Month: August 2010

Grappling with the 9/11 Families, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

E.M. at DiA says it as well as anyone:

It certainly would be insensitive, to use Mr Gingrich’s terms, to wave swastikas by the Holocaust Museum. But for this analogy to work, a mosque must be to 9/11 what a swastika is to the Holocaust. Happily, however, most politicians are reluctant to suggest that mosques are symbols of terrorism, or that Muslims are all terrorists.

Instead, the complaint seems to boil down to a vague sense that doing Muslim stuff near ground zero is an unhappy reminder of terrorism, because the terrorists claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. That smacks of collective punishment: I doubt, somehow, that Mr Obama or Mrs Palin would consider it insensitive to build a church near the site, say, of a cross burning carried out by the Ku Klux Klan or an abortion clinic bombed by Christian fundamentalists. I doubt also that they would want, if they thought about it a bit harder, to accept the 9/11 attackers’ assertion that they were acting on behalf of their Muslim brothers.

Yglesias Award Nominee

by Chris Bodenner

"By no means am I a fan of Dr. Laura, (as she's known), but I'm even less of a fan of the n-word, which I find more offensive, more harmful, and more poisonous to our community than Dr. Laura will ever be. … Now I happen to consider Dr. Laura's laughably flawed logic more offensive than her use of the n-word, but considering her doctorate is actually in physiology and not psychology like many believe, it's really not that surprising that she knows so little about people or race relations. But the fact that she felt justified saying what she did confirms a fundamental reality: Arbitrary rules about who can say the n-word and who cannot simply do not work. Dr. Laura felt justified saying what she did because a host of rappers and comedians continue to validate her perspective," – Keli Goff.  (Another HuffPo blogger, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, defends Schlessinger as well.)

Assessing Imam Rauf, Cont’d

by Conor Friedersdorf

Claire Berlinski responds to my earlier post on the Imam behind the Park51 project, and makes a persuasive case that whatever his intentions — and I still see no convincing evidence that they are malign — it is a fool's errand to associate with Hizb ut-Tahrir, a case that is only bolstered by this BBC piece I found while trying to read up on the group.

I'd be interested to hear why he attended a conference that they sponsored. [See correction below — he didn't.] It would certainly clarify this discussion. Ms. Berlinski has already made inquiries, and I'm going to do the same. In general, I'd very much benefit from a better understanding of the attitudes, pressures, and perspective of people who see themselves as bridge-builders between Islam and the west. The last time I embarked on that particular intellectual project I read "Whose Afraid of Tariq Ramadan" in The New Republic, and I was so exhausted by the end that I didn't read anything else.

Any reader recommendations on this subject?

UPDATE: Clare Berlinski issues a correction:

Imam Feisal was not at a conference sponsored by Hizb ut-Tahrir, just a conference where some members of Hizb ut-Tahrir were present. I still wouldn't have gone, if I were him, just knowing they would be there. but that's not quite the same as accepting an invitation to their conference.

This makes me think my initial position was correct. A necessary part of persuading people to abandon radical Islam is engaging people who aren't entirely on your side.

Commuting Kills?

by Patrick Appel

That's what Richard Florida suggests. Avent dilutes this:

Commutes of [over an hour] are relatively rare, and they’re also associated with declining incomes. Someone who has a two-hour commute experiences much more stress than someone with a 46-60 minute commute (who is roughly as stressed as someone with a 21-30 minute commute). They might be stressed by the commute, or they might be stressed by the set of circumstances that led them to live so far away from their job — low income levels in an expensive city, economically-induced household immobility, and so on.

Conservative Elites and the Park51 Debate

by Conor Friedersdorf

In his latest column at The Washington Examiner, Gene Healy argues that outrage over the Burlington Coat Factory mosque and community center is a red-herring. "You see, cutting government is hard, and often unpopular," he writes. "Faced with difficult choices, the alleged party of small government always retreats to the lazy politics of Kulturkampf… The establishment Right wants to play the Tea Party movement for suckers. It remains to be seen whether they'll play along."

I asserted a similar position here at The Daily Dish.

Will Wilkinson disagrees with us.

This idiotic foofaraw could be a distraction only if the GOP rank-and-file actually cared more about the size of government than the cultural politics of American identity. But they don’t. It’s not even close. American conservatism is a movement consumed by protecting and asserting a certain fabricated conception of the traditional American way of life against imaginary enemies. Support for small government is no more than a bullet point on the Right’s “What We Believe” cheat sheet, mouthed at opportune moments. I approve of what Gene’s trying to do here rhetorically, but the fact is that complaining about Muslims and keeping holy the memory of 9/11 and Ground Zero — the legitimizing altar of aggressive American imperialism —  is a direct manifestation of contemporary conservatism’s essence.

This overstates the degree to which opposition to the mosque among the general public is a conservative phenomenon. The polling I've seen, and Harry Reid's recent anti-mosque statement, suggest it's far more widespread.

Mr. Wilkinson may be right that the GOP establishment is "nervously along for the ride," but even so, this issue entered the culture wars largely because of elites in conservative journalism who framed it as provocatively as possible, often making factually inaccurate assertions and speculating darkly about the Cordoba Initiative's motives. Go watch this despicable anti-mosque ad. It's easy to imagine how members of the public who've learned about the controversy through it, Sarah Palin's Twitter feed, the Fox News Channel and Andy McCarthy columns would be misled about certain facts, and while I am under no illusion that rank-and-file Republicans would embrace the project if their elites behaved more responsibly (or merely more accurately), I can certainly imagine the issue being a minor one, and mosque opponents feeling less threatened, aggrieved, and inclined toward hyperbolic bombast. 

A Health Care Nation?

by Patrick Appel

Building off analysis by Richard Florida, Derek Thompson notes:

Look at the next ten years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and the White House both expect health care jobs to grow nearly twice as fast as any other category. Six of the top eight jobs with the fastest projected growth are in the health care or medical science industries. Three of the top five jobs with the largest projected growth are in health care.