In America, we have certain rights. One of them is the right to free speech. Another is the right to freedom of religion. Yet another is the right to assemble peacefully with whomever we please. These are our rights. They are not given by the government, they are protected by the government.
That said, there are other concerns that should cause us to self-limit our right to exercise those and other rights. For example, if I was invited to a party at a friend’s house, it would be boorish of me to insult the host and the host’s religion. Refraining from insulting one’s host is known as being being a decent human being.
Sure, I have the right to say whatever I think. But rights have responsibilities as well. It would be irresponsible for me to willfully insult my host just because I can. Were I to exercise my right to free speech, it would be well within my host’s rights to uninvite me from his parties. Forever. There’s that freedom of association thing.
I really can’t technically fault Obama for his legalistic defense of the right to build a mosque at Ground Zero – just as I can’t technically condemn him for dutifully walking his “ringing” endorsement back today. Except to say that what he said last night and what he said today shows nothing but cold, political calculation. Badly executed political calculation, to be sure.
Because his walk back did nothing to stem the vituperation that his “ringing” endorsement brought.
If he’d meant the walk back, he could have mentioned the sheer boorishness of building a mosque right next to where self-proclaimed Muslims incinerated 3,000 Americans while he was expounding on the legal rights involved. It would have been very powerful. Instead, it is amateurish political posturing. He’s not able to pull off a Clinton-style triangulation.
It’s not a question of rights. It’s a question of wrongs. The left, of course, does not understand that.
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“There’s that freedom of association thing.”
Yes: there is also the freedom, less enshrined but in a way more valuable to us all, of the freedom to not associate. Therefore we do not choose to mix with certain people or ideas. They can do what they wish; all they have to do is face the consequences of their actions, which does not involve those who stepped away from their circle.
But here’s the problem: the Muslims intention to build a monument as close as they can to Ground Zero invites us to be part of it. The timing and location mean we cannot disassociate because it is too close. It is deliberately in our faces. We cannot ‘step away’ and say “okay, get on with your religion but don’t involve us who don’t share it” because it is intentionally too close.
Your analogy of a friend’s party is thus extended to your friends having a party on your porch. You didn’t want them there but they invited themselves, claiming you would be ‘insensitive to their needs’ by refusing to allow them there.
Any realistic sensitivity of course on the Muslims part would have precluded the opening date and avoided being too close. In other words, worship want you want but in your own time and space and not in someone else’s.
President Obama speaking without his teleprompter to keep him from revealing himself is all too often a political fire-storm waiting to happen. This instance is no exception.
Only by strict adherence to a prepared script can Obama’s handlers keep him consistent with the carefully constructed public persona they created. Which is sharply at odds with his natural rabble rousing “community organizer” in-your-face confrontational personality. It’s always there though simmering just below the surface.
If his minders take their eyes off him for a few seconds, Obama slips the leash, puffs up his chest, and reverts to his Chicago roots. The problem is that showing his true colors not only conflicts sharply with his manufactured identity, it also reveals the poverty of his political skills, he’s much too inexperienced to see the pitfalls coming and side step controversy. He was trained for confrontation, not compromise, Obama’s on shaky ground when he’s expected to preach accommodation, it’s just not in his nature.
So, now, we see the damage control mechanisms swing into action. Tap dance and double talk, plus the bigot card for all of us who oppose a monument to Islamic terrorism at ground zero.
Let the terrorists use our oil money to build their mosques and celebrate their victory someplace other than the graveyard of our honored dead.
Today, FOX NEWS reported that Obama was reading from prepared notes when he endorsed building the Mosque at ground zero.
Still photos which accompanied several news reports didn’t show a teleprompter, so I assumed Obama was winging it. I thought Obama was speaking extemporaneously. That’s apparently not the case. Which, of course, only magnifies Obama’s insensitivity to the victims of Islamic terrorism.
Obama’s statement in support of Islam’s Monument to Terror was apparently a planned event, subject to discussion and the review of his advisers. What’s next, a beer summit for the underpants bomber?