King's Hearings Worth a Tweet, not a Speech

At the climax of the film, The King's Speech, I held my breath with the rest of the packed audience and hoped to God that history was kind to King George VI. His sudden ascension from the dutiful stuttering brother to the noble King who led Britain through World War II was one worth watching. Rep. Peter King's ascension is another story.

Today, another kind of "King" is ascending to make his mark on the annals of history. But his mark will only merit ballistic blogs and twittering tweets. My tweet read: "@lisasharper: Peter King's anti-Muslim hearing unites Long Islanders, Republicans, Christians to Dennis Kearney and Joseph McCarthy legacy. #kinghearings"

Dennis Kearney's political posturing and racist rhetoric led to the 1877 Chinese Exclusion Act and Joseph McCarthy's 1954 guilt-by-association anti-commie campaign led Americans through their own political version of the Spanish Inquisition. Kearney and McCarthy fashioned some of the darkest days in American history. They led us away from our values -- away from our ideals. Kearney and McCarthy stoked the embers of fear until they became a bonfire that consumed the soul of America, leaving only destruction, alienation, and crushed images of God in their wake. Now it seems Peter King is hell-bent on leading us into darkness again.

The most shameful part of this anti-Muslim American melodrama is King's Long Island constituents, his party, and those who share his Roman Catholic Christian faith are being forced to partake of the legacy of King's like-minded historical players. History will look back on this moment with a tsk-tsk and a waving finger and with all the flying blogs and tweets King won't be the only one implicated. People from Long Island will be reminded; they elected him. Republicans will be reminded; they did not censure him. And Christians will be reminded; they sat silent and let their spiritual brother lead the country away from God and into darkness.

And what does darkness look like this time around? It looks like Rep. King looking Jesus in the face and saying "No" to his command to "Love your neighbor." (Luke 10:27-28) National security is a genuine concern, but if King really wanted to strengthen national security he would take the advice of national security experts that warn against targeting a single ethnic or religious group for examination. That tactic only weakens us in the end. Better to broaden the scope of the hearings to focus on the effects of radicalization on American security in general or King could sharpen the focus to examine how Al Qaeda recruits in the U.S. Either of these would be worthy investigations, but King's middle ground of ethnic and religious suspicion leads only to confusion, prejudice, and more fertile soil for terrorist recruitment.

Darkness also looks like Rep. King listening to Jesus say, "I am the truth" (John 14:6) and then embracing lies. King has said the Muslim community is sympathetic to radical Islam and does not cooperate with law enforcement. Not true. American Muslims have been America's first and best defense against Islamic terrorist activity. Many Muslim-Americans migrated half-way across the world to flee from repressive extremist governments. They love America. They love what America stands for and they are committed to the safety of their new homeland. To boot, Islamic mosques are proven deterrents to extremist activities.

Thus, the annals of history might record King's hearings through the tweets they inspired. Here are a few:

• @TheMuslimGuy: @UncleRush @npr2way LA County Sheriff Lee Baca testifies that Muslims helped foil 7 out of last 10 terrorist plots #kinghearings


• @ACLU: Rep. Dan Lungren (CA-R) compares investigating American Muslims to investigating Nazi war criminals! #kinghearings #muac


• @NancyPelosi: Responsible policies are rooted in facts, fairness & unending commitment to rights & liberties of all Americans #kinghearings


• @washingtonpost The Washington Post: Rep. Dingell: I kept picture of McCarthy on wall so I knew what it was that I did not want to do or be http://wapo.st/eWb1yY #KingHearings.

Amen!

 

 

 

Follow Lisa Sharon Harper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lisasharper

Comments

[de-meme-ing]

06:14 PM on 03/11/2011

I consider these hearing valuable and necessary. They are what I call an "intervention" if taken in the right direction. Democrats can assist that direction, if they choose, or they can sabotage the opportunity these hearings potentially hold, as can republicans.

Extremism not checked gives birth to terrorism. Think of abusive husbands for example.

Of late I have come to recognize that the extremism and terrorism that the world is not unlike what is found in individual families who suffer from drug and alcohole addictions. What is occurring world wide is simply the same disease the individual family experiences, writ large. Denial enables. Family members all become enablers of one sort or another.

If one were to study that family they would see the same tactics are used by the extremist terrorists as is used by the addict in the family. Families are forced to walk on egg shells for fear of engaging or enraging the addict. Family members often turn on each other in desperate attempts to control their environment, to no avail, when the addict reigns.

I don't think that terrorism is going to go away, and I think we are foolish to think it will. It's hasn't yet, and is ever on the rise.

Finding the source of oppression, and not it's scapegoat, is the road to recovery in addictions, catering to the addict is not. Blaming republicans, pretending to be the teetotaler, is disengenuous at best.

[Cindbird]

06:55 AM on 03/11/2011

These hearing are nothing more than an attempt to reignite the fear and anger of 9/11 before the 2012 elections. Rep. King is trying to make muslims the outsiders and by association President Obama. It's a political gambit to make people afraid to vote for President Obama. And he's going to "radicalize" a lot of young muslims who will rightly see that they are under attack by the very government they thought would protect them. Rep. King is doing more damage than he will ever know. And what about muslims outside America? He's giving a huge recruiting tool to Al Qaeda. He's refusing to see that. He just wants to throw his weight around and in doing so puts us in more danger. Great way to run the Committee for Homeland Security. Make us less secure just to prove you have some political power.

[marind]

11:38 AM on 03/11/2011

More like The Kingfish (Hughie Long) - but without the public works projects or help for the working classes.

I've been in a lot of Muslim countries, and for 40 years have disliked Muslim culture because of how it treats women. So I'm no kumbaya liberal over Muslims. But these hearings are just plain wrong wrong wrong. Targeting an "outside" group is nothing more than fear-mongering at its most blatant.

Focus on terrorists if you must. But on Muslims as a group??? Outrageous. What if the focus were on American Catholics? Or Asian American (oh - been there, done that).

Demonizing an entire group is the first tool of tyranny. In 5 years will we be saying "When they came for the Muslims I didn't protest because I wasn't a Muslim......."?