is not why. Mr. Graham is using the quotes from my posts that are most likely to confirm his readers prejudice against the Left and Daily Kos. By doing so he makes sure there can be no meaningful dialog between the Right and Left. The Radical Right has been told for 9 years that we, their fellow citizens, are the enemy along with Islam. We are somehow less American because we don't agree with the jingoistic "Clashes of Civilizations" crap. The very crap that Osama Bin Laden has been purveying; they fail to realize that by giving credence to this terrorist asshat's idea we help him build up his forces and make it more likely that some city, here or in Europe or Asia sees another horrific attack.
The continued fervor over mosque construction, in NYC and elsewhere in this nation is self-defeating. By harassing Muslims, by treating them in ways that confirm the prejudices of Bin Laden and others we strengthen those groups. They can point to these actions and say "See? Americans don't really protect the rights of minorities. Just look what they are doing to their own Muslim citizens!" We are in a fight with Al Qaeda, by abandoning our ideals and demonizing and discriminating against our Muslim citizens we hand them a victory greater than 100 mosques in lower Manhattan could ever be.
The floor is yours. |
