House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have finally spoken a few words of wisdom. She asserted that “any controversy surrounding the proposed mosque at Ground Zero should be regarded as a local issue.”
If you follow my writings, it will be no surprise that I concur wholeheartedly.
This is not to deny that there are national feelings regarding the issue. Obviously, there are. These should be taken into serious consideration. But given that the usual suspects are espousing the primacy of “universal human rights,” religious rights and pure tolerance over and above the primacy of community, local autonomy and the right to democratic self-determination, I must agree with Pelosi. The decision is to do “what is right” with the interests of the community as primary. The integrity of community is the root and core of American spiritual identity.
For me, solving this issue is not simply a way to defuse the matter and prevent a national religious conflict as it is undoubtedly for Obama & Co. It is a way to assert the primacy of democracy. The present dilemma points to the impotence of big, centralized government and professional politicians in solving most of the nation’s ills. The country is too big and too diverse for the managerial Liberals to administer one-dimensional bureaucratic-legalistic solutions to issues of communal, ethical and political import.
The Liberal apologists for the mass nation-state, both Republican and Democrat needless to say, want to preserve the “unity” which is really based on a national somnambulism and false value system by asserting not only “rights” but also Law and the US Constitution as the criterion for a solution. Bloomberg and Obama “have both expressed support for the right of developers to construct the religious center near where the World Trade Center stood.” Note they said “developers” and not the putative Muslim religious “community.”
Obama said explicitly, "As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country."... "That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances…..This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable." Obama continued, as reported in the Huffington Post, that although Ground Zero is “hallowed ground” the “proper way to honor it was to apply American values and our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us – and that way of life, that quintessentially American creed, stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”
Obama, however, diminishes the value of this "hallowed ground" by failing to see that Ground Zero is a sacred site, for Americans in general and New Yorkers in particular, whose spiritual value is at least as great as the Muslim interest in their Mosque. A looming Muslim mosque throws a shadow on that hallowed ground. If it were possible to always separate the authentic Muslims from the terrorists it might be different. If it were possible to take all people at their word, it might be different. But that is not the case in an age of absolute warfare in the form of terrorism.
Again according to Huffington Post reporting, and along lines similar to that taken by Obama, “NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has been a strong supporter of the mosque, welcomed Obama’s words as a “clarion defense of the freedom of religion.” Bloomberg had the temerity to reduce the outcry of the people to mere "popular sentiment." Such popular sentiment he forgets is the lifeblood of democracy. Sentiment is not mere 'sentimentality.' It is felt value of that which is sacred, constitutive of identity and worth dying for.
Entering the highly charged election-year debate, Obama surely knew that his words would not only make headlines but be heard by Muslims worldwide. The president has made it a point to reach out to the global Muslim community and ambassadors and officials from numerous Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.“ It seems Obama, coloring this controversy as an indisputable and incontrovertible 'religious freedom' issue, has failed to take into account the value of the democracy for which thousands of American soldiers are dying.
The gist of this pro-Mosque rhetoric is summed up by Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee when said that even if the mosque is built America will not come to an end. Dean called for a compromise without really being remotely clear what that looked like. Yet the clue to his real interest is in this “so what” attitude. Dean like Obama and the big business barons are interested only in “American unity” meaning American quietism, passive acceptance of centralist rule from Washington, the belief in the big stick of “universal human rights” and the resolutional power of “pure tolerance.” For what purpose: stable business conditions for globalist development.
The fact is, however, America is not unified, should not be unified and has not entered into a golden era of harmonious post-partisanism, any more than its revolutionary history has come to an end despite the ideological writings of such as Francis Fukuyama. The centralist Liberals(neo-Liberals,managerial Liberals) are interested in one thing primarily: American unity. But what this means is not any real diversified unity based especially in vibrant robust organic communities where true social individuality may be spawned. Obama’s abstract, lock-step “unity” is the homogenized unity of the mass nation-state where citizens are self-alienated individuals being stripped of cultural and political substance of their own making. They are being denied educationally the intellectual substance and voice which would render their opinions as important and incisive as those of Obama, Bloomberg , Dean and the rest of the super-community of New Class political professionals.
Washington's Liberal Democratic “freedom” is the kind that imposes any and every condition that furthers the economic and political interests of big money, governmental power and corporatism while strangling the freedom of democratic choice. Obama's freedom excludes the concrete freedom of cultural self-determination and democratic choice, that is, the political freedom which is the real “American Creed” and “core value” that make America what it is historically and in principal--not to mention theoretically from the standpoint of the “neo-populist Federalism” which I have been advocating in this blog journal.
Obama’s “unity” imposes an abstract equality upon our citizens and peoples in the interest of leveling out the real, concrete differences that are the source and cause of the populist politics that are surfacing as we speak and may yet help save our democracy, community and authentic federalism in America. Liberal Democratic equality really means that no one has the right to determine values that are primary, exclusive and self-determinative. Liberal equality legally forces the tolerance of any value or way of life no matter how much it compromises our way of life and no matter whether we democratically reject that way of life and other values.
Let the people of New York City decide this issue. And this does not mean, as Bloomberg pontificates, “the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.” Bloomberg accentuates his position finally with: “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.” However, if such religious freedom displaces and devalues democracy, then we are setting are self up for a kind of superiority of religious relativism which law and the military will not in the end be able to control.
Yes, so when, the ideology of constitutional or universal human “rights” and “freedom” doesn’t work, clobber the people with “laws” of private property, suspect ‘local laws and ordinances’ and bring in the bureaucrats, lawyers and local sell-outs who want to profit from the “Muslim community” trucking in millions of dollars to NYC.
No, there must be a referendum on this issue and let the people speak. Yes, let’s debate the issue and let’s let democracy prevail. But let the people’s democracy decide, not the bought-and-paid-for institutionalized government that serves the interests of big business. Let the people work out this dangerously sticky issue of cultural, religious and political conflict as truly American political practice would have it. If not, what’s next, sending it to the Supreme Court? That would be the most ridiculous of political fiascos, not to mention power plays that the bureaucratic centralist elitists might pull off since sending the Florida results of the Bush-Gore election to the Supreme Court for final “decision.”
No let’s not let the people speak. Let us unequivocally demand that the people speak, debate, think, criticize and act according to their popular will and purpose. Yes, the people could be wrong. But why should we think the professional politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and technocrats cannot be wrong. This issue is not a matter of scientific, legal or managerial specialization that the “experts” can objectively resolve. This matter is precisely a question of values, feelings, purposes of community sanctity and real political/democratic choice. This matter is preeminently about the “sentiments” that Bloomberg derides and ridicules in his dry, smug dismissal of the voice and community integrity of the people.
Nationally, let us let all communities independently decide how they wish to live their lives, what values are paramount within different communities and who stands authentically for the future of the American polity. Let us not be trumped by legalist trickery, the power of globalist interests and manipulations of mass communications attempting to shape a “unified” consciousness of a slavishly “useful America,” an America whose citizens impotently succumb to group-think and are willing to accept the selling out of America, the fighting of meaningless wars and the demagoguery of a self-serving political class whose “values” are tucked away in secret Swiss bank accounts alongside their Muslim New Class compatriots.
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