Scott Stantis, a cartoonist I usually have a problem with because he's consistently snotty about anything that smacks of liberalism, actually hit the nail on the head with today's cartoon. It shows the text of the First Amendment, as if carved on a stone monument, with a spray-painted asterisk after the sentence, "Congress shall make no law respecting the extablishment of religion." The spray-painted footnote says, "except at Ground Zero."
Much of the debate over the proposed mosque and community center near Ground Zero invokes emotion: The opponents ask, “How must the families of the victims feel?” The supporters counter with, “How would you feel if a Catholic parish was treated this way ..?” And on and on. Many of the arguments resonate with most of us, and (according to the surveys I’ve seen) most of us feel mixed emotions and dissonance about this. Despite all the rhetoric, people don’t seem to be able to avoid talking about how they feel. Even very intelligent and reasonable essays (like this one in the New York Times) seem caught up in trying to come up with a way of looking at it that you can feel okay about.
But we have a Constitution for a very good reason: so that the way people feel at any given moment does not lead to decisions that have no consistency nor rationale.
However you feel about the mosque, Ground Zero, your views of Islamic beliefs, your impressions of someone’s perceived (or presumed) sympathies toward terrorists, or any other value judgment, none of it matters. That’s because we have a First Amendment that has stood the test of 200 years. And it has endured precisely because it is unequivocal and clear. We as a nation do not permit ourselves to attempt to dictate or restrict the practice of religion. Period.
If you don’t like that, then your only recourse is to try to assemble the majority needed to repeal it. But if that were to happen, we would lose a huge part of what makes this country what it is, and makes it worth fighting for. A visit to Iran might give you an education about what to expect were that to happen.
On another (and much lighter) note, it has been pointed out (also in the New York Times) that Obama and the Democrats have adopted the "car in the ditch" metaphor with special enthusiasm. In case you haven't heard this line of rhetoric, he likens the economy to a car that the previous administration drove off the road and into a ditch... "And now they want the keys back."
He has embellished this image with references to the mud that the car is stuck in, how muddy the current administration is getting trying to free it, and how even his daughter will need to show how she can drive before she'll be trusted with the keys. The one that gave me a laugh was when he mentioned that the Republicans were "...standing around with their Slurpees" while the Democrats toil to pull this vehicle out.
Shortly after that, I passed a Seven-Eleven with a window display of various Slurpee cups with WWE wrestlers on them, with the line, "Collect them all." I thought, what a great idea!
So here's a free idea for the Democrats. With the permission of the Slurpee folks, of course: "Right Wing Windbag Slurpee Cups." I can picture them now... Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, "Dr" Laura Schlessinger, Ann Coulter, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and what the heck, Russell Pearce, because even though he's only a state windbag, he unleashes a lot of stink into the national discourse.
The smaller size Slurpees could feature each of the Republicans who's delivered the Saturday rebuttals to Obama's radio addresses. That could be the "small Republican windbag" collection.
If we give credit to Ed Kilgore of Progressive Fix, we could expand this (throw in Ben Stein and Steve Forbes, for instance) and call the whole thing the "Teabags, Windbags, and Moneybags" Slurpee Collection. Collect them all!
Remember, I thought of it first.
