It’s Not About THEM, It’s About Us

Sent to you by Rio via Google Reader: It’s Not About THEM, It’s About
Us via ATTACKERMAN by mikeyhemlok on 8/14/10

Depending upon their willingness to demonstrate a straight-up, full on
bigotry or a kinder and gentler sort of discrimination, opponents of
the Cordoba House project will tell you it’s about Islamists, Muslims,
or the victims of 9/11. Their opponents counter that it’s about freedom
of religion, the constitutional guarantees of liberty and basic human
values of tolerance and diversity.

But here’s the thing. It’s not about Ground Zero, it’s not about the
constitution, and it’s not even about religious freedom. Ultimately,
its about us. All of us Americans, collectively. We need to decide what
kind of society we want to live in. We need to figure out to what
extent we want other people’s hatred to determine whether we can
actually have faith in the promises and guarantees made to us in the
founding documents. We need to decide if we want to follow the example
of Ibn Saud, or that of Thomas Jefferson. We need to choose whether we
show the world we stand uncaring and powerless before our base fears
and tribal hatreds, or if instead we stand up and demonstrate, once
again, that America defends her values fearlessly and without
reservation.

No matter how you personally feel about Muslims and mosques, you have
to recognize that this is a one-way trip, a simple, irreversible binary
choice. As there can be no real doubt that the Imam and his
congregation have every right to build their mosque where they wish, it
comes down to something more nuanced, and much more pernicious. Do you
want people, either by dint of their popular majority or their frantic
shrieking and hand-waving to have the power to over-rule the basic
rights and freedoms granted to all Americans? Do you understand that if
it’s just Muslims today, it will be Jews tomorrow and atheists after
that and in the end, the battle for the smouldering rubble of the
American experiment will be fought between Catholics and Protestants,
with the victors laying claim to just another totalitarian theocracy?

It truly makes me wonder. Can even the likes of Gingrich and Palin
actually be proud of an America so willing to run away from her core
values? In the name of political expediency and tribal nativism,
balanced against all the history and sacrifice that has come before? If
they actually got their way, and Cordoba House project was blocked,
would they see it as a bright and shining moment for America? Or would
it be a Pyrrhic victory, with the taste of ashes, as they wondered if
it could be a Mosque in New York today, might it be a Church in Kansas
or a book in Georgia or a political party in South Carolina tomorrow.

We need to stand up as Americans, collectively, and tell the demagogues
and fear-mongers, the politicians and pundits alike, that we’re better
than this. Indeed, this is what makes us Americans, and this is why we
believe America is important. We need to tell them that its not about
how we feel, or what we’d prefer, it’s about what we believe, and
ultimately, its about who we are.



Related posts:
- Cafeteria Constitutionalists, Ancient Mythology and Cordoba House
- Getting Ugly Out There
- Saturday Morning

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