...of small minds. I guess my tiny little brain seeks more of it from the Bamster. I've tried so hard over the last three years to embrace the code. I decipher whatever he says as meaning exactly the opposite. I interpret every intention expressed as a description of a course of precisely the opposite action. If he says he will, he won't. If he says I can, I can't. If he says lower, he means higher. If he says negative, it will come out positive. If he says it is Bush's fault, he really knows it is his own responsibility.
Yet, I seek consistency. I want him to "make himself perfectly clear..." and then not have to go through a week of rephrasings and nuancing of the message. Call a spade a spade and then don't come back tomorrow and tell me you really meant a shovel. Please don't trot out a series of spokespersons reducing a "spade" to a garden implement but not a rake or hoe, except in certain instances. Say it, mean it, let it stand on its own perfect clarity without recantation.
But, even though I found him agreeing with me on the application of First Amendment Freedom with regard to building a mosque two blocks from the WTC site and even though he and I are on the same sheet that it isn't wise, prudent, compassionate, considerate or sympathetic in the least; I still find this item disturbing:
Germans Shut Jihadist Mosque
I'll go so far as to cede that in times of war, and we are definitely at war, it is sometimes necessary to suspend certain aspects of our freedoms for some groups of people. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and Roosevelt incarcerated the Nisei. We can debate the action at our leisure with all the advantages of hindsight but at the time they thought it was necessary. Maybe building mosques by certain sects in some places might be an instance of the same appropriate suspension of a freedom for the duration.
Slippery slopes don't always result in a slide down them.
3 comments:
Don't forget most people who use that quote forget that it is only a PARTIAL quote. He wasn't deriding consistency the full quote reads:
"A FOOLISH consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
that one word foolish changes the context completely.
Read Locke's Letter on Toleration. Toleration is to be granted to churches--that is religious societies--with NO claims to magisterial powers. Islam--and the cleric who wants to build that mosque, and who believes in Islamic law--claims for itself magisterial powers.
And reflect also on what Jefferson wrote in the Virginia At for religious Freedom: the majority of religions in the world are FALSE, and their purpose has been to serve evil men who want to enslave humanity. The Virginia Act of Religious Freedom in fact represents a restriction upon the Episcopal Church, which many Presbyterian and Baptist followers of Jefferson believed to be as polluted by the anti-Christ as the Church of Rome
Perhaps I shouldn't be so gouache as to say that the Constitution is an expression of a Protestant, especially a Calvinist world view, which sees the anti-Christ in most churches and in government. But facts is facts.
It could very well be argued that Bloomberg's advocacy is in violation of the establishment clause. What business does an elected official on the public payroll have in advocating the construction of a religious center, moreover for a religious society that claims for itself magisterial powers?
While claiming for himself the moral and legal high road, he in fact is the one who is in violation of our traditions and our Constitution.
Post a Comment