Mosque We Go On

The Ground Zero mosque debate has stirred up deep passions, as evidenced not only by the continuing news about it but also by responses to recent postings. If you’re among those interested in this issue, read this admittedly loooong entry. If not, see you next time....

Reacting to the August 30 “Different Point of View” note from one of my readers (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/08/different-point-of-view.html), another had this to say:

I utterly agree with your correspondent, that there are smart terrorists and dumb ones. The smart ones exploit weaknesses (time, place, opportunity, lack of awareness, gullibility, poverty, pride, etc.) to accomplish their mission.

I believe most people on earth are more interested in their own peaceful lives than in waging war (although the desire for revenge, even on the most petty levels, seems universal). However, I do think there's a point where we have to recognize when we're being made fools of. We spend billions on defense, and a group nearly takes us down with a few flying lessons and some plane tickets.

More than 20 years ago, people I consider part of my own family came here from Pakistan. The mother, a peaceful woman with no ties to any extremists, innocently told me that in her home area they hoped so many Middle-Easterners would come to America that it would eventually become Muslim. She was in no way politically connected, and even at the time I didn't think it was an original thought. I believed she repeated something she had heard in her community.

On 9/11, she called, distraught, asking if she and her American-law-abiding family should immediately start wearing Western clothes. She was being stared down on the streets of New York. She was frantic that her family would be targeted by people lashing out at any person who was obviously Muslim. Even though i suffered, as every American did, on that day, I told her that our Constitution granted her freedom of religion. Her family has now assimilated; her two older children have post-graduate degrees and they are all fine American citizens. But I never forgot her remark.

I have no reason to believe that the people who want to put the cultural center in the country's financial hub are anything but people who desire peace and mutual understanding. But I do believe picking this site is disrespectful. And I believe it opens the door to those who wish to mock and exploit our freedoms. I don't want us to suffer a broken national heart again.

Commenting on my September 5 posting, “A Time for Every Purpose,” (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/09/time-for-every-purpose.html ), a psychiatric social worker wrote:

It took a generation to die out in the desert for the people (of Israel) to forget or distance themselves from slavery. it will take at least that amount, 20 years, for 9/11 to not cause instant angst and pain. There is no reason to rush the mourning process...if left unfinished and abruptly stopped, the person or people will never fully accept or deal with the loss. We as a nation are too quick to want to go on and let it "go".

I think the big fight over where the mosque should be located is not so much location; rather, it is a loud protest that we are not over the mourning period and still do not accept the loss. Why is it OK to remember D-Day, Hiroshima, Japan bombing the American fleet in Honolulu, and scores of other days we still remember and mourn?

To the reader who first responded to “Our Latest Demagogue” (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/08/our-latest-demagogue.html), I sent back the following note:

Thank you for your note. It reflects deep seated beliefs and I respect you for them, though I do disagree with some of your premises, mostly that it is acceptable to give in to our fears and discriminate against any people or religious group simply because some of their members are extremists and therefore could pose a threat to our way of life. We in the United States live atop a rare mountain of freedoms. But there are slippery slopes on all sides of our mountaintop and if we begin to restrict one group who knows where we might end up. For example, those who believe in the philosophy that triggered Timothy McVeigh to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, would you deny them their rights? Monitor them, yes, but deny them the right to pray together at a location of their choice? No, I don't think we want to go there. Once any group deviates from the norm of the majority, there is a danger of repression, fueled by demagogues. Yes, Glenn Beck is a demagogue, as is Al Sharpton. They are exploiting fears and prejudices.

It is interesting you brought up an egg analogy. In my "perfect" world, i am grateful we have a government that checks up on the safety of eggs. Too many libertarians would do away with government agencies and let the marketplace deal with an outbreak of salmonella. but as we've discovered, the offending company has many corporate subdivisions so it would be hard for the public to fully know which eggs are safe and which are not. So even with the egg scare of the last two weeks I have bought and eaten eggs, as have millions of others, because we have confidence in our government to protect us.

It is that confidence in government protection that is at the heart of much of the political debate today. I'm a liberal, or a progressive in the term more commonly used today. I believe government's responsibility is to care for its citizens, to protect them from overt and covert threats. So we have an army, and we also have an OSHA. We provide, or require, education for our children, and we provide financial support for our elderly through social security and Medicare. I believe the measure of any society is how well it cares for its less fortunate citizens. I'm not comfortable with the old custom of the Eskimos to simply put the elderly on an ice flow and send them adrift. I'm not comfortable with the practice in many Third World countries to allow children, young children, to work full time. Only through government (sometimes prodded by unions, but almost never because of the social consciousness of the Power Elite) do we get reforms that span the entire population and not some lucky segments.

Glenn Beck and his ilk want to go back to "a simpler time." They want to go back to an America they believe was better decades ago. Does that mean they want to go back to the time of racial discrimination? Do they want to go back to a time when the opportunity to attend college was limited? Do they want to go back to a time when we feared diseases like polio? Does it mean that we want to go back to a time when you had no safety net should you lose your job, or your health insurance? Does it mean we want to go back to a time when asbestos was commonly used to build our factories, our offices, our schools? Does it mean we want to go back to a time when factories openly and without restriction polluted our waterways? Do we want to go back to a time when, because we were at war with the Japanese, we interred everyone of Japanese ancestry? Why then did we not put German and Italian citizens behind barbed wire fences? Is it because they were Caucasians and did not look different from the mainstream?

Muslims are to be feared, if they have evil intentions. No, it is not easy to look into everyone's soul and predict what their true intentions are. But just as we don't lock up all the co-religionists of those who blow up abortion clinics and kill doctors, or those who bombed Afro-American churches, so too must we extend and maintain the freedoms of Muslims and all other religions who reside in the United States.

Did you ever stop to think why people who are ready to kill each other in their homelands (such as Serbs and Croats, Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, Arabs and Israelis, Hutus and Tutus, to name just a few) do not kill each other when they come to the US? They live side by side here, without incident. It's partly because of our tolerance of others that is imbued in everyday life, plus limitless economic opportunities. Once we begin to erode that tolerance we will be hard pressed to ever get it back.


To correct any miunderstanding of her original note, she provided the following reply:

I think some things may have been lost in my communication to you and I would like to clarify . . . I did not say that we should “give in to fears and discriminate against people or religious groups.” Rather, what I did say, is that while at war, we need to be mindful that our very freedoms are being used as an avenue of access by the Islamic Muslim extremists that we are at war with. I was not suggesting anything beyond that.

My point is, much conflict is born out of misunderstandings . . . so I believe it is important to “understand” where people are coming from and how and why their fears are created. I did not suggest that I share those fears nor that they are a valid basis for discrimination.

Incidentally, I see your example of people who are ready to kill each other in their homelands, but live peacefully here in the U.S. is an over generalization. Perhaps you are speaking of the general “people” of that country, but I would guess that whether they live here or there, the individual people you speak of would not be the ones killing their neighbors, otherwise they would be doing it here–which is probably why they left to come here.

Regarding Glenn Beck, I’m not sure what he would like to see happen in America. I am not particularly fond of extremists in any area of race, politics or religion–including both liberal and conservative ones. I think extremists are dangerous on all fronts and prone to narrowing the realities to align more closely with their arguments.

I believe there is a place somewhere in the middle of all of this, where most people would be satisfied. I was a Democrat my entire life–until now. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican now. I see the current liberal movement as something just as dangerous as the “simpler time” that Glenn Beck dreams of. I think people should be rewarded for their success–not penalized and demonized and forced to share their income with people who do not contribute.

I believe in sustainability–and in order for our country to become sustainable, its citizens need to contribute–not just take from it. I agree that the government should be there to help people in need–but it should not allow people to live off the government without contribution. I do not believe that everyone who is poor wants or deserves sympathy or charity and I feel that people should be encouraged to support themselves and contribute to their communities. Believe it or not, some people do not want to work for success–it doesn’t mean that much to them. Others don’t want the responsibility that comes with success . . . and that’s fine too. They have that right–but at the same time, they should not be rewarded for taking that stance with a percentage my hard earned money–or anyone else’s for that matter.


I’ve been questioned, even chastised, for giving too much space to the thoughts of others in my blog. Most newspapers, it should be noted, restrict their Letters to the Editor to 150 words. In more than 30 years of editing a magazine I never followed that practice. If someone took the time to send in a comment, I would run as much of it as space permitted. On the Internet, fortunately, there are no space restrictions. No trees are harvested to produce this Web page. Dialogue, important dialogue, can be fostered, even cherished, with the only restriction being the patience and tolerance of each reader.

Your comments are always welcome.