Sunday, August 22, 2010

American Delusion: Going Mad in Herds

Posted by Will Moredock on Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 4:01 AM

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd calls out the right wing fearmongers for their insane Islamophobia. If you don't believe the right wing has lost its collective mind, take a look at some of the responses to this post.

Read the full text of Dowd's New York Times column here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22dowd.html?src=mv

The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown, with the right spreading fear and disinformation that is amplified by the poisonous echo chamber that is the modern media environment.

The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy. The unbottled anger and suspicion concerning ground zero show that many Americans haven’t flushed the trauma of 9/11 out of their systems — making them easy prey for fearmongers.

Many people still have a confused view of Muslims, and the president seems unable to help navigate the country through its Islamophobia.

It is a prejudice stoked by Rush Limbaugh, who mocks “Imam Obama” as “America’s first Muslim president,” and by the evangelist Franklin Graham, who bizarrely told CNN’s John King: “I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim. His father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father, like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother.”

Graham added: “The teaching of Islam is to hate the Jew, to hate the Christian, to kill them. Their goal is world domination.”

A poll last week by the Pew Research Center tracked a strange spike in the number of Americans who believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Obama is a Muslim. And even the ones who don’t think he’s a Muslim don’t necessarily believe he’s a Christian.

The percentage of Americans who now believe that our Christian president is a Muslim has risen to 18 percent. It was 12 percent when Obama ran for president and 11 percent after his inauguration.

Just as some Americans once feared that John Fitzgerald Kennedy (who was a Catholic) would build a tunnel to Rome, now some fear that Barack Hussein Obama (whose name sounds scary) will build a tunnel to Mecca.

In “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” a history of such national follies as England’s South Sea Bubble and Holland’s Tulip Frenzy, the Scottish historian Charles Mackay observed: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

He also concluded that people are more prone to believe the “Wondrously False” than the “Wondrously True.”

“Of all the offspring of time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome,” Mackay wrote, adding that “a misdirected zeal in matters of religion” befogs the truth most grievously.

You can have an opinion on the New York mosque, for or against. But there aren’t two sides to the question of whether Obama is a Muslim.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

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Comments (6)

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Maureen Dowd is a wack far left propagadist, that's willing to take Rush out of context to prove her point!

Polls show 60-70% disagree with the "Trophy-mosque" if Rush has that much control over the population BHO would never had been elected...

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,…

Maybe it's just the fact that some people have educated themselves to the Radicals behind this mosque.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rauf-r…

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Posted by screddawg on August 22, 2010 at 8:39 AM

I am a person who believes in facts.Fact is-President Obama bowed down to kiss the hand of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia;when one kisses the hand of Arab royalty it means that you are; in essence,a person who serves him.Fact is-President Obama did nothing to extradite a murdering ,cold-blooded Libyan terrorist to the U.S.A man who blew an American passenger jet out of the sky to return home without nary a protest till after the fact.He is a liar if he was not aware of the pending release beforehand.fact is- he is in support of a mosque to be built near the site of ground zero in the name of tolerance.Considering that in Islam;mosques are usually erected in lands that they have conquered,it is pretty clear to me that our Commander in chief is not only a muslim sympathizer;he is most likely a muslim himself.Anyone who thinks otherwise with all the facts at hand must be brain dead or lacks the ability to come to conclusions on their own.I am just going by the facts....

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Posted by Motoman on August 22, 2010 at 11:03 AM

WHEN IT COMES TO SUPPORTING THE ISLAMIC FAITH IN THIS COUNTRY, THERE ARE NO SHORTAGES OF MO DAWDS OR MOREDOCKS. I HAVE LIVED AND WORKED IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOR ALMOST A DECADE AND I HAVE SEEN THE PRACTICE OF ISLAM FIRST HAND. IT IS NOT A SUPPORTABLE "RELIGION" IF YOU CAN EVEN DEFINE IT AS SUCH. EITHER END OF AN EXTREME IS USELESS. ISLAM IS AN INSIDIOUS FORCE THAT CREEPS IN SLOWLY FROM ALL SIDES AND SCREAMS THAT IT IS A VICTIM, UNTIL THE POWER IS GAINED AND AFTER THAT IT CREATES VICTIMS.

THE RADICAL RIGHT IN THIS COUNTRY IS THE OTHER EXTREME, PLAYING INTO THE HAND THAT ISLAM IS DEALING HERE. THE LEFT IS AIDING AND ABETTING THEIR OWN DOWNFALL BECAUSE IF ISLAM GETS A FIRM FOOTHOLD HERE, THEY WILL BE THE FIRST TO GO. THERE IS NO MIDDLE OF THE ROAD FOR EITHER THE LEFT OR THE RIGHT AND ISLAM IS DIVIDING AND CONQUERING.

TWO POINTS I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE, ONE, LET'S PUT A NATIVITY SCENE ON THE SOUTH LAWN OF THE WHITE HOUSE THIS CHRISTMAS. CAN'T DO IT YOU SAY, WELL SO MUCH FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. WHICH BY THE WAY IS NOT THE POINT OF CONTENTION HERE. BUT AS ALWAYS, THE LIBERAL, MORE EVOLVED AMONG US KEEP SCREAMING THAT IT IS. ABSOLUTELY DEAF THESE PEOPLE LATCH ON TO THAT ARGUMENT AND SHOUT EVERYBODY ELSE DOWN WITH IT. TOLERANCE IS A ONE WAY STREET AND NO ONE IS ASKING THE MUSLIMS TO BE TOLERANT, WHY BECAUSE THEY ARE THE VICTIMS HERE.

I AM JUST ASKING THE QUESTION, WHERE ARE THE MODERATE MUSLIMS? I AM NOT SAYING THEY DONT EXIST, JUST WHERE ARE THEY? THE ONLY MUSLIMS THAT HAVE SAID ANYTHING LIVE IN CANADA.

IF YOU THINK THAT THERE ARE MODERATE MUSLIMS IN THIS COUNTRY OR ANYWHERE ELSE, PLEASE FIND THEM AND ASK THEM TO SPEAK OUT FOR TOLERANCE TOWARD CHRISTIANS AND JEWS, FOR THE FAMILIES OF 9/11 OR ANY INFIDEL. I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN HEARING FROM THEM.

CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF AND ASSUMPTION IN THIS COUNTRY THERE ARE NOT TWO SETS OF RULES FOR ISLAM. THE RADICAL PRACTICTIONERS OF THE FAITH ARE JUST THE LEADING EDGE OF THE SWORD.

STOP COMPARING FAR RIGHT RADICALS IN THIS COUNTRY TO ISLAMIC TERRORISTS. IN THE USA WHEN THERE IS A RADICAL CHRISTIAN GROUP THAT INSISTS THEY DO MURDER AND MAYHEM IN THE NAME OF WHATEVER RELIGIOUS BELIEFS THEY CAN CONJURE UP, WE PUT A STOP TO IT, THEY ARE REVILED AND SOUGHT OUT, NOT TO VICTIMIZE THEM BUT TO PROSECUTE THEM. WE CAST A LIGHT ON THE ACTIVITIES AND JAIL THE LEADERS BECAUSE THIS CAN NOT BE TOLERATED HERE. JUSTLY SO.

WE NEED TO CAST A LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM, RHETORIC IS NOT THE ANSWER. BAD RHETORIC IS EVEN WORSE. I HAVE NO PERSONAL ANIMOSITY TOWARD ANY RELIGION, AS LONG AS MY LIFE IS NOT AT STAKE. FOR ME THERE ARE THREE SIMPLE RULES THAT LET ME KNOW WHERE I STAND WITH THE ISLAMIC RELIGION.

1) IF YOU ARE NOT MUSLIM YOU ARE AN INFIDEL.
2) ISLAM TEACHES THAT ALL INFIDELS WILL BE CONVERTED, SUBJUGATED OR KILLED.
3) RE-READ RULE NUMBER 1

HAVE A NICE DAY.

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Posted by PELICAN427 on August 23, 2010 at 8:06 AM

1) It's not a mosque, it's a community center that happens to have a prayer area.

2) It's not at ground zero. It's two blocks from ground zero.

So we see that the whole "ground zero mosque" narrative is fundamentally dishonest.

It's not about "sacred ground" or the location of the mosque. It's about bigotry plain and simple. Even those people who act more enlightened and say "well obviously they have the right to build there, but it's in bad taste" are operating under the bigoted assumption that these sufi muslims somehow bear responsibility for the action of the 9/11 hijackers. It's like saying that it's "insensitive" to open a German restaurant in NYC, because lots of jews live there.

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Posted by Sark on August 23, 2010 at 10:25 AM

Will was right; the comments prove his point. Wow.

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Posted by RickS. on August 23, 2010 at 11:14 AM

The main person behind building this community center is a Sufi- for all the people who don't understand that they are the mystical, aritistic, peaceful side of islam that people don't hear about. It is the attempt at the moderates of Islam to have their voice heard in their repudiation of the radical factions of their religion. That being said, I have also travelled and spend a great amount of time in Muslim countries and seen first hand what happens when there is no seperation of church and state. It turns any religion into a stifling, repressive force that is at the whim of any politician to translate what they want it to say. If I have to see a strip club, retail shops, and christian churches all surrounding ground zero, a community center and a mosque will hardly be a distraction. Especially if there are no minuets calling me to prayer.

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Posted by gigilicious on August 23, 2010 at 1:28 PM
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