Personally, I'd like to see the ground zero mosque built on Michael Moore. But we can't always get what we want.
Moore's rationale for this stunning display of moral incoherence: He wants to help Muslims take back their religion from extremists. "I believe in an America that says to the world that we are a loving and generous people, and if a bunch of murderers steal your religion from you and use it as their excuse to kill 3,000 souls, then I want to help you get your religion back. And I want to put it at the spot where it was stolen from you."
Let's stop for a moment and look beyond the bombastic rhetoric. Moore's logic goes something like this. A man breaks into your home and kills your family, while carrying a copy of Al Gore's soporific DVD, "An Inconvenient Truth." He's clearly perverting the intent of "An Inconvenient Truth," which is to put people into a coma; instead he's using the Gorefest as an excuse to kill people. After the funeral for your family, you come home to find Michael Moore and Al Gore on your doorstep, insisting that they should be able to erect a display case for Al Gore's Oscar in your living room. Moore explains that since your home was the site of the movie's perversion, in order to destroy misperceptions about global warming, Gore has a right to use your home for his agenda.
If that makes sense to you, you've been frontally lobotomized with a chain saw.
But it makes sense to Moore and to other liberals, including those behind the ground zero mosque, who posted Moore's article on their Twitter accounts. It makes sense to them because in their view, it is America's responsibility to help radical Muslims build bridges to non-Muslims.
It isn't.
That doesn't mean we should go around burning Qurans. That's wrong and stupid and counterproductive, largely because there are true moderate Muslims around the world who believe that Shariah law should not be enforced, that Israel has a right to exist, and that goats are for milking rather than shtupping in the mountains of Tora Bora. We need to do our best to reach out to those moderate Muslims and help them overcome their populous radical brethren.
But at the same time, we don't need to be lectured about our intolerance for Islam when we object to radical terror-supporting Muslims building a mosque on the bodies of those murdered by radical terror-supporting Muslims. Our objections to the ground zero mosque aren't based on xenophobic notions about brown people or baseless ideas about the nature of all Muslims. Our objections to the ground zero mosque are simple: We will not submit to a group of people who agree with terrorists in ideology, share funders with terrorists, and seek to use a site of Islamist victory as a site for the worship of an Islamist god.
Liberals simply don't understand the Muslim world. They're under the bizarre misimpression that if a Muslim isn't actively strapping a bomb to his chest, he's a "moderate." By that standard, Imam Rauf -- the man behind the ground zero mosque -- is moderate, despite the fact that he refuses to condemn Hamas, associates with terrorist funders and anti-Semites, and believes that United States foreign policy was responsible for 9/11.
The truth is that there are three groups of Muslims: those who are terrorists; those who agree with terrorists and support them with money, rhetoric or time; and those who are truly moderate. Only group three is worth cultivating. And group three would never have the gall to build a mosque at ground zero, let alone preach to the American public about their supposed racism for opposing such a mosque.
As for the argument that opposition to the ground zero mosque is a "recruitment tool" for al-Qaida (Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer made the similar argument that one moron burning a Quran acts as a jihadi advertisement), perhaps liberals forget that short skirts do not cause rape. In other words, Islamists are bad guys whether we choose to kowtow to them or whether we choose to stand up to them. We might as well stand up to them.
Ground zero still holds the remains of 1,100 unidentifiable bodies -- men, women, children burned to death and incinerated in the collapse of the World Trade Centers. Moore doesn't deserve to be buried within 1,000 miles of those victims and heroes. But the radical Muslims of whom Michael Moore is so fond would gladly bury him with them. Their only problem is finding a steam shovel big enough.
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