PrintJuly 9, 2010
The Ground Zero mosque; a contrary view
We have all heard about the plans to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade centers. Many of us have gotten the emails exhorting us to kill the mosque and contribute to the political action to keep it from going up near the place where the towers went down. For example you can go here.
Now my question is this - Are we living in America or are we living in a 3d world country? In America, we have the right and liberty to control our own property (in so far as the State has not yet proscribed us from doing so). Indeed, freedom to do pretty much anything with our property has been a hallowed feature of the American way of life for many years now.
In this vein, call them heartless, call them cruel, call them shameless, call them arrogant, call them jihadists, call them evil, call them satan’s real ally ..... do you not also call them owners of property and should they not have the same rights as everybody else to build their building on their own property? And what, should they be prevented from doing so because you do not like what they worship in that building ... or what they read in that building..
For Americans to publicly shame and censure the proponents of the mosque project is appropriate, for it is a truly tasteless and shameless act;, but to try and use the power of the STATE to prevent the shameless display is EXACTLY what the government of a 3d world dictatorship would do.
What will you then say, if having gotten your way on this issue, the power of the STATE is harnessed to plow asunder your synagogue, or your Mormon tabernacle, or your Baptist church. What will you say when the power of the precedent set in this matter is used to prevent you from sitting with the Lakers when they come to Philly.
This (allowing of a tasteless display of a mosque next to ground zero, or allowing the white sheets to march in Skokie) is what is really meant by the saying about "...freedom not being free". A bitter pill, but much better to swallow this than to create a mechanism for the power of the STATE to be enlisted either for or against whatever in or out of vogue.
Thus it is that concerning the mosque, I say bring it on, this is a free country and we will use the power of our press and our public and private discourse to heap censure on you, but contrary to how you would treat us, we will recognize your rights to build because this is a free country, where unlike most others where subjects answer the call of the minaret under pain of death for not doing so, you will not be beheaded for your worship of your idols on property that you own and we will not make it a crime to be Muslim.
This, my fellow Americans is the answer to the jihad, for what jihadists would not stop to think about what a great country it must really be where one can speak against the king/mullah without fear of his head coming off ,and his family being eradicated from the face of the earth.
