Some further thoughts, left and right, on Pres. Obama’s speech supporting the proposition that the constitution’s provision of religious freedom for all means that the Constitution provides religious freedom for all.
… We learn again that saying you’re for “democratic values” and freedom actually means being for “democratic values” and freedom. Are we in the tradition of the opening and plural societies of Amsterdam and London and America? Or the closed and authoritarian ones of Madrid and Moscow? The infrastructure of the Republican party has chosen to hoist its sail to religious bigotry. There’s no other way to put it. The president has done the only thing he could possibly do which is to state clearly that we’re Americans and we don’t discriminate on the basis of religious belief.
That link is to Eric Cantor’s reaction:
“I think that is the ultimate insensitivity,” Cantor said during an interview with National Review. “Anyone looking at that with any common sense would say, ‘What in the world would we be doing, you know, fostering some type of system that allows this to happen.’ Everybody knows America’s built on the rights of free expression, the rights to practice your faith, but come on.
“The World Trade Centers were brought down by Islamic extremists — radicals who were bent on killing Americans and accomplished that in unimaginable ways. I think it is the height of insensitivity, and unreasonableness to allow for the construction of a mosque on the site of the World Trade Center bombings. I mean, come on.”
It is, as Eric Kleefeld puts it, the ” ‘come on’ exception to America’s freedom of religion.”
Erick Erickson tweets (h/t Matt Duss at Think Progress):
Paging the Church of Satan: Our founding principles demand Barack Obama support your rights to human sacrifice. Carry on.
Alisyn Camerota and Dave Briggs, weekend hosts at Fox & Friends (don’t faint):
“Obama has to stand up for religious freedom,” said co-host Alisyn Camerota. “He has to stand up for our Constitution,” co-host Dave Briggs offered, to which co-host Clayton Morris added, “That’s the job he gets…defend the Constitution.”
Also via Think Progress (Faiz Shakir), which has the video.
William Kristol, quoting and responding to Obama’s acknowledgment of 9/11 sensitivities:
Obama: “Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.”
This is revealing. For Obama, 9/11 was a “deeply traumatic event for our country.” Traumatic events invite characteristic reactions and over-reactions–fearfulness, anger, even hysteria. That’s how Obama understands the source of objections to the Ground Zero mosque. It’s all emotional. The arguments don’t have to be taken seriously. The criticisms of the mosque are the emotional reactions of a traumatized people.
But Americans aren’t traumatized. 9/11 was an attack on America, to which Americans have responded firmly, maturely, and appropriately. Part of our sensible and healthy reaction is that there shouldn’t be a 13-story mosque and Islamic community center next to Ground Zero (especially when it’s on a faster track to be built than the long-delayed memorial there). But Obama (like Bloomberg) doesn’t feel he even has to engage the arguments against the mosque–because he regards his fellow citizens as emotionally traumatized victims, not citizens who might have a reasonable point of view.
Scott Johnson at Power Line refers repeatedly to a, or the, “Muslim shrine,” says that Pres. Obama should respect the feelings of “ordinary Americans” (as opposed to Muslims and Americans of all and no religious faiths who support the right of Muslim Americans to build an Islamic community center and house of worship anywhere it would be legal for any other religious group to build a house of worship or community center), and echoes the by-now familiar theme that freedom of religion is fine unless it offends “ordinary Americans” (read: Christian and Jewish ultra-conservatives). He repeats the phrase “ordinary Americans” several times, and over and over again tells us what “ordinary Americans” think and want:
If it is another mosque that is wanted, as Obama suggests, ordinary Americans desire only that it be built somewhere else in New York. Obama’s invocation of the First Amendment right of the free exercise of religion is not on point.
In the good old USA, citizens have a right to do many wrongs. One such wrong would be the establishment of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero. Obama simply does not engage the point. He does not argue that the establishment of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero would be right.
He says that we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities involved with the development of lower Manhattan, but then again, apparently we need not. His acknowledgment of the need to recognize and respect the sensitivities involved is meaningless ornamentation.
Obama does not recognize the deep offense that would be given by the establishment of a Muslim shrine at Ground Zero. On this point he has precisely nothing to say. He does not make a case why the feelings of ordinary Americans should give way.
With great reliability Obama stands athwart the feelings of ordinary Americans. Indeed, he is a much more ardent defender of the faith of Musims [sic] than he is of the United States, of its history or of its people. Obama’s defense of the mosque at Ground Zero highlights his adversarial stance and is thus a particularly valuable addition to the record.
My emphasis, because I just find this fascinating — this neat distinction that so many commentators on the right make — between Muslims and Islam, and “the United States, its history” and “its people.” As if Muslims and the Islamic faith were outside of the American people, of the United States, of U.S. history. Muslims and the Islamic faith have been a part of American history for just as long as any other distinct group of people or faith has been a part of American history.
It might also be instructive to remember that the hatred, dislike, suspicion, prejudice, fear, and misinformation about Muslims today echoes — quite stunningly so, in fact — that directed against Catholics in the 19th century.
So when John Boehner says, “This is a basic issue of respect for a tragic moment in our history,” he is full of you know what. Americans whose religious faith is Islam suffered that tragedy right along with Americans whose religious faith is Christianity and Americans whose religious faith is Judaism and Americans whose religious faith is Hinduism and Americans who have no religious faith at all. The respect Boehner calls for does not exclude Muslims, and it does not exclude the many, many other Americans of all faiths and ethnicities and national origins who would agree that “you have the right to practice your religion but not where I can see it because it offends me” is neither a respectful nor an American creed.
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