More From That Time Poll: We've Decided It's Objectively "Hate Speech" To Oppose The Victory Mosque

Hate speech is on the rise, Time Magazine asserts.

How do we know? Well, geeze-- 61% of the American public thinks the Ground Zero Victory Mosque is not an attempt to further dialogue and understanding. (Actually, it's higher than that-- Time is lowballing.)

Or even if it (doubtfully) began as such an attempt, that attempt failed, the builders now know this, but are going full-speed-ahead anyway because at the end of the day this isn't about dialogue or bridge building -- it's about advertising the power of Islam next to a crater which stands in silent testimony to all the bad elements of the power of Islam.

But this is of course an exhibit for the prosecution in Time Magazine's Case Against America.

Although the American strain of Islamophobia lacks some of the traditional elements of religious persecution — there’s no sign that violence against Muslims is on the rise, for instance — there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that hate speech against Muslims and Islam is growing both more widespread and more heated. Meanwhile, a new TIME-Abt SRBI poll found that 46% of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence against nonbelievers. Only 37% know a Muslim American. Overall, 61% oppose the Park51 project, while just 26% are in favor of it. Just 23% say it would be a symbol of religious tolerance, while 44% say it would be an insult to those who died on 9/11.

How is any of that even arguably "anecdotal evidence" of "hate speech against Muslims?" If I disagree with a Muslim, I'm committing "hate speech" against him?

Your MFM at work: If you disagree with us, and you won't buckle under our relentless lecturing and hectoring, you're engaged in "hate speech."

Also: America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, notes that enraging 70% of the public at large, 63% of New Yorkers, and most of the 9/11 families is a pretty strange way to "foster dialogue" and "build bridges," isn't it?

On that score, Zionist conspirator Jonah Goldberg notes:

[E]very time there is an Islamic terrorist attack, we’re told that we must brace for yet another anti-Muslim backlash, which never arrives.

Indeed, listening to all of this talk about “crowd” politics from liberals these days, you get the distinct impression that there are a lot of 20-something liberal bloggers, MSNBC talk-show hosts, and newspaper editorial writers who honestly believe that they are not only better than the American public but that they are in fact the duly anointed conscience of this, our embarrassingly backward and bigoted nation. They must stand ever vigilant, lest America’s deep reservoirs of hatred and bigotry burst their levees and spill out through the sluices of the Republican Party.

How does this river of hate manifest itself? The supposedly anti-Muslim 70 percent of Americans who don’t like the idea of building the Cordoba House near Ground Zero mostly also believe the owners have the right to do it if they can’t be persuaded otherwise. Wow, that’s some crackdown on Muslims.

In any decent society, tolerance must work both ways. If the majority is expected to show respect for a minority, the minority must also show some tolerance for the values of the majority. I’m no strict majoritarian – one with right on his side is the majority as far as I’m concerned. But this isn’t a clear-cut issue of right and wrong. It’s more complicated than that. It’s about deference and decency and common sense. And one of the things common sense should tell us is that it is not only unfair but terribly ill-advised to portray 7 out of 10 Americans as bigots when they are anything but.

More thoughts from Goldberg in another column.

Oh, and Time Magazine, even, has the GOP ahead by 7 among likely voters.

Oh: Check out this editorial from the Seattle Times to make all these points for me...

THE grotesque exploitation by mostly Republican leaders of plans for an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan is harmful to the party and insults the fundamental values of this nation.

Bigoted ranting about a Ground Zero mosque at the site of the World Trade Center attack is a willful distortion of the proposal and New York City geography. The facts are less important to GOP leaders than the political advantage they hope their calculated assaults will generate.

Etc.

These guys throw more hate speech at Americans than Americans throw at Muslims. Yes I realize some Muslims are American.) Can you imagine any professional publication -- or even an unprofessional blog like this one -- denigrating Muslims in those terms in an editorial?

No, it's not done.

But we're the "haters."

Thanks to Andrew's Dad.

posted by Ace at 01:52 PM

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