I'm a noob here, though I've been a long time lurker. This is the first time I've ever been so annoyed as to write a diary. And since I'm a noob poster, you can take this for what its worth.
But I'm becoming more and more disturbed with this automatic default position that some on the left seem to be taking, where whatever the rightwing says, the "correct" progressive position is the opposite.
Why, exactly, are we giving national attention to this idiot in Florida who is going to burn korans?
I'm not a religious person, I'm a secular humanist. Even so, I don't like willful acts of sacrilege because its deliberately provocative towards religious people. That said; its an issue of manners, not law. The idea put forward by a lot of people over the last couple of days that we really, really need to stop the asshole in Florida because if we don't, terrorists will kill Americans is unbelievable to me. The theater commander in Afghanistan, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the President of the United States (Not to mention endless numbers of talking heads on all networks, on every political show) just spent about a week in opposition to a fire started by 30 kooks in some Florida swamp. AKA; their exercise of the first amendment. They even sent the FBI to this church.
Unpopular speech is the MOST IMPORTANT speech to defend because it marks the edge of ALL of our expression. This guy's an asshole, no doubt about it. But the argument that we need to 'watch what we say' because it will anger Islamic peoples is not only unbelievable to me, as a civil libertarian, but OFFENSIVE. I refuse to believe that the attitudes of the Islamic world SHOULD IN ANY WAY effect the civil rights of Americans. That means that I don't believe terrorism should be an excuse for the government to listen to my phones, or search my house illegally. It also means, though, that some radical getting upset over South Park showing Mohammed or some jerk in Florida burning Korans doesn't matter to me in the slightest.
Not only does it strike me as fundamentally wrong to take these people's outrage into consideration when it comes to the exercise of our rights, it strikes me as DANGEROUS.
If I was some disturbed Christian fanatic, I would sure be scratching my head right now and pondering this, "Gee, if bombing something gets the President of the United States and the entire government along with the media on board to protect the sanctity of X religious object or symbol, I'm sure wasting my time protesting this abortion clinic. Where's my C4?"
How can we justify some civic 'no go zone' for Islamic religious symbols and beliefs, and no one else's?
I don't care about that Park51 mosque too much either. But I DON'T like Rauf raising a similar card. If the mosque is moved, the opinion of fanatics in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia shouldn't matter to us. We can't live like this.
Just because the right is piggish and bigoted, doesn't mean the left should fall into the trap of treating the immature sensitivities of foreign religious zealots as meaningful to the national dialogue. I really wish the government hadn't gotten involved in this thing.
It feels like a really big mistake.