The Captain's AMERICA Radio Show Hr 1 Nationally Syndciated Program For Sept. 11th...
September 11, 2010 - Hr 1, The Captain's AMERICA Radio Show...
Welcome to a very special weekend as our Country remembers the 9th year since the attacks on America Sept. 11th, 2001. Our program guests will be talking about Sept. 11th and other things related to America's national security and those who keep us free and safe...
This hour 1 guest list looks like this:
1= Frank Salvato, Managing Editor of the New Media Journal, who is a retired Chicago Firefighter Paramedic...
2- Fritz Wenzel, a national pollster, who keeps us informed as to the mood of the Country and the numbers that go with it...
3- Chris Markowski, 'The Watchdog On Wall Street', who is always on his A game when it comes to the nations economy...
4- Kyle Warren, our 'Professor of Politics', who discusses Sept. 11th and asks the question, "have we forgotten?" Of course there are many who have but not all...
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Showing posts with label new york. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new york. Show all posts
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The Ground Zero Mosque & The War of Ideas...
The Ground Zero Mosque & The War of Ideas...
Written By: Frank Salvato...
SARASOTA, FL (NS/NMJ) -
The controversy surrounding the Park 51/Cordoba House project – promoted by the Cordoba Initiative and headed by Feisal Abdul Rauf – is one that illustrates the full range of the ideological clash between the Islamic culture and the culture of the West. Whether Liberals, Progressives and apologists care to admit it or not the fundamentalist Islamist factions of the Arab world are actively attempting to advance their influence on the world; in every nation and every culture. In their attempt at establishing an elevated influence around the world this fundamentalist faction seeks not to be accepted as equals or to assimilate, but to enter into foreign cultures as a privileged and exempt class. The issue of the Park 51 Project – from this point forward referred to by its original label, the Cordoba House – is a perfect example of one particular battle theater in this culture clash: the war of ideas.
The West’s current conflict with expanding fundamentalist Islam is taking place on four different fronts, at least at the hand of the Islamists: militarily, diplomatically, economically and ideologically.
Militarily, the West is fully engaged on the internationally recognized battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent in the undefined battle theaters around the world, and especially throughout the Middle East, the Asian South Pacific, Africa and most recently, South America.
Of course, many experts maintain that the West’s engagement is an effort hamstrung by political correctness, a disingenuous Progressive-minded Western media and leaders who insist on telegraphing our intentions to the enemy in the form of timetables for withdrawal and openly stated standard operating procedures for our armed forces while maintaining unreasonable expectations that the enemy operates with any genuine wont for honest dialogue in the pursuit of conflict resolution.
Diplomatically, the West is again engaged, most notably in the form of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which has continued to be a failed effort from the onset and which has witnessed a slow but steady encroachment of fundamentalist Islam onto sovereign Israeli territory.
This effort, along with the misguided efforts suggested by Progressives and anti-war activists that Western powers should enter into negotiations with Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, not only ignores the basic Wahabbist tent of al taqiyya, but its allows fundamentalist Islamists to exploit the trust of a fickle Western leadership.
Economically, we are seeing advances into the Western culture by fundamentalist Islamists in the form of a budding effort to establish Sharia compliant financial institutions and instruments. By establishing these ideologically exclusive institutions and instruments fundamentalist Islamists create a self-sufficient entity within the framework of the Western Capitalist system. As the Sharia compliant financial structure grows and consumes, it will begin to sap many opportunities for investment from the Western financial markets, ultimately creating an “us against them” global financial structure. When one takes into account that OPEC could very well decide to exclusively engage a Sharia compliant financial system, the full financial threat to the global economy can be fully realized (I suggest researching the writings of Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld on this matter).
That brings us to the front most applicable to the issue surrounding the Cordoba House, the Cordoba Initiative and Feisal Abdul Rauf: the ideological battle front.
Fundamentalist Islamists are experts at exploiting the multicultural political correctness so prevalent in the West. On the military, diplomatic and economic battlefields they use propaganda, human shields, deception, exclusion and in many cases our own legal systems in their pursuit of attaining their goals, and in particular, the goal of establishing a global Islamic caliphate existing under Sharia law. But they are also exploiting the political correctness component of the Western culture to advance fundamentalist Islam societally, through means other than the legislative or diplomatic processes.
Two examples of just such exploitation of the debilitating multicultural, politically correct mindset of the West can be found in southern Lebanon in the advancement of Hezbollah in that once Christian nation, and in Israel with the ceding of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian authority, al Fatah and Hamas.
In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, an organization created by the Shi’ite mullahs of the Iranian Islamist Revolution of 1979 – the same wonderful people who oppress the native Iranian Persians, who created the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and who routinely call for the extinguishment of Israel as a nation and the Jews as a people – has gained legitimacy by encroaching societally, not unlike how the mobster Al Capone gained popular influence in 1920s Chicago.
With a government financially and logistically unable to meet the needs of the poor, Capone used his access to an obscene wealth of ill-gotten gains to establish soup kitchens and charity initiatives for the poor; those affected by the trying financial times of 1920s America. This endeared him to the citizenry and discouraged elected officials in Chicago from pursuing him for his criminal enterprise enabling him to become one of the wealthiest and influential people in the United States.
Using the same tactic of catering to the downtrodden and disenfranchised, Hezbollah morphed from a bloodthirsty Shi’ite terrorist organization to a politically legitimized faction of government in Lebanon. By using funds supplied by Iran, Syria and non-state entities sympathetic to the fundamentalist Islamist cause, Hezbollah constructed schools and hospitals in southern Lebanon, infused finances into the fragile infrastructure and, essentially, bribed the people of southern Lebanon into voting them into elected office and, thus legitimacy.
Through the advancement of influence via the exploitation of the poor in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah was able to buy political legitimacy on the world stage, even as they continued to exist and operate, simultaneously, as a potent terrorist organization around the world.
With the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the situation is the same only different.
The question must be asked, when did Israel as a government enable the legitimization of the Palestinian Authority? It did so when it first sat down with the PLO and Yassir Arafat to “talk,” or “negotiate.”
In a piece titled, A Brief History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Nancy Salvato writes:
“...Arab states allowed Palestinian resistance groups, organized in l964 by the Arab League into the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO), to use their territory to launch raids against Israel. The stated goal of the PLO was to use armed struggle to establish an independent Palestinian state.
“In l973, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Israelis were caught off guard when Egypt attacked Israeli troops, stationed in the Sinai Peninsula and Syria attacked Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. After heavy casualties, the Israeli army eventually began to win the war. The Soviet Union and United States pressured Israel to accept a UN cease-fire. Henry Kissinger brokered agreements with Israel and Syria and between Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat.
“Ironically, [shortly before his death], Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat rejected an offer of a Palestinian state in the areas of Israeli withdrawal (brokered by the Clinton administration) and proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. [An]... intifada against Israel erupted, and there have been no substantive negotiations since then. Arafat’s...demise offered hope that his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, would be a real negotiating partner for Israel. But he has been unable to control Palestinian militants, and now his party has lost control of the Palestinian parliament to the radical, militant, terrorism-supporting Hamas in the ...Gaza Strip.”
In sitting down at the table with the Palestinians to “engage,” the Israeli government lent them the full force of their credibility and legitimacy in the Western world. From there, the United Nations recognized Israel’s bestowed legitimacy upon the PA, and so did the US, Russia, Europe, and so on and so on...soon, the PLO, al Fatah, Hamas, etc. also became recognized as entities, legitimate or not, as the case may be, but entities that had to be “dealt with” and even “talked to” or engaged, nevertheless.
The result of the initial recognition and the perceived need to “engage on equal ground,” facilitated the legitimization of encroaching fundamentalist and radical Islamist entities complete with a “right” to have their voices heard; as being as potent and legitimate as the elected government of a nation state. It allowed an encroaching fundamentalist Islamist faction to, in the end, demand capitulation to their demands for Gaza and the West Bank, leading to their current demands that they be allowed to annex more Israeli land, that Israel cease the building of settlements on its sovereign soil and even for Israel to reconcile to East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capitol.
It is tantamount to “squatter’s rights” only on an international stage.
With regard to the Cordoba House issue, perhaps it would be legitimate to ask:
Can’t the illegitimate “legitimization” tactic be applied to the fundamentalist and radical Islamist elements – Feisal Abdul Rauf and his cadre of activists and operatives – currently provoking dialogue over the Ground Zero mosque?
Aren’t the Islamist factions promoting the Cordoba House project simply using the same tactics as the Palestinians did against the nation of Israel and Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon to establish the exact precedent of legitimization?
Can this issue of the Cordoba House be accurately depicted and explained as a pro-fundamental Islamist/pro-Sharia “attack,” via the “legitimization” tactic, in the ideological war (or war of ideas) between fundamentalist Islam and the West?
We in the West have to abort the notion that we are dealing with an ingenuous culture in the culture of fundamentalist Islam. These ideologues have proven time and time again that they will use any means necessary – military, economic, diplomatic and ideological – to attain their goal of a Sharia compliant world, ruled under an Islamist caliphate. If we do not resign ourselves to these truths we in the West are doomed to be ruled by the most oppressive, totalitarian and violently brutal ideology to exist in the history of the world.
Editor's Notes:
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He is a member of the International Analyst Network. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain's America Radio Show, nationally syndicated by the Phoenix Broadcasting Network and on NetTalkWorld Global Talk Radio catering to the US Armed Forces around the world. Mr. Salvato is also heard weekly on The Roth Show with Dr. Laurie Roth syndicated nationally on the USA Radio Network. His opinion-editorials have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally. He is a featured political writer for EducationNews.org and is occasionally quoted in The Federalist...
Written By: Frank Salvato...
SARASOTA, FL (NS/NMJ) -
The controversy surrounding the Park 51/Cordoba House project – promoted by the Cordoba Initiative and headed by Feisal Abdul Rauf – is one that illustrates the full range of the ideological clash between the Islamic culture and the culture of the West. Whether Liberals, Progressives and apologists care to admit it or not the fundamentalist Islamist factions of the Arab world are actively attempting to advance their influence on the world; in every nation and every culture. In their attempt at establishing an elevated influence around the world this fundamentalist faction seeks not to be accepted as equals or to assimilate, but to enter into foreign cultures as a privileged and exempt class. The issue of the Park 51 Project – from this point forward referred to by its original label, the Cordoba House – is a perfect example of one particular battle theater in this culture clash: the war of ideas.
The West’s current conflict with expanding fundamentalist Islam is taking place on four different fronts, at least at the hand of the Islamists: militarily, diplomatically, economically and ideologically.
Militarily, the West is fully engaged on the internationally recognized battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent in the undefined battle theaters around the world, and especially throughout the Middle East, the Asian South Pacific, Africa and most recently, South America.
Of course, many experts maintain that the West’s engagement is an effort hamstrung by political correctness, a disingenuous Progressive-minded Western media and leaders who insist on telegraphing our intentions to the enemy in the form of timetables for withdrawal and openly stated standard operating procedures for our armed forces while maintaining unreasonable expectations that the enemy operates with any genuine wont for honest dialogue in the pursuit of conflict resolution.
Diplomatically, the West is again engaged, most notably in the form of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which has continued to be a failed effort from the onset and which has witnessed a slow but steady encroachment of fundamentalist Islam onto sovereign Israeli territory.
This effort, along with the misguided efforts suggested by Progressives and anti-war activists that Western powers should enter into negotiations with Taliban and al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, not only ignores the basic Wahabbist tent of al taqiyya, but its allows fundamentalist Islamists to exploit the trust of a fickle Western leadership.
Economically, we are seeing advances into the Western culture by fundamentalist Islamists in the form of a budding effort to establish Sharia compliant financial institutions and instruments. By establishing these ideologically exclusive institutions and instruments fundamentalist Islamists create a self-sufficient entity within the framework of the Western Capitalist system. As the Sharia compliant financial structure grows and consumes, it will begin to sap many opportunities for investment from the Western financial markets, ultimately creating an “us against them” global financial structure. When one takes into account that OPEC could very well decide to exclusively engage a Sharia compliant financial system, the full financial threat to the global economy can be fully realized (I suggest researching the writings of Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld on this matter).
That brings us to the front most applicable to the issue surrounding the Cordoba House, the Cordoba Initiative and Feisal Abdul Rauf: the ideological battle front.
Fundamentalist Islamists are experts at exploiting the multicultural political correctness so prevalent in the West. On the military, diplomatic and economic battlefields they use propaganda, human shields, deception, exclusion and in many cases our own legal systems in their pursuit of attaining their goals, and in particular, the goal of establishing a global Islamic caliphate existing under Sharia law. But they are also exploiting the political correctness component of the Western culture to advance fundamentalist Islam societally, through means other than the legislative or diplomatic processes.
Two examples of just such exploitation of the debilitating multicultural, politically correct mindset of the West can be found in southern Lebanon in the advancement of Hezbollah in that once Christian nation, and in Israel with the ceding of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian authority, al Fatah and Hamas.
In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah, an organization created by the Shi’ite mullahs of the Iranian Islamist Revolution of 1979 – the same wonderful people who oppress the native Iranian Persians, who created the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and who routinely call for the extinguishment of Israel as a nation and the Jews as a people – has gained legitimacy by encroaching societally, not unlike how the mobster Al Capone gained popular influence in 1920s Chicago.
With a government financially and logistically unable to meet the needs of the poor, Capone used his access to an obscene wealth of ill-gotten gains to establish soup kitchens and charity initiatives for the poor; those affected by the trying financial times of 1920s America. This endeared him to the citizenry and discouraged elected officials in Chicago from pursuing him for his criminal enterprise enabling him to become one of the wealthiest and influential people in the United States.
Using the same tactic of catering to the downtrodden and disenfranchised, Hezbollah morphed from a bloodthirsty Shi’ite terrorist organization to a politically legitimized faction of government in Lebanon. By using funds supplied by Iran, Syria and non-state entities sympathetic to the fundamentalist Islamist cause, Hezbollah constructed schools and hospitals in southern Lebanon, infused finances into the fragile infrastructure and, essentially, bribed the people of southern Lebanon into voting them into elected office and, thus legitimacy.
Through the advancement of influence via the exploitation of the poor in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah was able to buy political legitimacy on the world stage, even as they continued to exist and operate, simultaneously, as a potent terrorist organization around the world.
With the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the situation is the same only different.
The question must be asked, when did Israel as a government enable the legitimization of the Palestinian Authority? It did so when it first sat down with the PLO and Yassir Arafat to “talk,” or “negotiate.”
In a piece titled, A Brief History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Nancy Salvato writes:
“...Arab states allowed Palestinian resistance groups, organized in l964 by the Arab League into the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO), to use their territory to launch raids against Israel. The stated goal of the PLO was to use armed struggle to establish an independent Palestinian state.
“In l973, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, Israelis were caught off guard when Egypt attacked Israeli troops, stationed in the Sinai Peninsula and Syria attacked Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. After heavy casualties, the Israeli army eventually began to win the war. The Soviet Union and United States pressured Israel to accept a UN cease-fire. Henry Kissinger brokered agreements with Israel and Syria and between Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat.
“Ironically, [shortly before his death], Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat rejected an offer of a Palestinian state in the areas of Israeli withdrawal (brokered by the Clinton administration) and proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. [An]... intifada against Israel erupted, and there have been no substantive negotiations since then. Arafat’s...demise offered hope that his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, would be a real negotiating partner for Israel. But he has been unable to control Palestinian militants, and now his party has lost control of the Palestinian parliament to the radical, militant, terrorism-supporting Hamas in the ...Gaza Strip.”
In sitting down at the table with the Palestinians to “engage,” the Israeli government lent them the full force of their credibility and legitimacy in the Western world. From there, the United Nations recognized Israel’s bestowed legitimacy upon the PA, and so did the US, Russia, Europe, and so on and so on...soon, the PLO, al Fatah, Hamas, etc. also became recognized as entities, legitimate or not, as the case may be, but entities that had to be “dealt with” and even “talked to” or engaged, nevertheless.
The result of the initial recognition and the perceived need to “engage on equal ground,” facilitated the legitimization of encroaching fundamentalist and radical Islamist entities complete with a “right” to have their voices heard; as being as potent and legitimate as the elected government of a nation state. It allowed an encroaching fundamentalist Islamist faction to, in the end, demand capitulation to their demands for Gaza and the West Bank, leading to their current demands that they be allowed to annex more Israeli land, that Israel cease the building of settlements on its sovereign soil and even for Israel to reconcile to East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capitol.
It is tantamount to “squatter’s rights” only on an international stage.
With regard to the Cordoba House issue, perhaps it would be legitimate to ask:
Can’t the illegitimate “legitimization” tactic be applied to the fundamentalist and radical Islamist elements – Feisal Abdul Rauf and his cadre of activists and operatives – currently provoking dialogue over the Ground Zero mosque?
Aren’t the Islamist factions promoting the Cordoba House project simply using the same tactics as the Palestinians did against the nation of Israel and Hezbollah did in southern Lebanon to establish the exact precedent of legitimization?
Can this issue of the Cordoba House be accurately depicted and explained as a pro-fundamental Islamist/pro-Sharia “attack,” via the “legitimization” tactic, in the ideological war (or war of ideas) between fundamentalist Islam and the West?
We in the West have to abort the notion that we are dealing with an ingenuous culture in the culture of fundamentalist Islam. These ideologues have proven time and time again that they will use any means necessary – military, economic, diplomatic and ideological – to attain their goal of a Sharia compliant world, ruled under an Islamist caliphate. If we do not resign ourselves to these truths we in the West are doomed to be ruled by the most oppressive, totalitarian and violently brutal ideology to exist in the history of the world.
Editor's Notes:
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He is a member of the International Analyst Network. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain's America Radio Show, nationally syndicated by the Phoenix Broadcasting Network and on NetTalkWorld Global Talk Radio catering to the US Armed Forces around the world. Mr. Salvato is also heard weekly on The Roth Show with Dr. Laurie Roth syndicated nationally on the USA Radio Network. His opinion-editorials have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally. He is a featured political writer for EducationNews.org and is occasionally quoted in The Federalist...
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The Ground Zero Mosque - What Have We Not Been Told?
The Ground Zero Mosque - What Have We Not Been Told?
August 17, 2010 - The Editor, Family Security Matters...
NEW YORK, NY (NS/FSM) -
In a Family Security Matters Editorial on Sunday, it was suggested that President Obama’s apparent support of the Ground Zero Mosque, followed less than 24 hours by presidential back-pedaling, was creating a crisis of leadership. The apparent pandering to a project which has never gained widespread public support was predestined to create problems. Michael Bloomberg, New York’s liberal mayor, had attempted on August 3 to invoke the Founding Fathers and to cite instances from a century before, during the time of Peter Stuyvesant, to impress upon New Yorkers that religious tolerance was the hallmark of the Big Apple. By extension, Bloomberg appeared to reason, New York's citizens should all rally to support the Ground Zero mosque and thereby defend religious liberty. A Mairist poll from August 10th had shown that Bloomberg’s former popularity had sunk dramatically since April, coinciding with his support for the mosque. A CNN poll from August 11 had shown that almost 70 percent of the American public opposed the Ground Zero Mosque.
In an act of extreme hubris, against the groundswell of political opinion, and ignoring the lessons that could have been learned from Mayor Bloomberg’s dip in popularity, the president and his speech writer pressed on regardless. The August 3 speech that had been made by Bloomberg on a windswept Government Island, surrounded by representatives of different faiths, had been seen by the administration as something of relevance to its own agenda. On Monday, August 9th, Bloomberg’s speech had been translated into Arabic, Farsi (Persian), Russian, French and Spanish and was posted onto the America.gov “Engaging the World” website.
At the White House iftar dinner of Friday 13th, Obama again invoked the Founding Fathers to suggest that they would be supportive of the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque on a matter of principle. Two days before, to celebrate Ramadan, Obama had claimed that “Islam has always been in America.” There is no historical evidence for such an assertion, unless Obama was passing a sop to Muslim revisionists, who claim that Abul-Hassan Al-Masudi (c. 895 – 957 AD) had written of Muslims going to a faraway land in “The Book of Golden Meadows.” Archeologists have never found any evidence of pre-Columbian Islamic influence. To suggest that “Islam has always been in America,” is a pandering not to genuine history but to a Muslim political agenda.
On August 10th, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley had told journalists that Imam Rauf, the imam behind the proposed Ground Zero Mosque, was on a trip to the Middle East as a sponsored emissary of America to “discuss Muslim life in America and religious tolerance.” Crowley was asked about the Ground Zero Mosque and if the administration supported it. He replied:
“Well, it’s not normal that the federal government would get involved in what is a – I think a zoning issue in New York City…. Well, I mean, we are obviously supportive of religious tolerance not only around the world, but in the United States, and – but this is a particular decision for the city of New York. And we do note the fact that Mayor Bloomberg made a very eloquent appeal for freedom of religion and religious tolerance recently in the city.”
When asked why the speech by Bloomberg was posted on America.gov and not on the regular State Department website, Crowley replied:
“I think Smith-Mundt probably has as much to do with that as anything.”
The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 402) was introduced in 1945 and signed into law by Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948. It was originally set up to delimit what America publishes abroad as propaganda. Nowadays, this law effectively limits what American citizens can be told about U.S. propaganda abroad, where the U.S. government “prevents its own people from knowing what is said and done in their name.”
Crowley conceded that Smith-Mundt did not prevent Mayor Bloomberg’s speech being posted on the State Department website. This is from the State Department transcript:
MR. CROWLEY: Again, we – the Obama Administration nor the United States Government have taken a position on this project. The decision is up to the people of New York. We simply posted the mayor’s comments –
QUESTION: All right.
MR. CROWLEY: -- as being – as we do frequently, helping people understand. We certainly support what the mayor was underscoring which is the history of religious diversity and religious tolerance in his city.
QUESTION: Okay, just – let me just finish.
MR. CROWLEY: Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. All right.
QUESTION: Let me just – yeah, I got one more on Smith-Mundt. Do you want to ask about Smith-Mundt?
QUESTION: No, I want to ask about the Imam Feisal.
QUESTION: Okay so – all right, well, on Smith-Mundt, right? The reason that that was passed in the 40s was to prevent the State Department or the U.S. Government in general from spreading propaganda to citizens of the United States in the United States.
MR. CROWLEY: That’s true.
QUESTION: Does the fact that you put this on the – on a website that was basically created because of Smith-Mundt and not on the regular website imply that you think that Bloomberg’s comments were propaganda?
MR. CROWLEY: No, it is to whom we were directing those comments. We were directing them to audiences overseas and we did that on one and not the other expressly because of the obligations that we have under Smith-Mundt. And this becomes a very complicated issue, because we know that on State.gov, our State Department website that is primarily geared towards audiences here in the United States, we do have people overseas who do tap into State.gov and we have American citizens who also tap into America.gov. In fact, we are constantly trying to evaluate the relevance of Smith-Mundt given the internet age and the fact that information now cannot be really – information that’s channeled overseas can have the ability to return instantly to the United States.
QUESTION: You’re convinced that you’re okay to be talking about America.gov from this podium.
MR. CROWLEY: I, from my position, can talk about both.
The issues of exactly WHAT Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf would be preaching abroad in America’s name are, and this may be hard to believe, not available for citizens to know, at least – not from government.
Crowley confirmed that Rauf would not be raising funds while in the Middle East:
“It is something that we have talked to him about and we have informed him about our prohibition against fundraising while on a speaking tour. We do not expect him to fundraise.”
There is something very odd about this issue. Imam Rauf can travel abroad to act as an agent of the State Department to issue “propaganda” but under the Smith-Mundt Act, the State Department will not make available to American citizens what is said on their behalf. Americans are not to be told what either Rauf, or CAIR representative Dawud Walid (who has been sent to Mali on outreach work, underwritten by the State Department) says, when the same American tax-payers fund such jaunts. There is something decidedly undemocratic and unwholesome to then see a president declaring at an iftar dinner that Rauf’s “rights” are fundamentally protected by the writ of the Founding Fathers.
Politically, defending in public an imam whose speeches abroad are already a “State Department secret” verges on the Kafkaesque. Such an action could be seen as inviting conspiracy theories no less cockamamie than propagandist theories of “Islam has always been in America” that Obama has publicly embraced.
When Obama stood up in the White House State Dining Room on Friday 13th and appeared to suggest that he supported the imam’s “religious rights” he made a bad political move. When on the very next day, relocated in the Gulf, he suggested that he had not meant what people thought he meant, he appeared weak. What seemed to be a crisis of leadership or even an act of political suicide has since been overshadowed by events.
The Backlash Begins Here
Obama’s speechwriters have handed a weapon to the president’s enemies. Following a longstanding tradition when leaders’ political hubris has gone so far that they think they do not have to consider those that put them into power, the political suicide could become a political assassination.
On March 15, 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar found that his friends in the Roman Senate had abandoned him, and he soon lay dead on the Senate House Floor. In Obama’s current drama enter, stage left, Senator Harry Reid. Before Obama has time to cry out “Et tu, Harry?” the knife glints and the damage is done.
Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, was pinned down over the weekend by his GOP opponent in Nevada, Sharron Angle. Reid has been on shaky ground and risks losing his seat to Angle in the November midterms. Angle demanded that Reid openly state if he supported the Ground Zero Mosque or not. Reid sent out a statement through his assistant Jim Manley:
“The 1st Amendment protects freedom of religion. Sen. Reid respects that, but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”
The decision by Reid to oppose the mosque’s location is not dissimilar to that of New York’s governor, David Paterson. Officially, Paterson says he supports the mosque, but has offered to help to provide a new location where it could be built, away from the site of Ground Zero.
Dave Reaboi on Big Government points out that journalist Mark Halperin, writing on Time Magazine, has issued a plea to Republicans, asking them to not attack the issue of the Ground Zero Mosque. The fact that both the president and the mayor of New York, both progressives, have themselves politicized the issue of the mosque, leaves the GOP with no option but to confront it at a political level. Not that Halperin seems to understand this. Halperin advises Republicans:
“If you go full force on the offensive, every Democratic candidate in every competitive race in the country will have three choices, none of them good, when asked about the Islamic center: side with Obama and against public opinion; oppose Obama and deal with the consequences of intraparty disunity; or refuse to take a position, waffling impotently and unattractively at a crucial time.”
Halperin admits that “Sure, Obama remains a young, inexperienced Commander in Chief with few discernible foreign policy achievements.” It is possible that great propaganda triumphs have been made in Mali and the Middle East by America’s Muslim emissaries, but under the terms of Smith-Mundt, it is unlikely that one will hear of them.
Yesterday, White House press spokesperson Bill Burton announced that Obama’s mention of the mosque was not about politics, but an issue where the president wanted “to make sure people are treated equally” and “felt it was his obligation as president to address this.”
It would be rude to suggest that Burton is lying, but maybe we can look out for him soon declaring that the moon is made of green cheese, perhaps confirmed by NASA’s Muslim outreach program……
Support for the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero has come from a most unwelcome corner: the terrorist group Hamas. It should be remembered that earlier this year, Imam Feisal Abdul Raif had refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization.
On Sunday, Aaron Klein was on WABC Radio with his show “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” He had with him as a guest Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas who is currently a senior leader of the terrorist group in Gaza. The full interview can be heard here. At the end of the interview, Klein asked:
“What do you think about the new initiative to build a mosque near the World Trade Center in New York, which is a major point of controversy now?”
Zahar responded:
“We have to build the mosque as you are allowed to build church and the Israelis are building there their holy places – we have to build everywhere in every area we have, Muslims, we have to pray, and this is, this mosque is the only site of prayer, especially which is for the people when they are looking to be – in a group, not an individual.”
Rush Limbaugh has waded into the arena, stating on his radio show yesterday that:
“Indeed just like Hamas, Obama believes Muslims should be allowed to build a mosque at Ground Zero but that Israelis cannot be permitted to build houses on their own land. I mean, there you go -- and the rude treatment that Bibi Netanyahu got at the White House over the building of these neighborhoods. Now, Obama's since done a walk-back on that as you get closer to the election. But still it's all about sensitivity. Some people are offended of those "settlements," saying it's not good for the peace process. Well, there are a whole lot of people sensibilities offended at the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero. I have some friends who lost a son. They are beside themselves. They just... None of it makes any sense. They don't understand why we can't even rebuild the place. They don't understand why the people that did what they did are not considered our enemy.”
Separation of Mosque and State
The president, the Mayor of New York, and the State Department may invoke the vision of the Founding Fathers to declare that they are only defending freedom of religion. However, in their haste to defend the “rights” of a man who once said that America was an “accessory” to the 9/11 attacks, they have trampled on a fundamental issue brought up by the Founding Fathers.
In a letter dated January 1, 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote of the “wall of separation between church and state.” Jefferson was echoing the words of Isaac Backus, who in 1773 had written that:
“church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.”
James Madison (1751 – 1836) who was fourth president of the United States from 1809 – 17 was one of the principle architects of the constitution. He wrote in a letter of March 2, 1819 that
“The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.”
The Bill of Rights, the ten-point addition to the Constitution, borrowed elements from George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, including Section 16, which would become part of the First Amendment:
“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote a brief “Memoir”, in which he discussed the creation of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
“The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved, that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, 'a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."
By publicly making statements in favor of a particular religion, talking to Muslims in Cairo and addressing people in the White House who appear to have strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the president has dug himself into a pit. With the anniversary of 9/11 coming around in less than a month, he will find it hard to dig himself out. His advisers should have warned him away from appearing to show such partiality towards the construction of a mosque, at a site where Islamic fanatics had murdered almost 3,000 American citizens.
The Founding Fathers knew why they had to ensure that there was not any bias towards any one specific religion. The incident of the Ground Zero mosque is only the last of a series of naïf statements designed to appease Islamic nations, when the only people that any president should put forward, above all else, are his own citizens.
Leftists and Muslim apologists may complain that those who condemn the Ground Zero Mosque are “Islamophobes”, a vague term with no real meaning. Most people with any ounce of humanity would oppose sharia law, and would be Islamophobic. Similarly, anyone who opposes Islamic terrorism could be called Islamophobic. And people who have no strong opinions but merely feel worried about the massive encroachments of Islam into the West, could also be called “Islamophobic.”
But just as the term “racist” has been used by those who have opposed the president’s actions, the term “Islamophobe” is similarly inappropriate. A poll from Rasmussen was released yesterday. This shows that 65 percent of US voters (two thirds) are “somewhat angry” about the current policies of the federal government. Of these, 40 percent are “very angry.”
The Ground Zero Mosque is only the touchstone which has drawn in the lightning. The other aspects of the political storm have been building up for some time, and these are again concerns about policies. The administration’s apparent genuflection to Islamism and Muslim nations that have no respect for democracy has been noticed by people at home, people who feel neglected and undervalued. This is not about Islamophobia, it is about listening to the people at home. That act of listening is fundamental to good democratic government.
The progressives have tried to engineer change, to force through new jurisdictions for a government where it formerly had no place, such as compulsory healthcare insurance, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the USDOJ apparently giving a free ride to Black Panthers in the name of redressing social injustice, as well prosecuting a state for trying to use state legislation to enforce federal laws while allowing sanctuary cities to openly break the law, the rights of illegals defended by Hilda L. Solis… the social engineering goes on, and on.
The Ground Zero Mosque issue is just the latest and most blatant sign of an administration that has steamrollered over the opinions and concerns of its citizens, an administration that has offered hope of a “pathway to legality” for illegal aliens who should have no legitimate right to be in America, while legal citizens have lost jobs, businesses and homes. The Ground Zero Mosque is opposed by most Americans, and a government that does not listen is a government that will eventually forfeit its mandate to stay in office.
The Editor
Family Security Matters
August 17, 2010 - The Editor, Family Security Matters...
NEW YORK, NY (NS/FSM) -
In a Family Security Matters Editorial on Sunday, it was suggested that President Obama’s apparent support of the Ground Zero Mosque, followed less than 24 hours by presidential back-pedaling, was creating a crisis of leadership. The apparent pandering to a project which has never gained widespread public support was predestined to create problems. Michael Bloomberg, New York’s liberal mayor, had attempted on August 3 to invoke the Founding Fathers and to cite instances from a century before, during the time of Peter Stuyvesant, to impress upon New Yorkers that religious tolerance was the hallmark of the Big Apple. By extension, Bloomberg appeared to reason, New York's citizens should all rally to support the Ground Zero mosque and thereby defend religious liberty. A Mairist poll from August 10th had shown that Bloomberg’s former popularity had sunk dramatically since April, coinciding with his support for the mosque. A CNN poll from August 11 had shown that almost 70 percent of the American public opposed the Ground Zero Mosque.
In an act of extreme hubris, against the groundswell of political opinion, and ignoring the lessons that could have been learned from Mayor Bloomberg’s dip in popularity, the president and his speech writer pressed on regardless. The August 3 speech that had been made by Bloomberg on a windswept Government Island, surrounded by representatives of different faiths, had been seen by the administration as something of relevance to its own agenda. On Monday, August 9th, Bloomberg’s speech had been translated into Arabic, Farsi (Persian), Russian, French and Spanish and was posted onto the America.gov “Engaging the World” website.
At the White House iftar dinner of Friday 13th, Obama again invoked the Founding Fathers to suggest that they would be supportive of the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque on a matter of principle. Two days before, to celebrate Ramadan, Obama had claimed that “Islam has always been in America.” There is no historical evidence for such an assertion, unless Obama was passing a sop to Muslim revisionists, who claim that Abul-Hassan Al-Masudi (c. 895 – 957 AD) had written of Muslims going to a faraway land in “The Book of Golden Meadows.” Archeologists have never found any evidence of pre-Columbian Islamic influence. To suggest that “Islam has always been in America,” is a pandering not to genuine history but to a Muslim political agenda.
On August 10th, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley had told journalists that Imam Rauf, the imam behind the proposed Ground Zero Mosque, was on a trip to the Middle East as a sponsored emissary of America to “discuss Muslim life in America and religious tolerance.” Crowley was asked about the Ground Zero Mosque and if the administration supported it. He replied:
“Well, it’s not normal that the federal government would get involved in what is a – I think a zoning issue in New York City…. Well, I mean, we are obviously supportive of religious tolerance not only around the world, but in the United States, and – but this is a particular decision for the city of New York. And we do note the fact that Mayor Bloomberg made a very eloquent appeal for freedom of religion and religious tolerance recently in the city.”
When asked why the speech by Bloomberg was posted on America.gov and not on the regular State Department website, Crowley replied:
“I think Smith-Mundt probably has as much to do with that as anything.”
The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 402) was introduced in 1945 and signed into law by Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948. It was originally set up to delimit what America publishes abroad as propaganda. Nowadays, this law effectively limits what American citizens can be told about U.S. propaganda abroad, where the U.S. government “prevents its own people from knowing what is said and done in their name.”
Crowley conceded that Smith-Mundt did not prevent Mayor Bloomberg’s speech being posted on the State Department website. This is from the State Department transcript:
MR. CROWLEY: Again, we – the Obama Administration nor the United States Government have taken a position on this project. The decision is up to the people of New York. We simply posted the mayor’s comments –
QUESTION: All right.
MR. CROWLEY: -- as being – as we do frequently, helping people understand. We certainly support what the mayor was underscoring which is the history of religious diversity and religious tolerance in his city.
QUESTION: Okay, just – let me just finish.
MR. CROWLEY: Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. All right.
QUESTION: Let me just – yeah, I got one more on Smith-Mundt. Do you want to ask about Smith-Mundt?
QUESTION: No, I want to ask about the Imam Feisal.
QUESTION: Okay so – all right, well, on Smith-Mundt, right? The reason that that was passed in the 40s was to prevent the State Department or the U.S. Government in general from spreading propaganda to citizens of the United States in the United States.
MR. CROWLEY: That’s true.
QUESTION: Does the fact that you put this on the – on a website that was basically created because of Smith-Mundt and not on the regular website imply that you think that Bloomberg’s comments were propaganda?
MR. CROWLEY: No, it is to whom we were directing those comments. We were directing them to audiences overseas and we did that on one and not the other expressly because of the obligations that we have under Smith-Mundt. And this becomes a very complicated issue, because we know that on State.gov, our State Department website that is primarily geared towards audiences here in the United States, we do have people overseas who do tap into State.gov and we have American citizens who also tap into America.gov. In fact, we are constantly trying to evaluate the relevance of Smith-Mundt given the internet age and the fact that information now cannot be really – information that’s channeled overseas can have the ability to return instantly to the United States.
QUESTION: You’re convinced that you’re okay to be talking about America.gov from this podium.
MR. CROWLEY: I, from my position, can talk about both.
The issues of exactly WHAT Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf would be preaching abroad in America’s name are, and this may be hard to believe, not available for citizens to know, at least – not from government.
Crowley confirmed that Rauf would not be raising funds while in the Middle East:
“It is something that we have talked to him about and we have informed him about our prohibition against fundraising while on a speaking tour. We do not expect him to fundraise.”
There is something very odd about this issue. Imam Rauf can travel abroad to act as an agent of the State Department to issue “propaganda” but under the Smith-Mundt Act, the State Department will not make available to American citizens what is said on their behalf. Americans are not to be told what either Rauf, or CAIR representative Dawud Walid (who has been sent to Mali on outreach work, underwritten by the State Department) says, when the same American tax-payers fund such jaunts. There is something decidedly undemocratic and unwholesome to then see a president declaring at an iftar dinner that Rauf’s “rights” are fundamentally protected by the writ of the Founding Fathers.
Politically, defending in public an imam whose speeches abroad are already a “State Department secret” verges on the Kafkaesque. Such an action could be seen as inviting conspiracy theories no less cockamamie than propagandist theories of “Islam has always been in America” that Obama has publicly embraced.
When Obama stood up in the White House State Dining Room on Friday 13th and appeared to suggest that he supported the imam’s “religious rights” he made a bad political move. When on the very next day, relocated in the Gulf, he suggested that he had not meant what people thought he meant, he appeared weak. What seemed to be a crisis of leadership or even an act of political suicide has since been overshadowed by events.
The Backlash Begins Here
Obama’s speechwriters have handed a weapon to the president’s enemies. Following a longstanding tradition when leaders’ political hubris has gone so far that they think they do not have to consider those that put them into power, the political suicide could become a political assassination.
On March 15, 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar found that his friends in the Roman Senate had abandoned him, and he soon lay dead on the Senate House Floor. In Obama’s current drama enter, stage left, Senator Harry Reid. Before Obama has time to cry out “Et tu, Harry?” the knife glints and the damage is done.
Harry Reid, Senate majority leader, was pinned down over the weekend by his GOP opponent in Nevada, Sharron Angle. Reid has been on shaky ground and risks losing his seat to Angle in the November midterms. Angle demanded that Reid openly state if he supported the Ground Zero Mosque or not. Reid sent out a statement through his assistant Jim Manley:
“The 1st Amendment protects freedom of religion. Sen. Reid respects that, but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”
The decision by Reid to oppose the mosque’s location is not dissimilar to that of New York’s governor, David Paterson. Officially, Paterson says he supports the mosque, but has offered to help to provide a new location where it could be built, away from the site of Ground Zero.
Dave Reaboi on Big Government points out that journalist Mark Halperin, writing on Time Magazine, has issued a plea to Republicans, asking them to not attack the issue of the Ground Zero Mosque. The fact that both the president and the mayor of New York, both progressives, have themselves politicized the issue of the mosque, leaves the GOP with no option but to confront it at a political level. Not that Halperin seems to understand this. Halperin advises Republicans:
“If you go full force on the offensive, every Democratic candidate in every competitive race in the country will have three choices, none of them good, when asked about the Islamic center: side with Obama and against public opinion; oppose Obama and deal with the consequences of intraparty disunity; or refuse to take a position, waffling impotently and unattractively at a crucial time.”
Halperin admits that “Sure, Obama remains a young, inexperienced Commander in Chief with few discernible foreign policy achievements.” It is possible that great propaganda triumphs have been made in Mali and the Middle East by America’s Muslim emissaries, but under the terms of Smith-Mundt, it is unlikely that one will hear of them.
Yesterday, White House press spokesperson Bill Burton announced that Obama’s mention of the mosque was not about politics, but an issue where the president wanted “to make sure people are treated equally” and “felt it was his obligation as president to address this.”
It would be rude to suggest that Burton is lying, but maybe we can look out for him soon declaring that the moon is made of green cheese, perhaps confirmed by NASA’s Muslim outreach program……
Support for the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero has come from a most unwelcome corner: the terrorist group Hamas. It should be remembered that earlier this year, Imam Feisal Abdul Raif had refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization.
On Sunday, Aaron Klein was on WABC Radio with his show “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” He had with him as a guest Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas who is currently a senior leader of the terrorist group in Gaza. The full interview can be heard here. At the end of the interview, Klein asked:
“What do you think about the new initiative to build a mosque near the World Trade Center in New York, which is a major point of controversy now?”
Zahar responded:
“We have to build the mosque as you are allowed to build church and the Israelis are building there their holy places – we have to build everywhere in every area we have, Muslims, we have to pray, and this is, this mosque is the only site of prayer, especially which is for the people when they are looking to be – in a group, not an individual.”
Rush Limbaugh has waded into the arena, stating on his radio show yesterday that:
“Indeed just like Hamas, Obama believes Muslims should be allowed to build a mosque at Ground Zero but that Israelis cannot be permitted to build houses on their own land. I mean, there you go -- and the rude treatment that Bibi Netanyahu got at the White House over the building of these neighborhoods. Now, Obama's since done a walk-back on that as you get closer to the election. But still it's all about sensitivity. Some people are offended of those "settlements," saying it's not good for the peace process. Well, there are a whole lot of people sensibilities offended at the idea of a mosque at Ground Zero. I have some friends who lost a son. They are beside themselves. They just... None of it makes any sense. They don't understand why we can't even rebuild the place. They don't understand why the people that did what they did are not considered our enemy.”
Separation of Mosque and State
The president, the Mayor of New York, and the State Department may invoke the vision of the Founding Fathers to declare that they are only defending freedom of religion. However, in their haste to defend the “rights” of a man who once said that America was an “accessory” to the 9/11 attacks, they have trampled on a fundamental issue brought up by the Founding Fathers.
In a letter dated January 1, 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote of the “wall of separation between church and state.” Jefferson was echoing the words of Isaac Backus, who in 1773 had written that:
“church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.”
James Madison (1751 – 1836) who was fourth president of the United States from 1809 – 17 was one of the principle architects of the constitution. He wrote in a letter of March 2, 1819 that
“The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.”
The Bill of Rights, the ten-point addition to the Constitution, borrowed elements from George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, including Section 16, which would become part of the First Amendment:
“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote a brief “Memoir”, in which he discussed the creation of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
“The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved, that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, 'a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;' the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."
By publicly making statements in favor of a particular religion, talking to Muslims in Cairo and addressing people in the White House who appear to have strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the president has dug himself into a pit. With the anniversary of 9/11 coming around in less than a month, he will find it hard to dig himself out. His advisers should have warned him away from appearing to show such partiality towards the construction of a mosque, at a site where Islamic fanatics had murdered almost 3,000 American citizens.
The Founding Fathers knew why they had to ensure that there was not any bias towards any one specific religion. The incident of the Ground Zero mosque is only the last of a series of naïf statements designed to appease Islamic nations, when the only people that any president should put forward, above all else, are his own citizens.
Leftists and Muslim apologists may complain that those who condemn the Ground Zero Mosque are “Islamophobes”, a vague term with no real meaning. Most people with any ounce of humanity would oppose sharia law, and would be Islamophobic. Similarly, anyone who opposes Islamic terrorism could be called Islamophobic. And people who have no strong opinions but merely feel worried about the massive encroachments of Islam into the West, could also be called “Islamophobic.”
But just as the term “racist” has been used by those who have opposed the president’s actions, the term “Islamophobe” is similarly inappropriate. A poll from Rasmussen was released yesterday. This shows that 65 percent of US voters (two thirds) are “somewhat angry” about the current policies of the federal government. Of these, 40 percent are “very angry.”
The Ground Zero Mosque is only the touchstone which has drawn in the lightning. The other aspects of the political storm have been building up for some time, and these are again concerns about policies. The administration’s apparent genuflection to Islamism and Muslim nations that have no respect for democracy has been noticed by people at home, people who feel neglected and undervalued. This is not about Islamophobia, it is about listening to the people at home. That act of listening is fundamental to good democratic government.
The progressives have tried to engineer change, to force through new jurisdictions for a government where it formerly had no place, such as compulsory healthcare insurance, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the USDOJ apparently giving a free ride to Black Panthers in the name of redressing social injustice, as well prosecuting a state for trying to use state legislation to enforce federal laws while allowing sanctuary cities to openly break the law, the rights of illegals defended by Hilda L. Solis… the social engineering goes on, and on.
The Ground Zero Mosque issue is just the latest and most blatant sign of an administration that has steamrollered over the opinions and concerns of its citizens, an administration that has offered hope of a “pathway to legality” for illegal aliens who should have no legitimate right to be in America, while legal citizens have lost jobs, businesses and homes. The Ground Zero Mosque is opposed by most Americans, and a government that does not listen is a government that will eventually forfeit its mandate to stay in office.
The Editor
Family Security Matters
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