Worrisome: The Ground Zero Mosque Nontroversy

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:25:33 -0400

The cycles being spent on this manufactured issue shows only that we really have bigger issues.

A few days ago I returned to Ann Arbor from a couple weeks of backpacking at Mt. Rainier and working in Seattle. For most of that time, I was, by choice, disconnected from the daily news cycle. But when I did reconnect, I was blasted from every side—TV, radio, Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere—with the "Ground Zero Mosque" story. It was (and still is) everywhere. I figured this must be something big, so I started looking into it.

Boy, was I disappointed. Not for the reasons that Newt, Sarah, Rush, and Glen are upset (or at least pretending to be upset), but because we're turning into a nation of idiots. Of course, not everyone has stopped thinking yet, but the trend is disconcerting. Even normally rational Sam Harris came down on the wrong side of this one.

I certainly appreciate both Christopher Hitchens' and Hendrik Hertzberg's responses more than Harris's. The fact of the matter is, the "Ground Zero Mosque" is not a ground zero mosque. It is not a "Victory Mosque" or any of that other Gingrich/Palin/Limbaugh/Beck/paranoid-kook rubbish. It is a legal, private project by U.S. citizens.

There should be no place in our society for special treatment that is quite literally based on "intolerant and bigoted" views, even if it would make some people feel a little better. As Thomas Jefferson rightly pointed out, "A society that trades a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither."

And that does not make me an Islam apologist—I'm actually (very, very) far from that. I just hate seeing Idiot America rising. I have genuine concern for the toll that ignorance, if not outright idiocy, is taking on this country. Jefferson was also spot on when he said, "If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and what never will be." (Incidentally, the Texas state school board, just this year, removed that rabble rouser Jefferson, who coined the term "separation between church and state" from the standard high school curriculum.)

We, as a nation, continue our steady march into ignorance. This whole mosque "nontroversy" is the latest in an ever increasing list of examples of Idiot America rising. It's worrisome.

FAS Talk | F. Andy Seidl

Worrisome: The Ground Zero Mosque Nontroversy