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Monday, February 20, 2012

The impertinence!

A reader writes:

Might it be worth mentioning that many of the same people concerned about the government's "war on religion" (in the contraceptive situation) were actually urging the government to halt construction of a Muslim community center only two years ago?

No, no, no. Different religion, so a totally different issue.



The comparison between a multi billion dollar Federal entitlement program and a local New York City zoning issue is excruciatingly painful.

I hope someone here can explain the difference to your readers.

@Yolanda - Yes, one is about the fundamental American value of Religious Liberty and the other is about health care for American women.

-- MrJM

I think this "War on Religion" theme is a backdoor avenue to bring back the "Obama is really a Muslim" drama. Santorum not-so-subtle inference Obama is forcing a separate theocracy. His press secretary kind of slipped yesterday when she said "radical Islamist policies." This really isn't about freedom of religion at all.

". . . many of the same people . . ." Does "A reader" have names to back up that contention? If not, it's just smoke.

Out of curiosity, could you cite who "many of the same people" are?

Or is this the lazy journalism that also uses the term "critics say" without saying who those critics are?

Um, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. See http://2012election.procon.org/view.answers.election.php?questionID=1718

How about Newt Gingrich?


Let me google that for you . . .

Let me google that for you . . .
How about Mitt Romney?

The quickest of google searches shows that Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Liz Cheney, John McCain, all opposed "Ground Zero Mosque." So did Republican pundits like Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol.

While it may be be a 100 pct overlap, It seems pretty fair to say that "many of the same people" who claim that Obama wages a "war on religion" felt pretty strongly that the "ground zero mosque" must be stopped.

Ahh, P.J., they're just politicians, who will say anything, and are not to be deeply trusted. Also, that's only three guys, and in my estimation, at least, three is well short of "many." Who else?

ZORN REPLY -- Dave, please, let's not even pretend that there isn't a significant correlation between those who were railing against the Mosque and those who are now railing about the "war on religion."

"Who else?"

How about most of the people voting for any of those three?

Dienne, how do you know? Have you interviewed a statistically significant sample of them?

For my part, I don't believe that BHO is waging a "war on religion," though I do believe that he's skating pretty close to the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Nor did I object to the "ground zero mosque," which, aside from not being at Ground Zero and not being a mosque, was aptly named. So, draw the Venn diagram, I'm not in the overlap, I'm not in either of the circles.

@ DaveB, how many makes "many" in your estimation? More than the nine (not three) people named above?

Eric, is there by any chance a "permalink" to the CoS discussion archive(s) on this topic? We can take a look at what some of the regular commenters had to say about this issue.

Pan, I'd just like to see statements like that accompanied by some numbers. Most useful would be a percentage; what per cent of people who didn't like the "ground zero mosque" now think that BHO is waging a "war on religion"? A few politicians, who will say anything, and pundits, who have to fill air time or column inches, and can't be bland, don't cut it. As johnnyruss points out, statements like this - "many of the same people;" "the vast majority of climate scientists;" and so on, ad nauseam, don't tell us much. How big is the overlap? How big a majority? Without the numbers, it's just smoke.

Does anyone else think using the shorthand "BHO" tips the hand of the person using it? To me, it conjures up statements about the Muslim-ness of his name, his questioned birth status, his questioned Christianity...

I mean - sure - it's 3 letters and maybe easier to write. But can't we at least pretend to neutrality instead of giving in full court press to the crazy?

BHO, GWB, LBJ, JFK, FDR. They're just the initials of the presidents, and used as shorthand since time immemorial. Bradley, methinks you doth protest too much.

ZORN REPLY -- I have given this topic its own thread here


Happy to oblige. Eric and I had a discussion on the topic where we mostly agreed. Excerpt below. (N.B. my reference to Greg Gutfeld's idea involved his plan to open a gay bar catering to Muslim men in the same neighborhood. "Suspicious Packages" was one of the suggested names.)

From "Obama, public opinion and the `Ground Zero' mosque" August 17, 2010.

Comment on August 19, 2010 ---
ZORN REPLY -- How's this? I think NEITHER ONE is a great idea. Putting the mosque there strikes me as extra provocative and therefore not likely to send the right message. And, good Lord, picketing and protesting and boycotting a peaceful religious group over the bad deeds of their violently extreme co-religionists is rotten idea and makes the protesters look hateful and malign.

GREG J REPLY -- Certainly protesting and boycotting a peaceful religious group is not a great idea. I'm on board with you there. However, as I agree with you that this particular mosque is being put where it is in order to be provocative, I have no problem with peaceful demonstrations against it and social condemnation of it.

ZORN REPLY -- I'm picturing it in my mind....picketers surrounding a Christian church in the Arab world ... and how the heads at Fox News would explode with indignation.

GREG J REPLY -- We're actually in close agreement here. We've established that, legally speaking, neither of us have a problem with the location of the mosque in question. Legally speaking, I have no problem with orderly social disapproval either. Our opinion on whether the mosque should be placed there appears to be the same; we agree that it is extra provocative and it sends the wrong message. Our opinion on whether a demonstration of social disapproval should occur appears to be (only) slightly different. You don't think it's a good idea and I think an idea like Greg Gutfeld's would be appropriate as a counter-message. I'm utterly indifferent to protests, etc. (In general, I think that protests are stupid because they tend to draw a strange crowd).

If a new Christian church was built in the Arab world (save for a few places), my head would explode in disbelief, which means I wouldn't even get to see the protests.

ZORN REPLY -- Perhaps we come full circle, then, when I say that I believe strongly in the right of anyone who wishes to protest the facility, but I rather wish they wouldn't and think it would be counterproductive. I see nothing inconsistent in this view (or, for the most part, in your views)

All of the opposition to the "Ground Zero mosque was political posturing & pandering to the wing-nuts.
It was never going to get built because the plan to spent over $100 million for that thing was insane overreaching & not planned in the real world.
It being not just in NYC, but in Lower Manhattan would also have probably doubled the price as the NY mob would have moved in for as much as they could scam. I'd bet the final price tag would end up over $200 million!
They didn't dare let the Saudis or some other foreign based group give them the money, so they would've had to ask for tons of small contributions from American Muslims, who also weren't going to give them any money out of fear of being tarred by the contribution if the news came out.

I'm in agreement wity DaveB and GregJ on both issues, both now and in the past.

DaveB - what do you suppose the overlap is between tree-hugging environmentalists and bra-burning feminists? Would you say it's fair to say that there are "many" people who fall into that overlap?

Greg J.,

I expected to you to be a voice of decency on this issue, but I seem to recall a few others who didn't seem to have much of a problem with a vague zone around lower Manhattan where some Americans would be entitled to First Amendment protection, but not others, based solely on their religion. They also wanted to disregard the local zoning board, which IIRC approved this building, which was actually a community center that included a mosque.

Dienne, you should never use the word "overlap" in the same sentence with "bra-burning feminists"! :-) (sorry, couldn't resist!)

And I do agree with you, by the way!

LizH - I suppose I should have been careful about saying "fall into" too, shouldn't I? ;-)

Yes, you do! Thanks for the chuckles, Dienne!

Kip, IIRC, it wasn't even a mosque, with minarets and all. It was a prayer room. Observant Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day, and the idea was to give them a quiet and out-of-the way place to do that.

Talk about a tempest in a teapot.

DaveB - yes, it was a tempest in a teapot, but Republicans were significantly more likely to be stirring that tempest than Democrats. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/11/overwhelming-majority-oppose-mosque-near-ground-zero/

Republicans are also significantly more likely to be stirring the employer-mandated contraception teapot too.

--In the Arab world, they kill Christians, as happened in Egypt.

OK, DaveB, since you're so fond of numbers, give us one. I'll ask you again: How many people in this context would qualify as "many" in your estimation?

In the Christian world, they kill A-rabs, as happens every day in Afghanistan, Iraq and several other Muslim countries.

And, yes, I know not all Muslims are Arabs and vice versa. Most Americans, I'd venture to say, however, don't.

"In the Arab world, they kill Christians"

And Muslim Iraqis kill Muslim Iraqis
and for, much of the 20th Century, Irish Christians killed Irish Christians.

And such observations are trite.

-- MrJM

Pan, I'm not going to give you a number. My point is that if somebody says "many," the burden of proof is on them to show that there is in fact a correlation. Otherwise, it's just lazy reporting, and may or may not be true. I've spent my career as an engineer; I can't count the number of times that a general impression has been disproved when one runs the numbers.

"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is a meager and unsatisfactory kind. It may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter be."

--William Thompson, Lord Kelvin.

ZORN REPLY -- I trust I have cleaned up your complaint about how I fixed my typo (as I fix others typos). As I trust that by now you're used to the idea that I don't want to turn this blog into a neener-neener-neener about typos, spelling mistakes, punctuation and things of that nature. I do go back and fix things written by me and others on the fly.

@DaveB - Huh?

-- MrJM

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