Hey! "Experts," It's Called Democracy In Action

The Geek has taken the position that any legal or narrowly defined political effort to stop the Cordoba House community center, swimming pool, and mosque would only benefit the advocates of political Islam, which group includes the imam behind the "Ground Zero" project.

Simultaneously, the Geek has argued that politics in the largest sense, the coherent expression of a mass view that the proposed bit of triumphalism is unacceptable so near a place of American grief, American humiliation, and recovery would be a most excellent way to derail a horribly ill-advised project.

Not surprisingly, a portion of the monstrous regiment of "terrorism experts" have come out four square in favor of the proposition that opposition to the Great Community Center and Mosque will offer advantages beyond count to the proponents of political Islam, particularly those such as Anwar al-Awlaki, who favor violence in the name of Allah. These academic type analysts demonstrate the common occupational disease of the professorate and others of that ilk--a congenital lack of backbone. They are unwilling or constitutionally unable to see that there are limits to the old don't-offend-them-or-they-will-get-more-extreme.

Only academics and others like them--including members of the current administration--can really, really believe that appeasement works, that tossing t-bone steak to a wolf will make it a vegetarian. Such cringing hand-wringing, such giving in to the worst advice of naked fear may be appropriate in a faculty commons or around the smoothly polished table of a conference room, but it has no applicability in the real world.

Construction workers, the "hard hats" who had such a negative press during the Vietnam War given their habit of beating up on anti-war protesters and "hippies" in general, are contradicting the "experts" in an expression of coherent opinion, a form of democracy in action. The emergence of a grass roots effort based in large measure on the internet has been reported recently. The movement, if it grows, will prove the most effective way of abating the looming nuisance of the Cordoba House community/athletic/inter-faith center and mosque.

The movement is quite simply a boycott. The idea is that no construction workers will engage in building the Cordoba House project. Further, no supplier of necessary materials from steel and concrete to all the specialized widgets needed to make a building a reality will sell to the project.

Given the extraordinary hard times which currently afflict the construction industry with the concomitant high unemployment among construction workers, the very idea that the boycott would be proposed, let alone agreed to by an ever larger number of individuals and firms boggles the imagination. The concept taken together with the positive acceptance to date demonstrates that, despite the best efforts of the American hoi olligoi including the Smiley Guy In The Oval, patriotism is alive and well among the elite despised hoi polloi.

Refusing work in advance during a recession of the magnitude and duration of the current meltdown is not particularly rational. It is not an action taken in self-interest. Patriotism, the belief that the US and We the People are united not only in common values but a sense of common decency, demands that rational self-interest take a back seat compared to acting upon the outraged sense of decency and insulted values.

Patriotism like nationalism may be seen as reactionary hangovers from a past, more primitive time by academics, pundits, and many politicians. However, that view is quite obviously not shared by many within the faceless, nameless bunch collectively referred to as "We the People."

Some hard hats in the Big Apple have pointed in the right direction. It is not enough to oppose the insulting project with words. Effective action must be taken to convince imam Rauf and the others behind the project that they must relocate.

It is critical that the pundits, the academics, the politicians both understand and support the reality of the hard hat movement. It is not anti-Muslim. It is not "Islamophobic." It is not directed against the freedom that all who live in the US have to worship in the manner and place of their individual choice. It is not an artificial movement created for partisan political purpose.

The long and the short of the opposition to Cordoba House is simply one of location. The solution to the problem is very simple, quite easy to understand, and not at all difficult to achieve. If a hick historian in the backwoods of New Mexico can get it so also can the ever-so-sophisticated members of the American elite, so also can the imam, the imam's wife and all the others in the shadows of the Cordoba House Initiative.

Move the bloody thing a few blocks. Move it from the loom of 9/11.

The Geek Goes Off Topic--Sort Of

Because religion, or more accurately, sensitivities and sensibilities purportedly predicated upon a specific religious conviction, have become a predominant feature of both domestic and international politics, a decision by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has at least tangential relevance to the Geek's appraisals of foreign affairs and national security. The decision should be taken as part of the context surrounding the controversy over the "Ground Zero" mosque and community center.

In the instant case the Tenth Circuit ruled that fourteen crosses erected and maintained by a private group, the Utah Highway Patrol Association (UHPA), on state land constituting the verge of highways violate the Establishment Clause. While not marking graves as is the case with crosses or Stars of David on the final resting place of American service members, the intent of the UHPA was identical--the commemoration and honoring of individuals who were killed in the line of duty.

Five years ago a Texas based group, American Atheists, won their case in the district court. The crosses were found to be an explicit statement of support for Christianity on the part of the State of Utah. The crosses remained in place pending appeal. Now the crosses must go unless an appeal is made to the SCOTUS and the order of removal stayed.

In its ruling the Tenth Circuit held that there was a critical difference between crosses or other religious symbols on military graves in national cemeteries and those on the Utah highways. In the case of national cemeteries viewing crosses or other religious symbols is voluntary; you have got to go there to see them, while the highway bordering crosses are perforce inflicted upon all who pass. Thus, their existence was construed to place an official stamp of approval on both cross and the religion for which it is iconic.

This conclusion is a piece of blithering judicial idiocy. For generations, centuries, in American history and culture, the cross has been generally accepted as a sign of honored death--or even of death itself as witnessed by the use of the cross symbol to indicate date of death in both historical and genealogical writing. The use of the cross in this role for so long has served in a very real sense to denature it of purely religious significance.

The cross, in short, has profound cultural significance entirely apart of its more specialized application to a specific confession of faith. As such, no person, no matter how hostile to the idea of a deity, should take offense. No person, again without regard to the depth of that person's distaste for and disgust with any particular or all religions, can take genuine offense--unless, of course, that person is willing to admit of abysmal ignorance of American cultural symbols and their evolution.

In this decision the Tenth Circuit has continued the long and far from laudable judicial tradition of needlessly sticking a black robed finger in the eyes of Christians. Crosses to commemorate death, creches, or carols at Christmas or any number of other predominantly cultural--dare one write "secular"--symbols which served for decades as definers of the shared American experience have been heedlessly and baselessly heaved out of the public square. While it is completely justifiable and Constitutionally proper to preclude forcing the taxpayer to fund religious entities and activities, the same cannot be maintained regarding symbols which might have arisen from a specific religious context but have gained the amorphous status of cultural definer, part of the context which defines We the People as a specific nation, an identifiable "us."

The Tenth Circuit should have adopted a leave it alone stance in this case. Insofar as there can be any genuine controversy it exists in the political sphere--not the judicial one. The same is true of the "Ground Zero" mosque and community center.

The unwise, ill-advised, insensitive, rather arrogant action of the people behind the Cordoba House (to use the original and accurately supremest name) is not one which can be nor should be challenged in court. It is not even one which is amenable to settlement through electoral politics.

Rather the Cordoba House initiative demands address through politics of the largest sort--the politics, the power of public opinion. As the Geek has posted previously, any blocking of the "Ground Zero" mosque through judicial or formal political process would serve to benefit the aspirations of adherents of political Islam. That is an outcome which must be avoided.

However, the collective, negative view of the vast majority of Americans constitutes politics at the ultimate level. Public opinion can and should express outrage at the very idea of placing a swimming pool, auditorium, various other non-religious venues as well as a mosque in the metaphorical shadow of the Twin Towers. A very firm, collective, "NO," is not "Islamophobic," rather it is, like the crosses on Utah highways, a definer of that messy aggregation called "We the People."

The rejection of Cordoba House by Americans generally is not prejudice, nor is it an attempt to inhibit free exercise of anyone's faith. It is an effort, hopefully a successful one, to insist upon respect for American sensibilities, American grief, American loss, American humiliation and recovery. Symbols matter--so does their absence.