Obama supports "Ground Zero Mosque" (of course he does)

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

Suddenly Reid is smarter than Obama?

No he is the same old hard core progressive, its just that his is an election year for him so...

Someone should ask Pelosi too

[antikristuseke]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

You are correct but the Constitution also affords us the right to complain, voice our opinions and be a general nuisance...within the law of course. Many are exercising that right under the Constitution.

I can understand and respect that. It is just that the thread has touched upon legalities so I wanted to clear things up for myself.
I am not opposed to bitching about things you don't like, that is a right as is responding to the bitching with counter bitching, turning it into a never ending cyclone of bitchage, which can either be bitching or more annoying than a bitch in heat (some dog owners can attest to that).

I believe the objection to this building is based on a moral stance to be sure. Many feel that Islam is thumbing their nose at the US by building this structure very close to the World Trade Center grounds. Perhaps some are not seeing this as a religious house of worship but a political statement.

And this is what I really take objection to, treating islam as if it was a single conscious entity. It is not, there are as many interpretations of islam as there are of christianity, just lumping it all into the same pot is far to great of a generalisation to be acceptable in my book.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Aramike

The Tenth Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with any guaranteed right to construction whatsoever.

It guarantees that the Federal government can't stop it just because you don't like it.

Furthermore then Tenth Amendment isn't there to simply be applied to every single case where one "feels" there should be a freedom. Case law simply doesn't support that.

So if you feel like taking away my freedom to go outside on Tuesdays, you can? The Tenth keeps the Feds from interfering with the powers that properly belong to the States and to the People, which is exactly what some here seem to be advocating.

In any case, in your post you said that state and local laws carry precedence. Exactly. Thank you for agreeing specifically with my point that this case has nothing whatsoever to do with the Constitution.

Except where the Constitution guarantees equal rights and protections under the law for everyone. You would deny someone the right to build something where he wants to. Is that not about the Constitution?

Vapid comebacks out of thin air don't work with me. I responded to someone Bush-hating for no reason. Please give me an example of my "Obama-hating". (I'm actually pretty independant, so I'm really looking forward to the example of my argument based upon nothing other than me not liking Obama.)

I didn't accuse you of "Obama-hating". My response was aimed directly at yours, which seemed to me equally vapid.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Oh thats his obligatory thing he had to do, shouldn't but he did.Whole different ballgame with Obama.

And how exactly do you 'know' this. It looks like nothing more than your opinion.

Tribesman, really going to say someone who majored in legal studies/pre law and begins law school in less than a month is ignorant of the constitution? get real.

Get real? The problem is that you don't argue like a college graduate. You argue, and write, like the average trailer-park scholar whose only knowledge is what he's heard from Rush Limbaugh. You give your opinion, call it fact, and if somebody questions it you become defensive and cite your 'credentials'. If you don't like what somebody says, you call him "scum". Sorry, but you don't sound like you're ready to start high school, much less law school.

Everything I just said has nothing to do with who you are, but only with how you express yourself.

This is not a constitutional issue as I see it.I see people who think the constitution is outdated and never invoke it unless it serves them, such as in this purpose , trying to make it a constitutional issue but it's not.

Had any good 'Church and State' discussions lately? You're correct about people on the Left only supporting the Constitution when it suits them, but it's true of the Right as well, so you need to give more facts and less opinion.

This just about about gloating of radical muslims and using the ridiculous amount of "tolerance" we have for muslims etc against us.The liberal fools like Bloomberg etc are too blinded by their pc mentality to see it.

No, this is solely about the legal right to build a building, and people who want to stop it because they hate the people who want to build it.

While we are at it lets build some type of Hitler memorial at Normandy or a Japanese shrine at Pearl Harbor, give me a f'n break.

And there you go with the childish pseudo-swearing again. As for the memorials you mention, of course I would stand dead square against them, but in the case of Pearl Harbor, it's America, and if the local zoning commission approved it and it passed muster with the higher authorities, I would support it, on LEGAL grounds. If you're going to law school you'd better learn the difference between what you like and what is right, because they aren't always going to be the same. Call it PC if you like, but you are the one opposing the freedoms we stand for simply because you don't like the folks who want to build a building.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by antikristuseke

Skybird, in essence, what you are saying is that every muslim in the world is bat**** insane like the fundamentalists. Do you apply the same to every religion?

I talk about an idelogy, and I insist on pointing out that ideologies tend to have the nasty habit of educating people to take on certain attitudes, to accept certain beliefs, to run their thinking under certain pre-assumptions and preconditions tjhat are confrom with said ideology, and even to become intolerant towards others. If ideologies would fail in doing all this, they would not survive for long.

Islam is a fundamentlist ideology by essence and nature. It is totalitarian by design - that is an inherent feature, and it is intentional in being so.

Islam is not like any other relgion, Islam is more policy and about social and cultural control than anything else. It is deeply "monoculturalistic" and supremacistic.

there are fundamentlaistrs in other relgions, yes. Fundamentalist christoians tend to be in violation of Christ's teachings that did not support intolerant and aggressive fundamentalism at all. But muhammad has taught intolerant and aggressive, supressive and supremacist fundamentlism for sure. That is why fundamentalism in islam, different to Christianity, is not a violation or aberation, but is nature and essence of it.

So, i have a problem with religion where it steps forward and tries to seize the public space, because then it is no more a private thing of the individual's intimmate relation to what he/she thinks szhe must believe in, but it becomes profane powerpolitics. If kept private, I do not care for it, if you want you can believe in the flying spaghetti monster or the maculate conception : I honestely do not care. Keep thy relgion to thyself, do not dare to bother others with your precious thoughts, you have no right to demand other needing to take note of your beliefs. but when you want others to believe the same way like you do, when you want public education, löegal system and social rules being chnaged to match the content of your beolief - then you get problems with people like me: becasue we have no doubt that freedom is by far the more precious good to be defended, for the sake of the few and the sake of the many, and not just for the sake of some powerhungry self-declare elites and supremacist demagogues.

If you have a new model for the world you want others to pay triubute to, then you have to convince people in the way it is done in scientific hypothesis-, theory- and model-building: the classic heritage of ancient greek philosophy. That is the best strategy to do things that human mind has developed so far. Everything else is just random chance, blind believing in the fairy queen, and unchecked hear-say. And that is not what has brought our culture to the ammount of knowledge and freedom that we have today.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Would you issue that permit?

Whether he would or wouldn't, or I would or wouldn't, is irrelevant. What is relevant is that a particular zoning commission did issue the permit, and a great many people want them to reverse that decision. This is about whether the thing is legal, nothing more.

Actually the only thing relevant to this particular thread is whether Barack Obama is "scum".

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

The idea of a mosque close to the attacks in NYC may very well be legal as it stands today. But it is a bad idea for a group hoping to spread good will and hoping to create a different relationship with the people and victims of the attacks perpetrated on September 11, 2001, as is often expoused by the Imam and his faithful.

I completely agree. I hate the idea. But so far the law allows it, and, bad idea or not, we can uphold the law all the time or we can do so only when it suits us.

[Moeceefus]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

An example is ...you only know what happened today based on what a/the media outlet you encountered. Does that mean that was all that happened today? Logic should tell you no,....more happened .

So how does one know everything about everything? With this logic, wouldn't all sources be wrong or self serving? What information could be reliable? Did history even happen? Are we all living a lie? Does one need to know every single event that happened on any given day in order to claim one of those events accurate?

[Moeceefus]

I wonder how much easier a time the extremists would have recruiting if we were intolerant of Islam. I bet most extremists are upset over us allowing this.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Oh thats his obligatory thing he had to do, shouldn't but he did.Whole different ballgame with Obama.

That is a disingenuous statement. President Bush and President Obama made the same statement, the only statement they could make as president of all Americans, including Muslims.

from the Politico:

The harsh Republican response to President Barack Obama's defense of a mosque near ground zero marks a dramatic shift in the party's posture toward Islam — from a once active courtship of Muslim voters to a very public tolerance after Sept. 11 to an openly aired sense of mistrust.

Republican leaders have largely abandoned former President George W. Bush's post-Sept. 11 rhetorical embrace of American Muslims and his insistence — always controversial inside the party — that Islam is a religion of peace. This weekend, former Bush aides were among the very few Republicans siding with Obama, as many of the party's leaders have moved toward more vocal denunciations of Islam's role in violence abroad and suspicion of its place at home.

The shift plays to a hostility toward Islam among many Republican voters, and it fits with traditional Republican attacks on Democratic weakness on security policy.

"Bush went against the grain of his own constituency," said Allen Roth, a political aide to conservative billionaire Ron Lauder and, independently, a key organizer of the fight against the mosque. "This is part of an underlying set of security issues that could play a significant role in the elections this November."

(....)


Bush is hardly remembered fondly by Muslim Americans, many of whom blame him for a wave of detentions and deportations immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks and for conflict with Muslims abroad. But a less-remembered element of his legacy is the battle he fought within the Republican Party on Islam's behalf.

By the day after the attacks, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer recalled, Bush had expressed his intense concern at the possibility of a backlash against American Muslims, and his aides had begun discussing "the need to balance getting America ready for war against the people who carried out the attacks without infringing on Muslims' right to practice their religion."

On September 17, 2001, Bush visited Washington's Islamic Center with a simple message: "Islam is peace."

Those words didn't sit well with key segments of the Republican base, including some Christian leaders. In June 2002, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention suggested that the God of Muslims would "turn you into a terrorist that'll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of people."

Fleischer took public exception to the statement on Bush's behalf.
"It's something that the president definitely disagrees with. Islam is a religion of peace, that's what the president believes," he said.

Today, Fleischer says he thinks the mosque's organizers would be more sensible to go elsewhere, but that the GOP risks taking too hard a line on Islam as the 2012 elections approach.

"The real issue is going to be the rhetoric of presidential candidates in '11 and '12, and whether they try to strike a balance or whether is it much more vitriolic," he said. "We are at war with radical Islam; we are not at war with Muslims writ large, and we have to find that right balance."

Other former Bush aides backed President Obama's defense of the mosque. Former Bush consultant Mark McKinnon called Obama's Friday remarks an example of "bold and decisive leadership."

"An enormously complex and emotional issue — but ultimately the right thing to do. A president is president for every citizen, including every Muslim citizen," said former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson. "Obama is correct that the way to marginalize radicalism is to respect the best traditions of Islam and protect the religious liberty of Muslim Americans. It is radicals who imagine an American war on Islam. But our conflict is with the radicals alone."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41076.html

[Ducimus]

I'm split.

On one hand:
AARRRRHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!


On the other hand:
Integrity is important and should be preserved.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

I'm split.

On one hand:
AARRRRHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!


On the other hand:
Integrity is important and should be preserved.

I'm right there with you. The people I trust the least, on either side, are the ones who are not split.

[Aramike]

So if you feel like taking away my freedom to go outside on Tuesdays, you can? The Tenth keeps the Feds from interfering with the powers that properly belong to the States and to the People, which is exactly what some here seem to be advocating.

Your going outside on Tuesdays is quite different from a building being erected as an inciteful landmark of sorts. One impacts only you, the other impacts many others.

Except where the Constitution guarantees equal rights and protections under the law for everyone. You would deny someone the right to build something where he wants to. Is that not about the Constitution?

Excuse me, but please show me the Amendment protecting everyone's rights to build whatever they want wherever they want...

By your definition zoning itself is a violation of the 10th, yet SCOTUS has already said it is not.

I didn't accuse you of "Obama-hating". My response was aimed directly at yours, which seemed to me equally vapid.

Except that my comment had a basis in reality (someone Bush-hating with little grasp of the actual issue). Yours made no sense.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Whether he would or wouldn't, or I would or wouldn't, is irrelevant. What is relevant is that a particular zoning commission did issue the permit, and a great many people want them to reverse that decision. This is about whether the thing is legal, nothing more.

Actually the only thing relevant to this particular thread is whether Barack Obama is "scum".

I tend to try to avoid discussions categorizing a person as descriptors such as "scum" but rather steer towards the actual ideas.

My issue, and my point, is that sense should have prevailed and the permit not have been issued in the first place. However, now that it has, I believe the permit should be cancelled on the same basis that I would want the permit struck down if that stripper church of mine were being built.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I talk about an idelogy, and I insist on pointing out that ideologies tend to have the nasty habit of educating people to take on certain attitudes, to accept certain beliefs, to run their thinking under certain pre-assumptions and preconditions tjhat are confrom with said ideology, and even to become intolerant towards others. If ideologies would fail in doing all this, they would not survive for long.

You might as well describe human nature, Sky. People are notoriously vulnerable to ideologies, both religious and secular. They're also notoriously vulnerable to stereotyping and prejudice. It's not the fault of any particular group (though some are more predisposed than others), it's simple human nature. Evidence for this claim comes from the behavior of other apes in the natural world; they follow leaders, they fight, they form groups, and they make war. Chimps are infamous for such behavior. The human mind evolved from such as these, and we display these tendencies today.....

Islam is a fundamentlist ideology by essence and nature. It is totalitarian by design - that is an inherent feature, and it is intentional in being so.

.....which is exactly what you are doing here. Islam is, in many cases, a bad religion. It is a bad ideology, but that doesn't mean it needs to be singled out for extermination. More importantly, it doesn't mean that the people who practice it need to be singled out or exterminated.

Islam is not like any other relgion, Islam is more policy and about social and cultural control than anything else. It is deeply "monoculturalistic" and supremacistic.

Actually, Islam is very much like other religions used to be. Hinduism Judaism, and Catholocism exhibited very similar tendencies when they were primitive religions. The problem with Islam is that it has not been forced to evolve in its home regions. Rather than being included in the global community it has been persecuted and excluded. We can debate that point forever, but what matters is the Islam sees it that way.

Islam is "tameable", as are all ideologies and religions. All it takes is a little mutually beneficial interaction and acceptance. Very soon, you would see an Islam, that is, a religion, that is so interdependent upon outsiders that it can't be fundamental or militaristic. It simply doesn't have the option anymore. Religions are made of people and they will behave like people.

Let me put it this way: I'm a follower of Christ. I believe in peace, tolerance, and forgiveness. I honsetly think that a man who existed 2000 years ago was the Son of the One True God and that he performed miracles and died for our sins. I believe that no man is closer to God than any other. My religion has survived and prospered because it is one of acceptance. But where it was persecuted, it fought back. If you came here today and told me that I couldn't practice my religion, I'd fight you, too. So is it any wonder that a primitive religion fights?

I daresay that you allow your general disdain for religion to be focused upon Islam as a whipping-boy. I'd even go so far as to say that you may allow your disdain for societal views that are not your own to be impressed upon religion, and from there to Islam. I could be wrong, and it is not my place to judge, but it is a question worth asking yourself.

there are fundamentlaistrs in other relgions, yes. Fundamentalist christoians tend to be in violation of Christ's teachings that did not support intolerant and aggressive fundamentalism at all. But muhammad has taught intolerant and aggressive, supressive and supremacist fundamentlism for sure. That is why fundamentalism in islam, different to Christianity, is not a violation or aberation, but is nature and essence of it.

Fundamentalist Christians, IMO, are just the evolved version of fundamentalist Muslims. Some still commit horrific acts, just not on such a broad scale and not so indiscriminately. Many are just blatantly stupid, and I have a hard time calling them fellows. As time passes, they, too, are being phased out.

So, i have a problem with religion where it steps forward and tries to seize the public space, because then it is no more a private thing of the individual's intimmate relation to what he/she thinks szhe must believe in, but it becomes profane powerpolitics. If kept private, I do not care for it, if you want you can believe in the flying spaghetti monster or the maculate conception : I honestely do not care. Keep thy relgion to thyself, do not dare to bother others with your precious thoughts, you have no right to demand other needing to take note of your beliefs. but when you want others to believe the same way like you do, when you want public education, löegal system and social rules being chnaged to match the content of your beolief - then you get problems with people like me: becasue we have no doubt that freedom is by far the more precious good to be defended, for the sake of the few and the sake of the many, and not just for the sake of some powerhungry self-declare elites and supremacist demagogues.

As long as you can say that and as long as there are politicians, I reserve my right to present Jesus' teachings to any willing to listen. If you don't want to listen, that's fine, we'll pray for you anyway, but you don't get to silence us.

If you have a new model for the world you want others to pay triubute to, then you have to convince people in the way it is done in scientific hypothesis-, theory- and model-building: the classic heritage of ancient greek philosophy. That is the best strategy to do things that human mind has developed so far. Everything else is just random chance, blind believing in the fairy queen, and unchecked hear-say. And that is not what has brought our culture to the ammount of knowledge and freedom that we have today.

That sounds disturbingly translateable into eugenics, for many reasons, and I don't say that to take a jab at you. I guess the same could be said of me, since I champion a form of social-Darwinism, but at least I give everyone a chance.

It is in this point that we have another fundamental difference, Sky. I believe that society is best advanced by the spontaneous experimentation that freedom generates, while you seem to think there is some system by which it is best accomplished. I would no more readily condemn Islam, or religion in general, or Newtonian Physics, or Quantum mechanics to the dustbin of history any more readily than I would condemn you or myself.
You don't know whether or not there is a God, and neither do I. Neither one of us could even define such an entity; and where you see short-sightedness on my part for assuming that there is a higher intelligence, I see short-sightedness on yours for assuming there isn't Nobody knows what is out there.

What I can see is what is right in front of us. I see an inevitable system of little biological machines generated by an unimaginably vast array of laboratories that inevitably create ever more complex biological machines that all have the goal of producing greater order from leser order or disorder. I see divinity in life itself, and I see the divinity in the message of life that Jesus preached. I do not violate your freedom by telling you that, as you have the choice whether or not to believe it, or anything else that I say. At most you could arrogantly dismiss me as being annoying.

However, I see something else, as well. I see a perfectly good and large segment of the human population being labeled as worthy of destruction (in belief, if not in person) for the sole reason that someone sees it as a shortcut. Why not afford Islam the chances that have been given to us? Trade with them freely, let them integrate, and the destructive nature of their ideology will disappear. I guarantee you that.