"You can build a mosque at ground zero when we can build a synagogue in Mecca."

Protest sign shown on the front page of CNN. So much stupidity compressed into one little space.

Who is "we"? Americans? Christians? Jews?

Is the WTC cite really the equivalent of "Mecca" for "us?" Does our religion center around the financial center of New York City?

Is our religion or nationality defined by a symbol of violent aggression and terrorism? Is that our "Mecca"?

After all the criticism leveled against Islamic nations, are we saying that our religious tolerance will be defined by *their* level of tolerance?

When we "export democracy," what are we sharing with the world? Are our Constitution and freedoms really just nothing but a different flavor of intolerance?

If "we" build a synagogue in Mecca, will we publicly condemn all the violence that is (or has been) carried out in the name of our religion and/or nation?

Etc.... the stupid continues, I just got tired of thinking about it.

of the US Constitution.

all these patriotic 'merkins looking to Saudi Arabia for guidance. :patriot:

which would be the appropriate comparison. I didn't know the WTC was the religious center of the Jewish religion.
Lock up these lunatics - somebody- anybody - they're fucking crazy.

Can see no reason to allow the building of a Catholic church here till one can be found....

:hi:

Your brain will hurt. Don't bother.

Fallacious all over the place and sloganeering.

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But this article actually made me LOL... :D

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8998375&mesg_id=8998375

that was carried out by Jews. It should be easy to find one in Palestine. In fact, I'm sure it has already been done.

That was 2008. Praying over the golden bull.

I just googled images for "prayer wall street bull" as I don't have a way of loading up a pic. The first link that came up about it was from Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/403920/jesus-people-pray-that-false-idol-will-save-gods-economy

Many many other references out there from various POV.

right before Charlton Heston smashed the tablets.

crowd refuses to use or buy anything connected to the petroleum industry.

So this bigoted bullshit doesn't make any sense.

You may have stumbled onto something there.

If extra-terrestrials were analyzing us objectively, they could be forgiven for concluding just that. Is an ATM really all that different from a confessional?

:(

That was the rant of an unbelievably ignorant bat shit crazy lunatic.

does not apply in Mecca.

This is a Constitutional issue.

I keep wondering about these "hallowed ground" or "sacred ground" descriptions being applied to the WTC site.

The idea of sacred ground was initially a religious one -- probably going back to the days when the sites of temples were carefully determined through feng shui or following the meanderings of cows or whatever method was considered best to trace out the earth energies.

As that sort of practical knowledge was lost, a more superstitious form of the concept came to be applied to any area around a church -- for example, the old principle that a suicide could not be laid to rest but had to be buried outside the churchyard.

And when even that degree traditional of religious awareness vanished, the idea took on a more secular meaning. Lincoln saying in the Gettysburg Address, for example, "We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

The Battle of Gettysburg was both a great victory and one marked by tragic loss of life, and Lincoln's words were not misplaced. But in retrospect, I can't help feeling he set us on a very slippery slope, bringing us to the point where now any place that lots of people were killed can be considered "hallowed."

The World Trade Center was not a battleground. It was not a place where anyone "gave their lives that that nation might live." It was not turned into a cemetery for the fallen and is not their final resting-place. Nothing at all happened there for Americans to be proud of.

This suggests to me that it isn't really being treated as "sacred ground" so much as a continuing irritant and source of anger and humiliation. That sort of thing also has a long -- and overwhelmingly barbaric -- history, but it's nothing to emulate. It has to do not with healing but with vengeance and the perpetuation of ancient hatreds.

There used to be a word for this sort of thing -- "revanchism," which was applied to the French determination to get back at the Germans for their humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War. That determination was one of the major causes of World War I -- and thus, by extension, of World War II.

Revanchism is the kind of low-level pseudo-religious cult that crops up when a real desire for peace and understanding is lost. It makes a mockery of any genuine idea of the sacred. And by even allowing the forces of darkness to describe the WTC site as "sacred" -- out of some sort of fear that we might be pilloried if we suggest it isn't -- we are setting ourselves up for exactly that kind of descent into barbarism.

opposed to icons, symbolism, or "sacred ground/things". (For example, megachurches often have the aesthetics of an auditorium rather than a cathedral.) Maybe the desire for sacred objects gets diverted....

It's hard to think of a more substantial transformation of consciousness than the sudden death of several thousand people all in one place...if you're some kind of Satanist or something, that probably makes that location a holy place.

I find it sort of appropriate that people who see the sites of the attacks of 9/11, which are after all the sole justification for the last ten years of U.S. foreign policy, as being somehow desecrated by the presence of an edifice intended to be a center of education and peaceful devotion, also tend to be the most vociferous proponents of bare aggression and jingoism when it comes to our interactions with other nations. The right wing has damn near made a religion out of violence and intolerance...the rantings of their favorite talking heads are sure focused on ratcheting up the hatred, at any rate...I think it makes perfect sense for these people to react as they have to the incursion of what they've been indoctrinated to see as the enemy into the area of their sacrificial alter.

Oops, did I just equate the right wing with human-sacrificing Satanists? Sorry 'bout that.

But really, what could be more appropriate for the WTC site, which is undeniably symbolic, than a facility intended to be a place of learning and sharing of knowledge? And hey, it'll have a gym too, which can only be a good thing...people should exercise more. If anything, there should be a whole bunch of places like this built around the area.

It says that America can't even rise to the level of an intolerant theocracy.

I find it depressing.

*wish* that America would be an intolerant theocracy.

Of course, it looks like the intolerants are winning right now, but that's partly because they've wrapped the whole issue in a WTC flag. Outside of a few blocks in Manhattan, mosques are still being built.

but my question has always been which religion are they wanting to base this theocracy on??

The christians can't even come to a consensus .....

A thought just came to mind ......... What ever the President's religion is, that is the religion of the country and then all religious buildings that are not that one religion have to be destroyed ......... should make some heads spin ..... and everyone has to worship that religion ..........

its private property and constitutional

Do these people actually think they're talking to somebody?

Il Duce's political analysis was reported in this New York Times story in 1989: .

The same morons who quote a fascist in the name of freedom will happily pull the lever for her in 2012.

1. It's not a mosque, it's a gym.

2. It's not at Ground Zero, it's around the corner and two quarter-mile-long blocks down the street. It'd be easier to "walk past the 'mosque' every day" from Ground Zero if it was in New Jersey.

And 3. I have no problem with using taxes on churches--especially ones who build graven idols and denigrate other faiths--to subsidize a tax cut for everyone. (And if you go through the record of my postings, you'll see I've got a fairly good track record of being against tax cuts of any kind.) I had to subsidize Big Butter Jesus and all these preachers screaming about mosques on Ground Zero through higher taxes on my income, and I'm tired of doing it.

Oh, well. Same level of stupidity.

is the same arguments being parroted here on DU by some members. You expect that from idiot narrow minded right wingers, but here?