Is This America? - Nicolas Kristof
For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”
Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?
This is one of those times that test our values, a bit like the shameful interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the disgraceful refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
God bless America, and all the ships at sea.
It gets better:
a Newsweek poll finds that 52 percent of Republicans believe that it is “definitely true” or “probably true” that “Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” So a majority of Republicans think that our president wants to impose Islamic law worldwide.
Just in case you were losing track of how deranged the GOP is, and the way that its leaders seem to be embracing lies, xenophobia, and hatred as planks in their platform.
We are skidding toward a mob that wants a religious dictatorship — a theocracy — to take over in America. That’s what Glenn Beck’s event at the Lincoln Memorial meant. Not a return to religion in American public life, but the intent of evangelical Christian right-wing loonies to take over all the branches of Government, rewrite the Constitution, and hound the disbelievers out of the country.
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canuckistan reblogged this from smack416 and added:
summarizing most...political reasons I would like...your...
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smack416 reblogged this from underpaidgenius and added:
September 11 was, of course, an active day in America’s fight against freedom. Following recent Bomb Bag observations on...
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