What do they mean by building a mosque in New York, and right down there at Ground Zero no less! Why we can’t have that! So what if we have the unalienable right to worship as we see fit, that don’t mean *they* can build a mosque right down there on Ground Zero. They are just spitting in our face by doing that. [/sarcasm]
This whole issue has been completely blown out of proportion by the news media and then, for some strange reason beyond my comprehension, the President made a statement about it on national TV so it has now become a political “hot potato”. Republicans are jumping all over it and Democrats are distancing themselves from it to the point that I saw a cartoon today showing a democrat getting money from an “Obama ATM” with a 10 foot pole.
From a political standpoint this is, at best, a local zoning issue. From a property rights standpoint the original owner has the right to transfer ownership to whomever he/she pleases and the new property owners have the right to use that property as they see fit. As “alleged” free men we have the unalienable right to worship, or not worship, how, when and where we wish. The Bill of Rights enshrined that right, it did not grant it but rather made clear that the government can’t (or at least shouldn’t be able to) do anything about it. Just like all the other rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. One of the very things that this country was founded on was the fact that would be no state sponsored religion, or state sponsored censorship of religion. Yet we have “patriotic” Americans that want to do that very thing, use the State to censor what types of religion are acceptable in any given area. Now, having said that, I think the folks that are wanting open the mosque/community center where they are opening it probably should have put a little more thought into where it was located. Kind of like the old saying of “Just because you can say something, don’t mean you should say something”. The real hypocrisy in all this is there are strip clubs and “adult” shops closer to Ground Zero than the proposed mosque. For some reason they don’t have a problem with lap dances, but have a problem with folks that pray on a mat.
