I hate to get all inflammatory on such a pleasant Friday afternoon, but I think this is probably worth it. A buddy of mine sent me this chart a few days ago, and I’ve since seen it on a number of blogs. It’s a real doozy. Study it. Ponder it. Think about everything our nation has done to itself and others in the last decade, and then consider the concept of proportionality:
Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? At least not to me. We’ve waged two enormously costly wars; surrendered the idea of personal privacy to the “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear” mentality; ceded the moral high ground we enjoyed for 50 years by stooping to the same torture and “disappearance” tactics we always decried in third-world dictatorships; and voluntarily prostrated ourselves to anyone in a uniform in the name of “security.” And for what? A group of extremists so tiny it’s best represented alongside its parent population as a speck. And the really insane thing is that, even after all that, we’re still scared. Scared of boogeymen on the other side of the world, but even more scared of our fellow citizens because they don’t go to the same church or read the same book we do, so we assume they must be up to no good. Except we won’t admit to ourselves that we’re scared, so we recast it as righteous indignation and talk about hurt feelings and dishonor. Yes, I am talking about that so-called mosque in New York — the mosque that isn’t really a mosque and which isn’t actually located at Ground Zero, but which has set off a wave of paranoia and outright bigotry unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my 41-year-old lifetime.
You know what finally convinced me to broach this subject after doing my best to ignore it all summer long? It was a billboard I saw a couple days ago on the side of I-15, here in the Salt Lake Valley, only a couple miles from my house. Apparently bought and paid for by a single individual who worries that we’ve collectively forgotten about 9/11, I guess because we’re not all still shaking our fists at the sky and vowing to “bring it,” the billboard features an iconic photo of the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center and the slogan “Stand up and be heard. No mosque at ground zero.” (One of the local newscasts did a story about it, available here, if you want to see more than my description of it.)
A lot of things came to my mind as I was looking at that billboard. Like, for instance, what the hell business is it of people in Utah what happens in New York City, three-quarters of a continent away? And isn’t it ironic that a man who feels so strongly about such a distant land-use issue is most likely a member of the LDS Church, which has such a long history of people trying to prevent it from building its places of worship where it wants to? (Seriously, that’s how the Mormons ended up out here in Salt Lake in the first place, because the neighbors kept telling them they couldn’t build their temple in a particular back yard. Among other issues. It’s a problem that still troubles the Church from time to time, most recently in Phoenix just last year.) Now, maybe the billboard guy isn’t a Mormon, but I have no doubt that a whole lot of people who drive past it and nod their heads in agreement are, and I wonder if those people have read their own Articles of Faith, the formal declaration of their church’s beliefs, one of which — number 11 — says: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.” (Emphasis mine.)
But you know what, let’s not make this a Mormon thing, because god knows there are people of all creeds all up in arms about that mosque that isn’t a mosque. People are all up in arms — sometimes literally — about Muslims in general at the moment. As one blogger memorably put it this week, the message seems to morphing from “don’t build the mosque” to “don’t breathe American oxygen.” And I for one am getting really damn sick of this crazy, anti-American — yes, anti-American! — bullshit. Like the continuing pernicious nonsense that arrives in my mother’s e-mail inbox almost everyday claiming President Obama is some kind of secret Muslim agent out to bring down the country from within. He’s not Muslim, and even if he was, so the frak what? What part of freedom of religion do people not understand? And don’t give me any nonsense about how Islam is “different” or inherently violent (as if Christianity doesn’t have its own strains of violent fanaticism) and therefore we can’t extend full rights to them. As Captain Kirk said in “The Omega Glory” — a frankly ridiculous Star Trek episode that nevertheless seems more and more profound to me all the time, and isn’t that a sad commentary on the state of this nation these days — the Constitution must apply to everyone or it means nothing. Just like the devolved Yangs whom Kirk was bitch-slapping, the hysterical Tea Partier types slur and misunderstand the very words they claim to worship.
Or, to quote that same blogger I linked above:
The grotesque excuse “But the the first amendment is dead, and Islam killed it. There is no ‘freedom of speech’ or ‘freedom of religion’ with the threat of Muslim violence hanging over your head” is rubbish. Cancelling the rights of 307 million people because you are, by your own admission, afraid is neither patriotism, nor courage, nor Christian fortitude. It is cowardice. And it is extra-special cowardice when you are ready to cancel your most precious national heritage because you are afraid of a speck.
Got that, Muslim-phobes? You’re a bunch of pussies. And you need to man up and have the courage to actually live by the Constitution you’re always getting moist in the panties about.
No comments on this entry, because I don’t feel like debating something that’s really crystal clear.
Oh, and if you care, that diagram seems to have originated here.
