What's Behind all this Mosque Mess...

D

Dixie - In Memoriam

New member
I've been seriously thinking a lot about this, something is bothering me tremendously about this whole controversy over the mosque at ground zero. Democrats like Obama are not stupid, he didn't get elected president by making stupid boneheaded mistakes. I find it odd that he would make a statement of perceived endorsement for this mosque, in light of all the polls showing it was so very unpopular, and potentially caustic. I have to think, there is some political motivation for this position, and here is what I have come up with.

The key difference, as we determined in my 'marriage counseling' thread, between Social Conservatives and Libertarian Conservatives, is the issue of religious faith. While these two groups share a common (and politically powerful) bond of connection with regard to fiscal policies, they differ sharply on social issues and religious morality. Now, how would you go about best exploiting that to your political advantage as an opponent? Well, you could create a controversial issue, centered around religious faith and moralities, the concept of what is morally right or wrong, versus what is constitutional and legal. The defining difference between Social Conservatives and Libertarian Conservatives!

I think Obama knew, this would start a firestorm, and the result would be a lot of angry "religious righties" who would eventually "turn off" the more libertarian non-religious conservatives, and thus fracture the whole Tea Party movement in the process. As frustrated fundamentalists scurry to write legislation to prohibit Muslims from building the mosque, libertarians would peel off and stop supporting the 'coalition' formed on the basis of smaller limited government. The more the religious people on the right scream, the faster the libertarian conservative runs away and disassociates... and I think THAT was their plan all along!

Maybe I am giving Obama too much credit?
 
Let me help you out with a timeline of the events leading up to this becoming a huge media story.



Here's a timeline of how it all happened:
(from http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/08/16/ground_zero_mosque_origins)


Dec. 8, 2009: The Times publishes a lengthy front-page look at the Cordoba project. "We want to push back against the extremists," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the lead organizer, is quoted as saying. Two Jewish leaders and two city officials, including the mayor's office, say they support the idea, as does the mother of a man killed on 9/11. An FBI spokesman says the imam has worked with the bureau. Besides a few third-tier right-wing blogs, including Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs site, no one much notices the Times story.

Dec. 21, 2009: Conservative media personality Laura Ingraham interviews Abdul Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, while guest-hosting "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox. In hindsight, the segment is remarkable for its cordiality. "I can't find many people who really have a problem with it," Ingraham says of the Cordoba project, adding at the end of the interview, "I like what you're trying to do."
(This segment also includes onscreen the first use that we've seen of the misnomer "ground zero mosque.") After the segment — and despite the front-page Times story — there were no news articles on the mosque for five and a half months, according to a search of the Nexis newspaper archive.

May 6, 2010: After a unanimous vote by a New York City community board committee to approve the project, the AP runs a story. It quotes relatives of 9/11 victims (called by the reporter), who offer differing opinions. The New York Post, meanwhile, runs a story under the inaccurate headline, "Panel Approves 'WTC' Mosque." Geller is less subtle, titling her post that day, "Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction." She writes on her Atlas Shrugs blog, "This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem." (To get an idea of where Geller is coming from, she once suggested that Malcolm X was Obama's real father. Seriously.)

May 7, 2010: Geller's group, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), launches "Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!" (SIOA 's associate director is Robert Spencer, who makes his living writing and speaking about the evils of Islam.) Geller posts the names and contact information for the mayor and members of the community board, encouraging people to write. The board chair later reports getting "hundreds and hundreds" of calls and e-mails from around the world.

May 8, 2010: Geller announces SIOA's first protest against what she calls the "911 monster mosque" for May 29. She and Spencer and several other members of the professional anti-Islam industry will attend. (She also says that the protest will mark the dark day of "May 29, 1453, [when] the Ottoman forces led by the Sultan Mehmet II broke through the Byzantine defenses against the Muslim siege of Constantinople." The outrage-peddling New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser argues in a note at the end of her column a couple of days later that "there are better places to put a mosque."

May 13, 2010: Peyser follows up with an entire column devoted to "Mosque Madness at Ground Zero." This is a significant moment in the development of the "ground zero mosque" narrative: It's the first newspaper article that frames the project as inherently wrong and suspect, in the way that Geller has been framing it for months. Peyser in fact quotes Geller at length and promotes the anti-mosque protest of Stop Islamization of America, which Peyser describes as a "human-rights group." Peyser also reports — falsely — that Cordoba House's opening date will be Sept. 11, 2011.

Lots of opinion makers on the right read the Post, so it's not surprising that, starting that very day, the mosque story spread through the conservative — and then mainstream — media like fire through dry grass. Geller appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show. The Washington Examiner ran an outraged column about honoring the 9/11 dead. So did Investor's Business Daily. Smelling blood, the Post assigned news reporters to cover the ins and outs of the Cordoba House development daily. Fox News, the Post's television sibling, went all out.

Within a month, Rudy Giuliani had called the mosque a "desecration." Within another month, Sarah Palin had tweeted her famous "peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate" tweet. Peter King and Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty followed suit — with political reporters and television news programs dutifully covering "both sides" of the controversy.

Geller had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.
 
this holds possibilities, but I think that it will backfire on both the liberals and the social conservatives. People are angry at both parties for their huge governmental interference and writing more legislation to disallow something that can be looked at as fundamentally inconsequential will have the effect of driving more middle of the road people to the TEA party movement.
 
I'm tired of it...absolutely sick of hearing about it. I think most agree that they have the right to build it but most will also agree that it would be very insensitive to build it. Say that and go on to a more important topic...like say...unemployment or something.
 
Dixie said:
I've been seriously thinking a lot about this, something is bothering me tremendously about this whole controversy over the mosque at ground zero. Democrats like Obama are not stupid, he didn't get elected president by making stupid boneheaded mistakes. I find it odd that he would make a statement of perceived endorsement for this mosque, in light of all the polls showing it was so very unpopular, and potentially caustic. I have to think, there is some political motivation for this position, and here is what I have come up with.

The key difference, as we determined in my 'marriage counseling' thread, between Social Conservatives and Libertarian Conservatives, is the issue of religious faith. While these two groups share a common (and politically powerful) bond of connection with regard to fiscal policies, they differ sharply on social issues and religious morality. Now, how would you go about best exploiting that to your political advantage as an opponent? Well, you could create a controversial issue, centered around religious faith and moralities, the concept of what is morally right or wrong, versus what is constitutional and legal. The defining difference between Social Conservatives and Libertarian Conservatives!

I think Obama knew, this would start a firestorm, and the result would be a lot of angry "religious righties" who would eventually "turn off" the more libertarian non-religious conservatives, and thus fracture the whole Tea Party movement in the process. As frustrated fundamentalists scurry to write legislation to prohibit Muslims from building the mosque, libertarians would peel off and stop supporting the 'coalition' formed on the basis of smaller limited government. The more the religious people on the right scream, the faster the libertarian conservative runs away and disassociates... and I think THAT was their plan all along!

Maybe I am giving Obama too much credit?
Click to expand...

I get what you are saying but to me the Terry Shivo (sp) issue is something that divides social conservatives and social libertarians. Because this issue revolves around 9/11 it isn't really an internal Republican thing or even a Rep/Dem issues.

And contrary to Jarod's 1,000 posts it really is a simple issue. Almost everyone correctly agrees they have the first admendment right to build this center/mosque. There are some who don't like its location so close to ground zero and others who don't care.
 
cawacko said:
I get what you are saying but to me the Terry Shivo (sp) issue is something that divides social conservatives and social libertarians. Because this issue revolves around 9/11 it isn't really an internal Republican thing or even a Rep/Dem issues.

And contrary to Jarod's 1,000 posts it really is a simple issue. Almost everyone correctly agrees they have the first admendment right to build this center/mosque. There are some who don't like its location so close to ground zero and others who don't care.
Click to expand...

We all agree with that... Including the President.

THe reason there is so much discusson here today is the attempt by Dixie and others to say the President had a different position.
 
Jarod said:
We all agree with that... Including the President.

THe reason there is so much discusson here today is the attempt by Dixie and others to say the President had a different position.
Click to expand...

His position is opposite Reids. Obama loves the idea of building the mosque, and has said so in multiple media venues.
 
cawacko said:
I get what you are saying but to me the Terry Shivo (sp) issue is something that divides social conservatives and social libertarians. Because this issue revolves around 9/11 it isn't really an internal Republican thing or even a Rep/Dem issues.

And contrary to Jarod's 1,000 posts it really is a simple issue. Almost everyone correctly agrees they have the first admendment right to build this center/mosque. There are some who don't like its location so close to ground zero and others who don't care.
Click to expand...

Well, fundamentally, the same thing was in play with Schiavo. It was a largely 'religious morality' based issue for social conservatives, and libertarian types didn't care. When we boil this whole issue of the mosque down, don't we have the same fundamental argument? Isn't it a 'religious morality' issue, versus a 'legal/constitutional/liberty' issue?

I just think there is a larger political motivation at play here, it's the only justification I can find for the president putting himself in the middle of this, when he totally didn't have to. I think he knew exactly what he was doing, and what they are hoping now, is the 'religious wackos' will run with this, let it become the #1 issue... and create a chasm in the Tea Party movement by diminishing support of libertarians.
 
Dixie said:
I've been seriously thinking a lot about this, something is bothering me tremendously about this whole controversy over the mosque at ground zero. Democrats like Obama are not stupid, he didn't get elected president by making stupid boneheaded mistakes. I find it odd that he would make a statement of perceived endorsement for this mosque, in light of all the polls showing it was so very unpopular, and potentially caustic. I have to think, there is some political motivation for this position, and here is what I have come up with.

The key difference, as we determined in my 'marriage counseling' thread, between Social Conservatives and Libertarian Conservatives, is the issue of religious faith. While these two groups share a common (and politically powerful) bond of connection with regard to fiscal policies, they differ sharply on social issues and religious morality. Now, how would you go about best exploiting that to your political advantage as an opponent? Well, you could create a controversial issue, centered around religious faith and moralities, the concept of what is morally right or wrong, versus what is constitutional and legal. The defining difference between Social Conservatives and Libertarian Conservatives!

I think Obama knew, this would start a firestorm, and the result would be a lot of angry "religious righties" who would eventually "turn off" the more libertarian non-religious conservatives, and thus fracture the whole Tea Party movement in the process. As frustrated fundamentalists scurry to write legislation to prohibit Muslims from building the mosque, libertarians would peel off and stop supporting the 'coalition' formed on the basis of smaller limited government. The more the religious people on the right scream, the faster the libertarian conservative runs away and disassociates... and I think THAT was their plan all along!

Maybe I am giving Obama too much credit?
Click to expand...

I dont doubt that you are on to something with this statement.

And I am glad you have changed your wording to "a statement of perceived endorsement for this mosque" instead of "endorsement for this Mosque."
 
Jarod said:
We all agree with that... Including the President.

THe reason there is so much discusson here today is the attempt by Dixie and others to say the President had a different position.
Click to expand...

No Jarod if the issue was you Dixie disagreeing over what Obama said that could be handled in one thread. You have started over a dozen threads on freedom and all other kinds of b.s. The issue is as simple as I stated it. You have turned into some out of control cluster f*ck.
 
cawacko said:
No Jarod if the issue was you Dixie disagreeing over what Obama said that could be handled in one thread. You have started over a dozen threads on freedom and all other kinds of b.s. The issue is as simple as I stated it. You have turned into some out of control cluster f*ck.
Click to expand...

I disagree.

Dixie claims the President came out in favor of the Community Center being built.
 
Jarod said:
I disagree.

Dixie claims the President came out in favor of the Community Center being built.
Click to expand...

Dumb ass... neither me nor anyone else gives two shits what you and Dixie are arguing about. Quit fucking trolling the board crying because you don't like what Dixie is saying. Stay in one thread.
 
cawacko said:
hey genius, when the entire board is threads you started because you are crying about Dixie its rather hard to see anything else.
Click to expand...

Sorry you are having trouble. Maybe you can get your Conservative brotheren to answer a direct question....
 
Our tolerance to religion needs to be questioned when religion is a cover for totalitarianism and murder.

Our forefathers were wrong about god.

Our rights don't come from god. we got them by our own actions.
 
Jarod said:
Sorry you are having trouble. Maybe you can get your Conservative brotheren to answer a direct question....
Click to expand...

Only you care what Dixie has to say on this topic. Why don't you send him a private message so you all can hash it out there.
 
The difference between libertarians and social conservatives is not faith. Plenty of libertarians are religious. The difference is that social conservatives reject the non-agression or non initiation of force principle and believe they have a right to utilize force to protect the cultural dominance of their dogmatic views.
 
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