Ground Zero Mosque, Grade Zero Argument
The proposal to build a mosque in Manhattan near the site of the Twin Towers has ignited the usual futile debate that marks all political discussion in America. I don't know which set of arguments is more degrading, the opponents' cry of insensitivity or the defenders' claim of religious freedom.
Let us begin with the more obvious exercise in stupidity, the notion that the First Amendment to the Constitution of 1787 grants a blanket freedom of religion to be enforced by the Federal government. Anyone who got through second grade by now is aware that it is not the First Amendment that is in play but the 14th, which was passed illegally for the purpose of giving civil rights (primarily involving contracts and wills) to former slaves. Only the tortured metaphysics and imbecility of federal judges--no exceptions alive today that I know of-could twist this into anything relevant to the current case. The purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent power-crazed national politicians from imposing their religious views on the rest of us in the states.
So now a power-crazed Muslim-loving president is doing just that. Pew Opinion Research now reports the really surprising news that growing numbers of Republicans think Obama is a Muslim, while the number of Democrats who do not regard him as a Christian is on the rise. I'd like to meet one of those Americans not in an institution who still thinks there is a Christian president in the White House.
We know the context in which the First Amendment was written. Many states had established churches and nearly all had religious tests for voting or holding office. Some of the tests require some vague statement of belief in a god, while others are more specific and Christian. The tiny minority of Jews was, for the most part left alone, but no one in his right mind would have thought they had a right to practice their religion. Muslims and Hindus were not imaginable.
Islam was created as a Satanic parody of Christianity and Judaism, and it has been waging war on those two religions from its earliest days. It is a sign of how genuinely stupid--and evil--Americans are that they tolerate Muslims in their midst and allow them to become citizens. One would have thought, however, that New York Jews would have had enough clout to intimidate the political class into preventing the construction of this mosque, but the times are changing, and if we are to be liberated from the domination of the Jewish lobby, it is because we are being sold out to the Muslim, neopagan, and atheist anti-Christians. But, as Jay and the Americans used to sing, "Only in America, land of opportunity, yay-ay-ay-ay.." (Someone should ask me what the song was supposed to be about before the lyric was changed.)
So it is only reasonable for the people of Rockford to be just a little upset about the construction of a mosque here, but the response to the story in our local Red Star is mostly positive. The only Rockfordians brave enough to express a negative opinion are combat veterans. There is an unfortunate tendency, among people who understand that Christians have been victims of Islamic terrorism for 13 centuries, to demonize all Muslims and support our foolish and wasteful frolics in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be enough to keep them out of Rockford without nuking them in their own countries.
But New York? New York has not been an American city since before World War I. No one can be happy that some 2,600 people were murdered by Saudi terrorists, but how significant, really, is their death to the rest of us who are lucky enough not to live in New York? The horror belongs to TVland America, not to whatever is left of the real country. We are told, over and over, by the teachers,politicians, and pundits who know what is best for us, that we live in a global community in which we care as much about starving Somalis as for a sick widow next door. Fine. Then why care more about New Yorkers than the victims of murder, terrorism, and genocide all over the world. Why care more about New Yorkers than, say, Afghan, Iraqi, and Palestinian civilians, or the Iranian civilians whose blood we are lusting after.
It is different for New Yorkers, of course, and for people with close relatives in Manhattan. So far as I am aware, I knew only one person working in the Twin Towers that day and she was smart enough to panic when the first plane hit and ran down dozens and dozens of flights of stairs, though her colleagues thought she was freaking out. They did not have long to reflect on their mistake. Even I, listening to NPR, knew what was happening and managed to see the second plane on TV. We Americans are so incredibly naive, we refuse even to this day to understand what happened then and what is continuing to happen. This is more than ignorance: It is a self-administered lobotomy.
Weeping and wailing about the victims in a faraway city that ordinary Americans mostly dislike and resent is a degrading experience. If New Yorkers wish to live there--and the rich do have reasons to be there--let them, but leave the rest of us out of their new Holocaust. A people that sees nothing wrong in one million plus aborted babies per year cannot justify sentimentality over a mere 3000, and a government that has killed far more Muslim civilians and aided and abetted the Israeli killings of civilians--while consistently lauding Islam as a religion of peace--is in no position to complain about terrorism.
The debate, as one of our writers has said below in a comment, really comes down this: on one side is a coalition of Muslims and leftists who hate Christians and libertarians who hate Israel first and America second, and, on the other, neoconservatives who have no use for Christians--indeed, prefer Muslims except when they are inconvenient for Israel--and even they are willing to tolerate mosques, just not anywhere near the sacred soil of Ground Zero.
The complete bankruptcy--political, moral, and spiritual--of the so-called American Right has been on display during this episode. The depths were plumbed, inevitably, by Ms Palin, who compared the construction of the mosque with "building a Serbian Orthodox church at Srebrenica killing fields where Muslims were slaughtered.” Never mind she knows nothing about the Balkans or the facts of the Srebrenica case--both sides were slaughtering each other in a bloody civil war. What really leaps out is her vulgar sentimentalism and, even more, the ease with which she compares a Christian church with a mosque. For Palin and the rest of the leaders of the GOP, there is simply no evidence. For the Palin episode, see Srdja Trifkovic's excellent piece on the Lord Byron Foundation website.
If New York were a Christian city or if the United States were a Christian country committed to defending its people and their religion, then the construction of a mosque anywhere in the United States including Manhattan would be an outrage. As things are, we have no reason to complain.
Tagged as: 9/11, Barack Obama, Ground Zero, Islam, Manhattan, mosque
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To Mr. Sanjay I would point out a few facts. In the first place, there is a fair amount of violence committed by Muslims in the US, quite out of proportion to their small numbers, and it is their small numbers, outside of a few places, that also partly explains the lack of mass demonstrations. There is no evidence that US immigration was selective in the admission of nice Muslims as opposed to not-so-nice Muslims. But, let us not forget the important fact: Unlike the UK, France, and even Italy, the USA never had a colonial empire that ruled large Muslim populations, so there was no need to grant automatic admission to large numbers of uneducated losers. I have no figures, but anecdotally I can say that Muslims who came into the States some decades ago tended to be hardworking Middle Class people with job skills who were looking for economic opportunity, quite unlike the North African ne'er-do-wells who trouble the Parisian banlieues. Unfortunately, nice Middle Class Muslims, as religiously intense as modern Methodists, have children who are sucked into the corruption and decadence of American life, experience alienation, and end up longing for a religious-cultural identity. Some decades ago, this feeling might have been channelled into some useful direction--they might go back where they came from--but in an era of Western failure and Islamic insurgency, the appeal of radical and violent Islam can be overwhelming--even to nice midwestern white protestants, to say nothing of illiterate inner-city blacks. Muslims could not fit into the old America, while In the New America it is we old Americans who are strangers in the land of our grandfathers. It is therefore a little hard to blame Americans who wish the Muslims would go away and leave us alone.
In saying Americans are stupid and evil, I said "stupid" because we as a people are impervious to reality, and no matter how many Muslims attack us, we continue to celebrate the enrichment they bring, and I used the word "evil," because American parents apparently see nothing wrong in ruining the lives of their own children and grandchildren in order to help immigrants or make a few dollars more from cheap labor or feel good about themselves for being compassionate. Just take another pill, have another beer, change the channel, go to Disneyworld. I am sorry, but anyone who sticks his kids in a a public school to be raped and humiliated by the gangbangers is evil; and anyone who does not at least verbally support exclusion of Muslims is stupid and evil. It is one thing to be fleeced; it is another thing to open the door to the sheepfold and tell the wolves, come on in, we're running a special on Spring lamb.
To Eric, let me be clear. Americans have every right to be angry with Muslims who would stick a mosque so close to the site of a terrorist atrocity. The location of the mosque is a form of psychological terrorism, another stage in their campaign to bring us to dhimmitude. Anger and indignation are appropriate responses, and they should produce a determination to exclude all mosques from our soil. My objection was not to this sense of outrage but with the bogus conservative leaders who say things like,"we believe in religious freedom, but just don't put it here," and "we know Islam is a religion of peace: we just love Muslims, it is only Islamicists object to." Palin's response was perhaps the worst, in finding moral and spiritual equivalence between Christianity and Islam. So long as the Tea Partiers continue to support Palin and the other GOP frauds, no good can be expected from them, and so long as conservative Americans get themselves all teary-eyed over strangers without resolving to do anything but elect two pro-Muslim presidents in a row, their emotional hysteria will not translate into useful political action. But then, it never has (in my lifetime, at least), and it never will.
Regarding selective immigration: in peachy-keen 1965, when immigration re-opened, I imagine that the system was largely self-selecting.
At that time, an unassimilable villager in an underdeveloped country had probably never seen a TV set or used a telephone - just 2 small examples of the huge functional gap between societies. For most of them, immigrating to the USA was not even imaginable (unlike European nations, which had the post-colonial coattails that Dr. Fleming mentioned).
But even the poorest and least exposed of today's unassimilable villager, who makes a mere $1 per day, need save only a week's wages to buy a cellphone on which he can receive text messages advertising greed card lottery application services.
Our immigration policy was not sufficiently altered to reflect the new reality. As usual, our government is listening to 8 tracks in an mp3-dominated world.
The fact that there is a "debate" at all about this mosque is testament to a putrescent society. Dr. Fleming is correct in pointing out the non-Christian beliefs and behaviors of our sitting emir, so I think we know where this will end - there will either be a mosque there or we will be subjected to a cascade of "religion of peace" indoctrinations - and a mosque down the street.
At this point let NYC do whatever it wants; I'm more concerned in keeping that meddling nuisance of a mayor there from using the courts to infringe on our gun rights out in Middle America, which he has attempted on a number of occasions.
Sadly, while much of America supposedly disapproves of Obama's performance - and while many of us would find Jethro Bodine a significant improvement - we should gird ourselves for a second term. Considering the power of incumbency, the electoral college system and the absence of any strong opponent, this is what's in store for us, I'm afraid. When one of the likely opponents at present is Sarah Palin, who now sees fit to lecture us on the Balkans when she couldn't distinguish Bulgaria from Burkina Faso on a map, then it's time to face reality; our two major parties are both intellectually bankrupt and corrupt. Let's focus on those things we can control and view all this other noise as low-grade entertainment.
What was "Only In America" about before the lyrics were changed?
"Perhaps people at Chronicles should be a little more charitable towards their country’s immigration policies, which heavily screen and scrutinize foreigners, before they are even allowed to step foot in it on temporary visas. A good number get rejected and go to Britain instead."
It is apparent that Mr. Panjay's interest in immigration policy is informed by sources that are, at best, misleading. I have no idea how long he has lived in this country, but I suspect during his time here, he has led a very parochial life.
For openers, Mr. Sanjay, effective enforcement of current federal immigration law has been totally discarded for three decades or more. Those of us who have for decades tried to point out that Border Patrol agents use the code, "SAI," Special Alien of Interest," to refer to Middle Eastern interlopers, and the dangers that such illegal entry might easily promote, were classified as "hatemongers," or worse. Two of the 9/11 hijackers were attached to a mosque in Tucson, (one of three) after probably coming here through our porous borders. Thousands of Muslim prayer shawls now litter the Arizona desert.
Secondly, the "family unification" system, the brainchild of the brain-dead late Sen. Kennedy, has afforded countless methods of gaming the immigration system. As currently constituted, distant relatives are eligible for entry into the US as part of the program: we do not, unfortunately, systematically check, as Signor Fleming alluded to, to determine if they are nice or not so nice. Frankly, I don't know if the current bunch in control of immigration would do so.
Hence, your comment that we "heavily screen and scrutinize foreigners" is patently absurd, and such delinquencies do have results.
Finally, for nearly two decades, I have either lived in, or visited, Italy annually. I believe that Italy has resisted the baleful impact of Muslim immigration better than any other Western European country with major a enconomy because it has resisted the siren's song of multiculturalism as a panacea for everything wrong with the West, including unbridled guilt feelings. Italian societal cohesiveness, not the idiotic objectives of the fractious political and religious identity groups, tells me that to allow that mosque to be built will be a giant step along the path to our national suicide.
#43 "the first time since the British attacked Washington that we have been hit by an alien power"
"We" were viciously attacked from every quarter by an alien power 1861-1876
Everyday experience is very revealing. Whenever I see a man of hispanic or, ususally, Arab origin approaching on a quiet street, he almost always walks by with a scowl and rudely downturned eyes, whereas indubitable American men above 25 years of age or so will nod in a friendly way or say hello. Assuming this is a common experience, it should tell us which kind of people can't be trusted and don't fit in here.
@vatvince
Actually, like Sempronius and Hans Georg Lundahl, I am a foreigner on this generally American discussion place.
Like they probably do, I come here just to visit one of the many websites with contrarian stances online.
I hope I didn't end up sounding like one of those foreigners lecturing people on their own country, and even if I do, it is not intended. (I know the lesson that was learnt about punching over your weight class by Indira Gandhi when she sent a criticising mail to Nixon, and was given back an effectively humilating response by a smarter person.)
So back to what you're saying: "Those of us who have for decades tried to point out that Border Patrol agents use the code, “SAI,” Special Alien of Interest,” to refer to Middle Eastern interlopers"; it just reminded me of something. Canadian journalist Barry Zwicker reported that American embassies established in Kuwait, Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Syria often have large groups of certain suspicious applicants enter them. They are granted, nay, generously passed around visas when their sort would have been rejected under normal procedures. There are ulterior motives. I don't know what they are, but there probably are ulterior motives.
I am sympathetic. You should not be treated like this by your own government.
I could not find the link to Dr. Trifkovic's piece that Dr. Fleming mentioned; in case others are in the same boat, I am including it with this post: http://www.balkanstudies.org/blog/sarah-palins-misguided-demagoguery
I now see that it was in the main text. I must read more carefully in the future.
Congenital stupidity and invincible ignorance, as opposed to willful evil might also explain the sheepfold's dynamics. Ignorance I take to mean merely the absence of knowledge- to be "unlettered,uninstructed, unlearned or simply uninformed." Information entering the sheepfold is filtered- freedoms are restricted , - hence imputability and moral responsibility lessened. The fold's culpability is nescience not ignorance and the ignorance is invincible not vincible. I don't say willful evil is absent, but I do say let us ascertain the role,obligations, and accountability of gatekeepers, shepards and butchers. I've yet to see sheep carry about a set of keys or selling rack of lamb. Not to be impertinent, but is seems odd to be warned of sheep in wolfs' clothing.
This Ground Zero Mosque controversy is causing some new political alignments. Oddly, we Pro-Defense libertarians find ourselves more in line with the views expressed here at Chronicles, who formerly we despised, than we do the views of our fellow so-called "libertarians" like Justin Raimondo, Rockwell, Eric Garris & crew.
Pro-Defense libertarians more aligned with PaleoConservatives than Paleo-libertarians? Who'd have ever thunk it?
Eric Dondero, Publisher
LibertarianRepublican.net
I cringe at all these labels. Paleoconservatives, paleolibertarians, oh my.
On the political axis, I am a mutualist, Jewish anarchist, agrarianist, ecofascist, psychoanalytical feminist, ordoliberal, Romantic nationalist, Khalistani, Bolivarian vegetarian.
Yeah.
Barry Goldwater once said that if he had his way, he would saw off Manhattan island and let it float into ocean. To which I would add "hopefully to sink".
Mr. Sanjay @ 65:
Where does that put you in Brian Mitchell's description of the political landscape in Eight Ways to Run the Country?
http://www.amazon.com/Eight-Ways-Run-Country-Revealing/dp/0275993582/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282508496&sr=1-3
Kudos to Mr. deChanson (Ya gotta LOVE that name! Where is Roland and Charles The Hammer when we need them). Dhimmitude is fast approaching, as witness the most recent touchy-feely comments from Archbishop Dolan.
I should add that Brian Mitchell is a good friend. (In fact, although younger than I am, he is my God Father, having been my sponsor when I ways Chrismated as an Orthodox Christian many years ago.) I don't get any commission, only satisfaction, when promoting his books.
At the height of Turkish expansion in Europe, the Mussulmans controlled vast territories inhabited by Christian populations. Yet at the time when open warfare was waged against Christians by ruthless and cruel followers of Islam, in most of these areas churches were not destroyed and mosques were not built. This is true for Bulgaria and Romania and Hungary which were under Ottoman rule, direct or indirect, for centuries. How do we explain this? Especially in light of what has happened in much recent times in the former Yugoslavia, when (at least in my understanding), churches were actively targeted for destruction or mutilation. I am genuinely interested in your opinion and not trying to start a polemical exchange or stir up trouble on this excellent web site, especially on an article by Dr. Fleming whose writings I enjoy very much.
Haha, Mr. Van Sant, I see three types of conservatives listed there in the Table of Contents.
I think political labels were already outdated in the 17th century, a time by which every average Joe could write a giant philosophical treatise on his oh-so-unique ideas for mass publication. One of those average Joes was John Locke, who simply reassembled ideas of various Frenchmen and Spaniards from decades back into one very mediocre book.
By the time every ordinary person could create his own rudimentary school of thought, why bother classifications?
The worst thing about categorizations and compartmentalizations is that you get lumped in with those with whom you don't want to be. One of those things that infuriated Schumpter and Rothbard was the status given to Adam Smith and John Locke. Adam Smith is seen as a giant, even though he was a dwarf. Everything written in his famous book could be found in, again, French books from decades or even centuries back and was nothing new. Where anything was new, it was disturbingly wrong and long discredited, as saddened Frenchmen realized after reading his book. They knew he set back all thought on social and moral life.
It's relevant to this mosque topic. This whole "movement conservatism" has produced characters like Sarah Palin and the legions who now defend her. Thanks to compartmentalized movements, there is a grade zero argument against the mosque.
I don't wish to enter into polemics on a question, e.g. the evil of Americans who sacrifice their children's future to some lesser "good," when it can be settled pretty easily by a rational examination of the underlying assumptions. To keep this short, I am going to assume that participants adhere either to Christian or classical teachings on ethics. Question one: is evil simply the product of ignorance, as Socrates argued? Or are Euripides and St. Paul, to name just two writers, correct in saying that people may know what is right but choose to do what is wrong? If we side with Socrates, then we must follow the argument to its logical conclusions: there are no innate or inherent propensities that drive us to evil, only ignorance. If you believe this, you should join the NEA or become a social worker.
Some people do evil knowing it is evil. Some of them are criminals, though criminals often have multiple excuses, from "I didn't know the gun was loaded" to "I didn't know it was illegal to prostitute children" to "everybody does it, I just got caught."
Taking these three in order, we might indeed acquit someone of murder, if we really believed he did not know he was playing with a loaded gun. We should still hold him responsible for the death of his victim, because first, grownups are supposed to know never even to point a gun at anyone unless they are willing to shoot him and any morally responsible person would check out the gun--on the odd chance that pointing an empty gun and pulling the trigger could be justified (for example, as part of a play--to make sure it is not loaded. Ignorance of a fact, then, does not necessarily constitute an excuse if one is breaking with custom and the rules of prudence. To say, I didn't know that Mexicans and Africans commit violent crimes at higher rates than Europeans is no excuse for not opposing open immigration, the loaded gun in this case.
Secondly, we all know the legal maxim that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Ignorance of the constitution--I mean the real Constitution--can not be invoked by politicians and voters who think everyone has a right to come to the US and practice whatever godawful cult they happen to follow.
Finally, the best argument that dumb Americans have: If they support politicians and policies that will ruin the lives of their children, they are no different from their neighbors. If such people could be suddenly enlightened, they might explain that they had the misfortune to grow up in a place and time where people did not know right from wrong. Really? So the African chieftain who rapes his pre-pubescent grand-daughter can be excused because no one every told him it was wrong? Christians believe with Paul that implanted in nature is a rational order that we see in the heavens and feel in our hearts. Even in an evil society or neighborhood, some people grow up to be comparatively decent people. If the American people are so invincibly ignorant that they cannot know good from evil, then we should adopt one or more of the following courses: 1) Impose a dictatorship because they cannot be trusted to vote; 2) give them a pass for any crimes they commit because they do not know what they are doing, or 3) give them the Sodom and Gomorrah treatment--that is, execute the lot of them because they are criminally insane. Of these three unpalatable solutions, I prefer the first.
Of course we could hold people responsible for their actions, in which case we could say they are evil in doing evil without necessarily wanting to kill or enslave them.
Euripides and St. Paul, of course, are correct. Example: A few women might be ignorant (I doubt it) but most of them know what they're doing when they abort their child. Certainly they know what they're doing after the first time, so serial abortionists know exactly what they're doing. The doctors certainly know what they're doing.
Let me also respond to Doda Pilli, whose comment had been in moderation until I approved it (this happens to first-time contributors). In the history of Islam, different methods have been used at different times to subjugate the Christian populations. Roughly speaking, there is a series of phases: terrorism to soften up the target, conquest and subjugation--high taxes, destruction of churches, mass rape--toleration punctuated by intermittent periods of terrorism and renewed destruction. When the Turks took Constantinople, they destroyed some churches and turned others--such as Hagia Sophia--into mosques. The Turks knew, however, that they needed support from the hardworking and better educated Greeks, Armenians, Slavs, and Albanians they conquered. Greeks staffed the Ottoman bureaucracy and manned the ships; Serbs and Albanians often played important political, diplomatic, and military roles. All was not, however, so swell as it might seem, since a mad ruler--such as some of the Fatimid rulers in Egypt--or local aristocrats could get it into his head that the slaves were getting uppity, and any sign of independence was punished by the destruction and vandalizing of churches, cemeteries, etc. The Turks actually dug up the remains of St. Sava of Serbia and publicly burned them as a means of destroying Christian identity and anyone who has travelled through the Balkans and visited historic churches knows how many times they were attacked, vandalized, and burned.
Even today in secular Turkey whose constitution stipulates freedom of religion, the Orthodox Church is persecuted in numerous ways. Adequate police protection is rarely extended; laws are passed that enable the government to confiscate Church property; riots are winked at; the government makes it difficult for non-Turkish priests to assist the Patriarch, and, while the government is doing everything short of genocide to extirpate the Orthodox Church, they require the Patriarch to be a Turkish subject. This not only reduces the pool of candidates down to almost nothing but also has the effect of making sure that the Patriarch is a timid man used to being pushed around. I should add, by the way, that in my few days in what I prefer to call Constantinople I found the Turks to be among the politest people I have ever known. The same has been true of the midele-class Turks I have been in the US and Europe. I don't think there is anything inherently evil in them--indeed, middle-class Turks are far more genetically European than they are Turkish--but anytime you give people an excuse for lording it over others, they will generally take advantage. One of the things Christians dislike in Islam is the license it gives to bigotry and oppression.
But let us accept Mr. Pilli's basic point, for the sake of argument, that such violence has been worse in recent decades. This is partly a question of turning religion into a badge of ethnic identity. Thus, a loose-living rakija-swillling pork-eating Muslim in Bosnia, who does not believe in God much less in his prophet--would burn Christian churches, which to him are a symbol of the enemy. Why are Orthodox Serbs the enemy? Because they are supposed to be the slaves of the Bosnian Muslims, that is, the Serbs whose ancestors converted to Islam for the sake of preserving wealth and power. So, I think that such conflicts are more ethnic than religious. Muslim terrorists, on the other hand, probably have a rather different orientation in which ethnic resentment plays a part--why are Arabs such losers compared with Europeans?--but in going to war or committing acts of terrorism they would appear to be operating from sincere religious motives, even though their fanaticism may well be fueled by an ethnic and cultural inferiority complex.
I am starting to understand a little more what you have been indicating earlier, Dr. Fleming.
You mention that Turks are generally good people, but still can and will bully and hurt others when they get the chance.
Would it be that the middle or upper class Muslim Americans, who might behave well on a day to day basis, can and will conduct harmful acts to other ethnic groups once they get a little motive?
"Only in America, land of opportunity, can they save a seat in the back of the bus just for me. Only in America, Where they preach the Golden Rule, will they start to march when my kids go to school."
There is a general rule about American pop music. Very few authentic pop songs are leftist anti-American, because the writers and singers of country music, rockabilly, and non-TinPan Alley all have deep roots. I wonder what one would find if one had the bad taste to look into the origins and original names of the members of a group having the nerve to call itself "Jay and the Americans"?
As Clyde Wilson once observed to me: You can always tell who the illegal aliens are--their cars have the most American flags and yellow-ribbon decals.
My thanks to Herr Bosse for the compliment. I would willingly stand with my confrère M Martel against the Saracen onslaught as our eponymous heroes did in bygone days. Yet the Mohammedan menace still threatens Christendom.
BTW, the "Roland" prénom is my own; the de Chanson is fanciful, though epical.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam!
Mr. Bosse, @68, I looked up Archbishop Dolan's comment upon reading your own. Archbishop Dolan is a man I have a great deal of respect and fondness for, as he was a long time priest in my childhood parish. He also trained me to become an altar boy, back when we were exclusively boys and wore cassocks and surplusses with no tennis shoes or jeans even imaginable.
Although my parents do see him from time to time when he comes home to visit his brother's family, I do not know how he is now. I do know back then, he was nobody's fool. He did not walk lightly upon this earth.
I hope he is still a man not be underestimated. I trust that he has learned a couple things about being in the public and greasy position he currently occupies, having to deal with people like Bloomberg. Let us wait and see how he handles the words that matter before we conclude anything. This assumes that he has been clever enough to give the Catholic church any sway whatsoever in the shenanigans of NYC. I'm also sure he would appreciate our prayers.
Dr. Fleming,
Thank you for allowing my comments to be posted on your web-site and also thank you for your response!
I visit this web-site very often and also subscribe to the paper version of the magazine. My contributions (if one can call them so) will probably be mostly in the form of questions, hopefully intriguing enough to merit posting, but always in good faith. I prefer to watch and learn and I have come to believe that there is much to be learned at Chronicles from all the contributors, including most of the commenters.
Since Doda Pilii is a village in Rumania, I assume you are Rumanian or have an interest in that country. They suffered terribly from Turkish aggression and although disunited the Wallachians were heroes in resisting the advance of Islam. Janos Hunyadi was Wallachian as was the terrible Vlad. For several years I contemplated writing a book on the siege of Belgrade, but the amount of work in a variety of languages was staggering.
Dr Fleming, you are, of course, right about the name and your first assumption. I have spent many summers exploring the Western Carpathians and our base was often this village with a very strange name. I went to school in Romania in the "Ceausescu era" and learned history with a certain bias, so I would like to discover how historical events and their causes and effects are explained or viewed by others.
Heinlein wrote a novel on taking the USA through a religious venue. Sans the Scifi, the muslimes are doing it by the book.
Doda Pilii-- you won't find much difference between the Ceausescu bias and American Universities, media and political pundits in their historical interpretations.
My family, quite the small one, my father, my mother and I, would sit at our little supper bar looking out onto the backyard in which there were apple trees, rare in Louisiana, and pear trees. At supper, with this pleasant view, family council was held, a time during which we discussed, among other things, politics. I recall my father discussing the debate and then the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act. It was, he asserted, something evil which would, over time, change the face of America. That which my father feared is upon us.
"It is a sign of how genuinely stupid–and evil–Americans are that they tolerate Muslims in their midst and allow them to become citizens."
To my Islamist brethren I say build your Mosque. We've invited you wolves into our sheep pen and we're too squeamish to rid ourselves of you. The least we can do is let you eat in peace!
As for the New York Jews supporting or at least not opposing the Mosque, that is an easy read. It serves the long-term national security interests of the country to which they pledge allegiance - Israel. The Mosque will be one more Islamist thorn in the side of the typical yahoo low brow Americans that constitute and support our "warrior" class. Those who proudly cheer and tolerate the deaths and maiming of our servicemen and women for the sake of foreigners too corrupt and incompetent to establish a civilized society for themselves will be fueled with much righteous anger when the current war-monger-in-chief thrusts us into an Iranian war as Israel’s mercenaries.
Dear Mr.McCabe:
I hope you are right. In any event most assuredly Archbishop Dolan will be in my prayers.
"Let’s focus on those things we can control and view all this other noise as low-grade entertainment."
Mr Colin and to all the others who comment here - let us please dispense with the bravado and self delusion. Our rantings here are nothing but "noise" and "low grade entertainment" meant to convince oursleves that we are relevant. We are the battered spouse who vows to "someday leave him." We are the skinny geek who will "show that bully the next time." Control? We cannot even control how our beneficent government uses or taxes. We increasingly cannot control how we use our own property. We increasingly cannot control with whom we may choose or may not choose to associate. We are threatened with prosecution or ruinous civil suit if we choose to defend ourselves when the duly appointed government agents are unavailable. Even the personal consumption of food and tobacco is being attacked.
Until we are ready to flip the middle digit on April 15, openly defy intolerable attacks on personal liberties, and forcibly resist the government agents sent to enforce the attacks, let us resign ourselves to venting or frustrations in print. But let us not delude ourselves that our tangible action will ever amount to anything more than casting a meaningless ballot for a co-conspirator of either party.
Mr. Kamka @ 88 & 90:
I think your posting on the mosque/Iran connection is insightful. Anything that furthers the interests of the Neo-cons, their masters and their enablers is a good thing from their perspective.
Pursuant to your point @ #90, you interpret my final comment incorrectly. I'm not seeking relevance. I certainly don't think our postings here or our votes will effect change in our federal government. What you call for is revolution, which, however justified, might not effect in the end the changes we want if we consider the history of most of them.
When I speak of attending to the things we can control I mean my thoughts and actions and those of like mind. I'm not forced to support the lobotomized robots atop the head of either major party, so I don't. I can't make either party change, but I can control how I speak, how I conduct my business and what behaviors I engage in. Instead of relying on the ballot to achieve the elimination of abortion,pornography et al we need to change hearts; we can do that best by example. Other cultural issues abound with steps we can all take that fall short of refusing the tax man, which will only get me hauled off to prison and marginalized besides.
As for our military adventures, we need to quit providing the cannon fodder for these imperialistic forays in service to the Likudniks. It's still a volunteer army (and increasingly a mercenary one) so it's within our grasp.
1) Most disputations are inherently polemical- but need no devolve into semantics
2) The dispute is most certainly not due to a "question, but an assertion, to wit: Islam is evil,it is at war with us, we should know it is evil, we allow evil to dwell amongst us, hence we are not only stupid but evil. Conceded.
3) Actions, good or bad, have moral responsibility and carry with them reward or punishment, but not all human actions are equally imputable.
4)An action's imputability is determined by the actors knowledge and freedom. Evil is sin and will be punished according to degree of responsiblity. All have sinned- no passes issued- severity of punishment unknown.
5) For a sinner it is not semantics to seriously consider the Church's teaching regarding vincible and invincible ignorance.
6) Americans are not so much impervious to reality , as hubristic in believing they can construct their own.
7) Charges of stupid and lazy;stupid and naive;stupid and gullible, unlike the more serious charge of stupid and evil , need not at least leave unanswered a most obvious question-.... compared to ?
Since I have no idea what this last post means, I think it is time to close down the discussion.