It's Always Something
by digby
I'm beginning to miss George W. Bush. No, not because I think he was better than Obama, but because he was able to keep his lunatic fringe somewhat in line when it came to Muslim bashing.
Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.
[...]
Because of this subversive ideology, Muslims cannot claim religious freedom protections under the First Amendment
There you go. That makes me yearn for the day when they were only saying that people with a different skin color than "ours" want to govern themselves too.
Turns out that a big majority of Americans agree with them, at least as it pertains to the Manhattan cultural center. I wouldn't be surprised if they could muster a majority to say that Islam shouldn't be allowed in America before long. This country is just itching to have a fight.
Half of Americans think we should repeal the 14th amendment too, although once they find out that it's open to reinterpretation, then I suppose they'll be fine with keeping it just as long as we don't let the pregnant animals "swim across the river" and "drop" their young on our pristine shores.
So we have 60+ percent of Americans thinking that it's a good idea to ban a Muslim center near ground Zero and nearly half thinking we should deny babies born in the US an automatic right to citizensship. It would seem that our exceptionalism isn't all that exceptional. These are the same policies that have gotten "old Europe" into trouble -- not to mention civilizations going all the way to the beginning of civilizations -- so we're following a well worn path. But it's a shame. America is fucked up for a million reasons, but the idea that citizenship had nothing to do with your parentage was always one of the nicer ideals, however erratically it was practiced.
Normally I would think we could ride out this latest wave of nativism and racism, but there are two factors that make it more dangerous than usual. The first, of course, is the economy which looks like it's not going to recover smartly thus giving this impulse more oxygen than it might otherwise have. The second is that the right wing demagogues have an entire industry now devoted to creating and nurturing these wedge issues for political and financial gain. The culture warriors have just shifted their strategy away from "family values" to their other stand-by, "stop the boogeyman." It's all part of the same throwback tapestry, but different times require difference emphasis. We're officially in the "the foreigners and blacks are ruining everything" portion of the show.
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