Professor Obama Lectures on Religious Freedom
The Cordoba House project to build a huge mosque on the site where Islamic terrorists slaughtered thousands of Americans in cold blood is an epic troll. Merely getting away with proposing it in broad daylight would have been proof enough of America’s pathetic and castrated situation, but actually doing it while being cuckolded by our own Commander in Chief will be the most hilarious pantsing in our nation’s history.
In a characteristically sassy yet toothless rejoinder to our own President coming out in support of the mosque, Sarah Palin joined the rest of the kosher conservative movement in conceding that “We all know they have the right to do it”:
Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people?
Please tell us your position.
We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? And, no, this is not above your pay grade [Matt: zing!].
If those who wish to build this Ground Zero mosque are sincerely interested in encouraging positive “cross-cultural engagement” and dialogue to show a moderate and tolerant face of Islam, then why haven’t they recognized that the decision to build a mosque at this particular location is doing just the opposite?
According to Sarah Palin, Americans need to ask the moderate and peace-seeking Islamic community to ask the aggressive and triumphant Islamic community to please not hurt our national feelings. Both Palin and Obama, for all the media hype, have the same opinion on the mosque: we wish they wouldn’t do that, but we agree that our founding documents disallow us from doing a damn thing about it.
We’ve reached the logical conclusion of this multicult buffoonery: conceding on principle that aggressive third world invaders must be allowed to take over America. We’ve been hoisted on our own scimitar. This government won’t give us permission to stop the Muslims from coming, holding the borders wide open. This government won’t give us permission to keep them out of our neighborhoods. We’re being conquered and humiliated by our sworn enemies and it’s our own government with its boot on our neck.
I suppose we might as well learn to live with our condition…
The theory goes that our First Amendment makes this a straightforward case of religious freedom…
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
But in the original context, before the federal government metastasized into a pervasive and oppressive regime, this entire amendment was limited to “Congress”. At our nation’s founding, there were indeed state religions, official state religions, in some of the states. It would be entirely in following both the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights for the State of New York to pass a law banning the construction of mosques, even outlawing Islamic institutions altogether.
Does Not Compute
But more importantly, one must understand what “religion” meant in the founding context. Different “religions” were different Christian denominations. The only real exceptions at the time (atheism, deism, and Judaism) were powerless minorities that didn’t seem to pose a credible threat to our Christian and White American way of life. The specter of powerful enemies whose political and ethnic identities were inextricably rolled up into their religion wasn’t on our radar.
A moment’s reflection makes it plain that the prevailing interpretation of the First Amendment leaves us integrally vulnerable to enemies who wear a fig leaf of “religion” while conquering us. The craven failure of the Tea Party movement to “refudiate” this, clinging to their American Revolutionary cargo cult, is yet another damning exhibit in the case for dismissing the absurd notion that these self-castrated Cosmic Cowards are up to the challenge of rescuing America.
Matt Parrott
mindweapon
“The Cordoba House project to build a huge mosque on the site where Islamic terrorists slaughtered thousands of Americans in cold blood is an epic troll.”
America started it.
If you read Bin Laden speak about America he always goes back and forth between talking about all the Muslim blood it has spilt and all the corruption it has spread on one hand, and how Americans will back down from confrontation on the other.
Just look at all the money the American taxpayer willingly spends on remote control drones, just so the so called soldiers in their army can avoid actually having to fight.
“According to Sarah Palin, Americans need to ask the moderate and peace-seeking Islamic community to ask the aggressive and triumphant Islamic community to please not hurt our national feelings.”
That’s a good description of their position, and it well captures just how beta they are.
“At our nation’s founding, there were indeed state religions, official state religions, in some of the states. It would be entirely in following both the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights for the State of New York to pass a law banning the construction of mosques, even outlawing Islamic institutions altogether.”
Excellent point.
At the same time it would certainly be unconstitutional for the Federal Government to do anything on this front.
The reason the Founding Fathers put that religious clause in was largely because in Europe the Federal Governments had the right to hold up construction of religious buildings, which led inevitably to the sort of religious stagnation well described by Rodney Stark.
“A moment’s reflection makes it plain that the prevailing interpretation of the First Amendment leaves us integrally vulnerable to enemies who wear a fig leaf of ‘religion’ while conquering us.”
I dunno. Mexicans don’t bother with mixing religion and politics much and it doesn’t seem to hold them back.
“The craven failure of the Tea Party movement to ‘refudiate’ this, clinging to their American Revolutionary cargo cult…”
I love that metaphor. I honestly didn’t get what this Tea Party movement thing was about, in terms of the imagery and whatnot, but within 3 seconds of first reading your use of that metaphor I got it completely.
Top class writing.
“…is yet another damning exhibit in the case for dismissing the absurd notion that these self-castrated Cosmic Cowards are up to the challenge of rescuing America.”
Yeah, what I don’t get is why they don’t concentrate on the crucial issue of immigration, while leaving alone America’s love affair with the abstract concept of religion.
Cause actually there could be few things worse than only cutting off Islamic immigration.
The vast majority of non-European blooded immigrants into America aren’t Muslims, and cutting off Muslims with have the undesirable effect of removing the only negative externality of immigration (terrorism) which actually threatens the welfare of the elite, which just happens to also be the negative externality of immigration which isn’t subjected to a massive media blackout in this Country.
That last paragraph should read:
The vast majority of non-European blooded immigrants into America aren’t Muslims, and cutting off Muslims would have the undesirable effect of removing the only negative externality of immigration (terrorism launched from outside America) which actually constitutes a direct threat the welfare of the elite, and which just happens to also be the only negative externality of immigration which isn’t subjected to a massive media blackout in this Country.
“It would be entirely in following both the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights for the State of New York to pass a law banning the construction of mosques, even outlawing Islamic institutions altogether.”
Also if the City of New York, or the neighborhood where the specific Mosque is going to be built, wanted to ban the construction of Mosques they would certainly be free to do so.
In the good old days Neighborhoods had the power to control their own affairs, if they were so inclined.
But anti-racism was used as a pretext to destroy neighborhood autonomy in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
The irony is that they didn’t politely ask this or that neighborhood to let Blacks move in, like they now politely ask the Cordoba project not to build their Ground Zero Mosque.
Instead they said my way or the high way, my way or federal troops will march up and down your city streets.
Thanks a lot, Eisenhower.
Reginald,
America started it.
Americans were almost completely in the dark about the origins of this war that’s been going on since well before 9/11. I’m against America taking the side of either the Muslims or the Jews in their ongoing Holy War we’ve been thrust in the middle of, and I believe it’s both tactically and morally appropriate to embrace the Middle American backlash at Islam and help direct that toward immigration restriction.
Cause actually there could be few things worse than only cutting off Islamic immigration.
You may be correct on some very subtle strategic level. Worse may be better in some cases. However, we need to be advocating and fighting for the better, while jumping in to capitalize on the growing frustration as our policy prescriptions are ignored and things get worse. It’s kind of like with Mexican immigration: Little if any of the progress we’ve made in the past decade toward the mainstream would have happened without the open border, but that doesn’t mean we should be for open borders.
But given that we’re still a minority influence on the people and the people have no influence on this issue in the first place, the issue is a purely academic one, no?
At the same time it would certainly be unconstitutional for the Federal Government to do anything on this front.
I’m not so sure about that. As I suggested above, I believe there’s a solid case that the founders really only meant religion to be the different Christian denominations, Masonic deism, and atheism. Both Islam and Judaism are far more pervasive and aggressive in scope and effect than the founders had in mind when grappling with these issues.
Kievsky here. I hope to be part of the delightsome blog collective. My new blog is http://mindweaponsinragnarok.wordpress.com come on over and say hi. I haven’t figured out how to do all the fancy sidebar stuff with WordPress yet, like putting links and stuff.
Our old Khazar friend Joshua Holland made a post about Occidental Dissent at Alternet, re: the 911 Mosque:
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/16/white-supremacists-totally-oppose-cordoba-house/
I made a post noting that he was a “congenitally treasonous Khazar whose ancestors opened the gates to the Muslim invasion in Spain,” and asked if he considered Charles Martel an “eeevil white supremacist” too. He deleted it and banned me from Alternet.
It’s funny how their first reaction is ALWAYS treason, unless the host nation is going to do something that’s good for the Khazarian agenda.
Matt,
“Americans were almost completely in the dark about the origins of this war that’s been going on since well before 9/11. I’m against America taking the side of either the Muslims or the Jews in their ongoing Holy War we’ve been thrust in the middle of, and I believe it’s both tactically and morally appropriate to embrace the Middle American backlash at Islam and help direct that toward immigration restriction.”
Sure.
“You may be correct on some very subtle strategic level. Worse may be better in some cases. However, we need to be advocating and fighting for the better, while jumping in to capitalize on the growing frustration as our policy prescriptions are ignored and things get worse. It’s kind of like with Mexican immigration: Little if any of the progress we’ve made in the past decade toward the mainstream would have happened without the open border, but that doesn’t mean we should be for open borders.”
Yeah, we shouldn’t be in favor of that.
But I’m not really saying we should be in favor of Muslim immigration, rather that I think the immigration issue shouldn’t be too bifurcated.
A major problem is that while White Americans are strongly against illegal immigration, they aren’t nearly as much against legal immigration.
I think a major reason for this is that the immigration restrictionist movement talks too much like illegal immigration is by far the biggest problem, even though I think legal immigration is how at least half of the non-European immigrants get in.
Now obviously the law breaking aspect of illegal immigration is going to make it more offensive to people, so it’s only natural to give it a somewhat disproportionate share of attention, but it’s been taken too far.
And then with Muslim immigration it’s a much smaller subset of the immigration problem than illegal immigration is.
I just can’t stand what’s happened in Holland with Wilders. They finally got a guy willing to be the “bad guy” to the Left on immigration, but then it turns out he’s fine with any kind of immigration as long as they aren’t Muslim.
It seems like such a waste to me.
“But given that we’re still a minority influence on the people and the people have no influence on this issue in the first place, the issue is a purely academic one, no?”
You’re right.
On the other hand if Neocons start talking about only cutting off Muslim immigration, it’s going to be a problem.
It would probably cut the Government and Elite off from any meaningful negative effects of immigration for a long time while still allowing 95% of the immigration to continue.
That would be very close to the worst of both Worlds.
“I’m not so sure about that. As I suggested above, I believe there’s a solid case that the founders really only meant religion to be the different Christian denominations, Masonic deism, and atheism.”
I think they also treated Judaism as a religion.
“Both Islam and Judaism are far more pervasive and aggressive in scope and effect than the founders had in mind when grappling with these issues.”
Maybe they would’ve only said the federal government can make no law respecting an establishment of a Christian religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, if they knew how things were going to turn out.
But the way things stand Christianity has no special legal protection relative to other religions.
Unless this is changed you can’t prohibit the free exercise of non-Christian religions on a federal level without establishing the removal of first amendment protection from Christian forms of religion.
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