The churches I grew up in have remarkable Veterans Day celebrations. They are like Father's Day, Mother's Day and Valentine's Day all rolled into one. I love those celebrations. The church choir sings "God Bless America," and the preacher or deacon calls out the various branches of military service: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines... And old soldiers stand.
They stand with pride and a sense of duty that has never left them since the day they stormed the beaches of Normandy, fought for inches of earth on the Korean peninsula or patrolled the Mekong in Southeast Asia. They did it for freedom, for America, for you and me. You look in their eyes and realize they would do it again.
Newt Gingrich does these patriotic American war veterans -- and every American, really -- a gross disservice when he says a mosque should not be built in New York City because it would be too close to Ground Zero and it would be for the Muslim religion, which he associates in its totality with terrorism. Then he says we should not allow such a religious institution be built on American soil because Muslim nations don't allow Christian and Jewish churches and synagogues on their soil. (Read: Gingrich calls for America to be like Saudi Arabia.)
Basically, in his sprint back to power, Gingrich shreds the constitution both in its enshrined verbiage and practical application. The bedrock freedom of religious liberty is encapsulated into our most sacred national documents such as our constitution. And the belief and practice has been dearly held by each subsequent generation of God-fearing Americans.
We're really left no doubt that a World-War-II-era Newt Gingrich would have been quick to arrest and place Japanese Americans in internment camps because, well, they looked like the enemy. Courage and hope and resolve made us the victors in World War II, not those sad moments when the constitution was trampled on out of fear and a sense of helplessness.
But it's fear and helplessness that Gingrich embraces in his belief that America should simply shred the constitution and begin denying the religious freedom for which our fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers sacrificed and fought over our history. Mercy, we have sons and daughters, sisters and brothers fighting for those very freedoms in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.
Yet Gingrich says we should act like those very nations and deny religious freedom.
Reagan once borrowed from St. Augustine, calling America a "shining city on a hill" that demonstrates for the world how democracy works and empowers people through freedom, trust and dialogue. Gingrich, in one fell swoop of political desire, dethrones Reagan's imagery and calls on Americans to follow the example of other nations that do not hold to a belief in religious freedom.
What did our ancestors fight for, Mr. Gingrich? What are our friends and family fighting for right now?
The Golden Rule is essential to all of us. We all hold it as a belief, a philosophy, to strive for. It is both simple and profound in reminding us to treat others as we would want to be treated.
As an Evangelical, I hold the Golden Rule high as a core tenet of my faith. Yet Gingrich trashes that, too. In saying that we should not allow a mosque to be built because other nations don't allow churches or synagogues built on their soil, Gingrich is really saying that we should treat others as they treat us. Don't lead; for God's sake, follow. Don't seek the moral and ethical high ground; seek a get-even-often-and-quick strategy that only Machiavelli could love.
Mr. Gingrich is simply wrong. And he must know how he spits in the face of those who have defended our constitution on the battlefields of war, with so many precious lives taken away from us in defense of our liberties. He must know that a "shining city on a hill" does not follow examples of others but rather leads and sets examples.
We are Americans. Gingrich is calling us to be less.
And, Gingrich must know that turning the Golden Rule on its head is a house built on the shifting sand. It cannot stand. My faith and my confidence in that faith and in my nation compel me to seek the truest meaning of the Golden Rule.
Gingrich's desire to rise back to power, maybe even through an attempted run for the White House, makes me more deeply consider FDR's admonishment that the "only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
We can't allow our fears to overtake our pursuit of a more perfect union.
We can't allow our fears to undermine the very freedoms we seek to uphold.
And we certainly can't allow political fear-mongers like Newt Gingrich to divide us -- not only from our national tenets and our faith but also from each other.
We have nothing to fear when we act like Americans and embrace living up to the wonderful and lofty tenets, goals and freedoms we have always sought. Destroying our freedoms by seeking to emulate the rules of other nations for the sake of protecting the values of our own nation is ridiculous.
Shame on you, Mr. Gingrich.
Follow Burns Strider on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BStrider
Newt Gingrich: Mosque at Ground Zero Shows Hypocrisy - Associated ...
Newt Gingrich Mosque - The Daily Beast
My Take: No conservatism in Gingrich's attack on the ground zero ...
Think Progress » Gingrich Calls NYC Mosque Supporters 'Hostile To ...
Gingrich Blasts Cuomo Over Proposed WTC Mosque - NY1
Newt Gingrich: 'No Mosque, No Self Deception, No Surrender'!
Newt Gingrich: No Ground Zero Mosque Until Saudis Allow Churches
Gingrich Denounces Ground Zero Mosque - Politics - The Atlantic
I don't doubt for a second that the noots of the nation, who are indeed a powerful bunch, would resort to totalitarian methods to get their Saturday Evening Post America back. Ahhhh yesss, the good ole' days, when things were wonderful for the noots and s_cked for pretty much everyone else.
Now you know why he and his ilk wax nostalgic for those good old days.
**Gingrich for president of 80% of the people!**
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.
"What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias...'
Needs no comment!
Thanks all.
BTW what wife are you cheating on now?
Fair is fair, members of all religions attacked us, so all should be banned. Got it.
audio: Thom Hartmann, caller Caleb in Portland
Caleb: .......1959, research by Russell Church, looking at empathy in rats. Are you familiar with this thing? Seminal research. It turns out you train a rat to press a little lever to get food, OK? So the little rat's pressing a lever but it notices in the cage next to it, every time it presses the lever, it shocks another rat.
Hartmann: I am familiar with that research.
Caleb: So then the rats don't do that—because they have empathy.
Hartmann:That's right.The rats would actually starve themselves rather than shock another rat.Yes.
Caleb: If rats can learn this, can't Republicans learn this?
Hartmann: [laughter] I'm not sure!
Caleb: I know!
Hartmann: [laughing] I'm just not sure, Caleb…
sums up the repub of today - that a rat, no less, has more morals than a repub exemplifies the bleakness of the 'values' they pretend
And, yes fascism is the fashion in Newt's comeback.
So Gingrich is telling these members of the US military that they should not be allowed to build a church in the country that they are fighting to defend? The very same country whose Constitution states in the very first amendment in the collection of amendments known as the Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Most interesting.
Although estimates of the Muslim-American population vary widely, the most conservative estimate I've come across is 1.3 million in 2008 from the American Religious Identification Survey 2008.
So Gingrich is telling 1.3 million Americans that they should not be allowed to build churches in this country?
To judge a religion and all of its followers by the acts of a few would logically lead to the condemnation of Christianity as well as all religions or to all adherents of no religion.
Either our Constitution and our laws apply equally to all Americans or they apply to no one.
Agreed.
Will you agree that it is fair to judge a religion by its laws?
Umdat al-salik, o9.0:
"Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and it is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion. And it is the lesser jihad. As for the greater jihad, it is spiritual warfare against the lower self (nafs), which is why the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said as he was returning from jihad,
“We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.â€
The scriptural basis for jihad, prior to scholarly consensus (def: b7) is such Koranic verses as:
(1) “Fighting is prescribed for you†(Koran 2:216);
(2) “Slay them wherever you find them†(Koran 4:89);
(3) “Fight the idolators utterly†(Koran 9:36);
And such hadiths as the one related by Bukhari and Muslim […]
This is the law of Islam as of 1991.
"Freedom of religion" means "You can have your choice of evangelical mega-churches".
You've said it well. Gingrich is selling America short to raise his short-term political capital.
To all those that say religion is inconsequential or a series of lies: perhaps; yet religious freedom should also be the right live religion-free.
Strider, however, mostly argues against the "Fear and helplessness that Gingrich embraces."
Lack of fear and treating others well don't need to be attached solely to a religion.
It is still the truth.
My version of a hero is a person willing to risk life and limb protecting equal rights for everyone, not just what benefits them personally, or their particular interest in promoting a religion.
I don't discredit anyone's service to country, but we can please stop assigning heroic motives to each and every one?
This attitude is the stuff of popular fiction and political rhetoric, it's the not the stuff of truth. And until we're willing to face why people are so willing to serve the whims of gov't, we're not being honest.