Month: August 2010

by Conor Friedersdorf

Over at Ricochet, Claire Berlinski has been asking tough questions about the Cordoba Initiative, engaging that organization via social media, and expressing dismay at certain remarks made by Imam Rauf even as she opposes the approach taken by Sarah Palin, Abe Foxman, and Newt Gingrich. In other words, she's one of the people whose take on this differs from my own, but whose work on the subject nevertheless seems to me a valuable contribution.

In her latest, I want to highlight an excellent point:

I am all for pointing out good reasons to be offended by Imam Rauf's political opinions, but one argument that keeps coming up is actually not compelling at all. Feisal has been roundly criticized for saying the the September 11 attacks were a "reaction against the U.S. government politically, where we [the U.S.] espouse principles of democracy and human rights, and [yet] where we ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries.” Feisal has said many stupid things, but these words can hardly be numbered among them by any enthusiast of the Bush Doctrine, given that they're indistinguishable from the standard neoconservative critique of American foreign policy prior to September 11. This point is explained approvingly by none other than William Kristol.

Elsewhere in the same post, she writes, "Those smiling photos of the good Imam at a Hizb ut-Tahrir conference at the very least suggest that the man is naive to the point of lunacy about what that organization represents and the likelihood of spreading moderation among its members through any form of outreach short of a Hellfire missile."

Obviously I cannot know the motivations of Imam Rauf, nor am I familiar with Hizb ut-Tahir, and I certainly don't think that the leader of the Cordoba Initiative is beyond scrutiny or criticism. But I will say that were I a moderate Muslim working to oppose violent jihad, I'd go wherever I was invited in an attempt to win converts. And it seems to me that folks engaged in similar projects often do reach out to some shady characters for better or worse.

Bill Clinton earnestly sought peace between Israel and Palestine. And he worked closely with Yasser Arafat. Naively? A lot of people think so. What would people say if Imam Rauf had sat down with the same man? It would be cited as proof that he isn't really a moderate Muslim who abhors terrorism, because Muslims in the media spotlight are in some ways held to a much higher standard, and distrusted far more readily. Again, I don't know the man's heart, but I don't envy the task he asserts is his life's work, and absent persuasive evidence that his public remarks, professed aims and admirable cooperation with the American government are all a charade, I see no reason to withhold from him the benefit of the doubt.

by Patrick Appel

Suderman shares how he came to support marriage equality:

Is there any more damning moment for an advocate than when he admits that he not only does not know how to justify his own position, but that he believes it is so obvious, so utterly self-evident that it does not need justification at all? For the diehards, intuition is not just enough, it is everything.

But for the majority of the public, that will likely not suffice — not forever, anyway. It didn’t for me.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

If the World Trade Center site is such a sacred place, then why are we allowing a for-profit office complex to be erected on it?  Did we move the USS Arizona because it took up valuable dock space?  (Maybe someone will open a coffee shop on the first floor called Hallowed Grounds.) Also, I assume the new complex will have toilets and that they will be used. Talk about disrespectful.

Here is the most thorough accounting I've seen of all the strip clubs, sex shops, bars, liquor stores, and other less-than-sacred establishments within three blocks of Ground Zero. Daryl Lang snapped a bunch of commercialized scenes around the site and concludes:

The people who live and work here are not obsessed with 9/11. The blocks around Ground Zero are like every other hard-working neighborhood in New York, where Muslims are just another thread of the city fabric.

by Chris Bodenner

An incredible collection of color photos recently featured in the Denver Post:

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations.

Caption for the one above:

Jack Whinery, homesteader, and his family. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940.

Another Dish fave after the jump:

Who is he pining for?

(Hat tip: Zach Klein)

by Patrick Appel

Bernstein asks liberals:

Are there specific pols, interest group leaders, activists, pundits, or whoever who, if they support a candidate or a nominee or a bill, you would basically assume that she or it was acceptably liberal?

He poses the same question for conservatives. I don't trust any politicians; pols are incentivized to lie or gloss over hard truths. There are a number of writers who I trust to write with intellectual honestly, but I put more trust in systems than I do in people. This reader reply is spot on:

I think about this process in the way my uncle once recommended that I think about movie reviews: the key is to read the same reviewer over and over (regardless of whether you consistently agree with their perspective or not). In this way, you begin to establish a third (or fourth or fifth) point of reference in relation to to the objects under consideration (movies, pols, or policies) and yourself.

by Chris Bodenner

Matt Duss tackles Ross' column:

Whatever positive function nativism and bigotry, institutionalized and otherwise, may have performed in encouraging greater, faster assimilation is far outweighed by the harassment and discrimination endured by new immigrants as a result. This attempt at even-handedness also leads Douthat to underappreciate the extent to which, just as newly arriving Catholic, Jewish, Italian, German, and Chinese immigrants became more American upon arriving here, America itself became more Catholic, Jewish, Italian, German, and Chinese as a result of their arrival.

This, also, is part of what I think makes America unique: “Assimilation” has never been a one-way street. New arrivals to America have adopted American ways as their own, but they’ve also changed the way that we define and understand what it is to be American. Resistance to this is, I think, a big part of what underlies much of the opposition to the Cordoba House: Many Americans are uncomfortable with the fact — and it is a fact — that America will become, is becoming, more Islamic.

Duss also makes an excellent closing point – appropriated here as a response to Harry Reid's cowardly opposition to Cordoba.

Today on the Dish, Andrew was away, so we got to assess the fray. On the mosque, Halperin urged Republicans to avoid hubris; Reid crumpled; and Douthat, Bouie and Bernstein butted heads. Conor hit upon an apt analogy by imagining a Catholic prayer group scenario instead. There's a history of the entire controversy here; and Reihan on Ross and his own Muslim parents here.

Debbie Riddle pulled a Palin on Anderson Cooper; Palin pulled a Palin on Levi's custody agreement; and Levi talked to Kimmel.  Conor got excited over a Salon profile of the could-be-perfect 2012 Republican candidate who no Tea Partier has ever heard of, and Palin came in 4th in an early Iowa poll. Goldblog was asked to clarify "going nuclear;" Conor invited examples of when analysts have been wrong about their predictions before and Mexico's narco-censorship was on the rise.

Patrick responded to Bazelon on Prop 8; he picked at an America where even the rich claim to be middle class, and he pushed against Kleiman's 'grow your own' cannabis policy. Obama was grouped under the same TARP as Bush, and readers responsed to race, poverty, gangs and education in America here, here, here, and here.

Chris catalogued the current cultural imperialism of Facebook on the web, via French rap; and song lyric riddles went the way of Google maps. Creepy ad watch here, MHB mash-up here, FOTD here, and VFYW here. Hewitt award here, Moore award here, and Yglesias award here.

Conor was curious about your first kiss, goaded Obama on his global war on terror, and had his mind blown by this piece of long form journalism. 

— Z.P.

by Chris Bodenner

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just stayed Judge Walker's ruling. Brian Devine reacts:

First, and drastically most importantly, the Court granted the stay. Consequently the thousands of couples who were waiting for the day of equality will have to wait at least a few more months until December.

Second, the Court wants this case to be resolved quickly. Appellants’ opening brief is due in just a month and the hearing will happen on December 6th. This is lightning quick for a Federal Court of Appeals, and it’s a very good sign. The Court understands that this case is important, and it doesn’t want it to linger.

Third, the Court specifically orders the Prop 8 proponents to show why this case should not be dismissed for lack of standing. Here’s a discussion of the standing issue. This is very good news for us. It shows that the Court has serious doubts about whether the Appellants have standing. Even better, the Court is expressing an opinion that its inclination is that the case should be dismissed. That being said, the panel that issued this Order (the motions panel) is not the same panel that will hear that case on the merits. The merits panel will be selected shortly before December 6th and we don’t know the three judges who will be on the merits panel. But this is a very good sign that the appeal could be dismissed on the ground of standing alone.

Updates here. 

(Photo: Same-sex couple Kristen Orbin and Teresa Rowe embrace on August 12 in San Francisco as they wait to hear a decision on whether same-sex marriages will be allowed to resume in California. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.)

by Patrick Appel

Sam Harris, whom I often enjoy, has an exceedingly wrong-headed article on the Cordoba project. He sees no legal reason to oppose the "ground zero mosque" but nevertheless feels it is a bad idea:

The claim that the events of September 11, 2001, had “nothing to do with Islam” is an abject and destabilizing lie. This murder of 3,000 innocents was viewed as a victory for the One True Faith by millions of Muslims throughout the world (even, idiotically, by those who think it was perpetrated by the Mossad). And the erection of a mosque upon the ashes of this atrocity will also be viewed by many millions of Muslims as a victory—and as a sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with decadence and cowardice. This may not be reason enough for the supporters of this mosque to reconsider their project. And perhaps they shouldn’t. Perhaps there is some form of Islam that could issue from this site that would be better, all things considered, than simply not building another mosque in the first place. But this leads me to a somewhat paradoxical conclusion: American Muslims should be absolutely free to build a mosque two blocks from ground zero; but the ones who should do it probably wouldn’t want to.

Jerry Coyne is in similar territory:

Do I oppose the center’s construction? No.  Do I think that building it on that site is a good idea? No.  It’s no better an idea than would be building an American cultural center near Ground Zero in Hiroshima.  It was Islam, after all, that propelled those planes into the World Trade Center nine years ago.

It's amazing to watch staunch secularists and the far right read from the same playbook. Islam is not a nation. And Harris dismisses religious moderates far too quickly, with too broad a brush, a point Andrew made in detail during their debate. Harris implies that the people building Park 51 are the wrong sort of Muslims without bothering to prove that charge. The specter of 9/11 is enough. For someone who claims a special relationship to reason, Harris is leaning awfully heavily on emotion and strawmen. Hitchens, as Andrew noted last week, was more measured:

We need not automatically assume the good faith of those who have borrowed this noble name for a project in lower Manhattan. One would want assurances, also, about the transparency of its funding and the content of its educational programs. But the way to respond to such overtures is by critical scrutiny and engagement, not cheap appeals to parochialism, victimology, and unreason.

A scarecrow is dressed as a banker during the annual Scarecrow Festival on August 14, 2010 in Kettlewell, United Kingdom. Every year since 1994, hundreds of scarecrows have been created by the villagers and hidden on a trail around the village. By Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images.