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Sat. Aug 14, 2010

Rights For All, Not Just The Ones You Like

After waiting for the local governmental bodies to make their decision on the building of the Cordoba House near the former site of the World Trade Center, the White House, currently occupied by someone who was a professor of constitutional law, finally spoke to the issue:

“I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground,” the president said in remarks prepared for the annual White House iftar, the sunset meal breaking the day’s fast.

But, he continued: “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”

NYTimes: Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site

There’s been a lot of hyperbole on the right, from Sarah Palin to John Boehner, Peter King and Newt Gingrich (though there was somewhat surprising support for Obama on Fox)

I think some visual perspective might be helpful. And maybe the added knowledge there have been mosques within mere blocks of WTC for decades.

But it is really very simple. The Constitution is not a series of rights and limitations on government that we uphold only when we like it.

I don’t like the KKK or neo-Nazi’s or white supremacists holding rallies in my state, but it is their constitutional right to do so.

I don’t like when people hyperventilate and call Obama a socialist, a communist, or compare him to Hitler (and I didn’t like it when the left did that to Bush, either), but it is their constitutional right to do so.

I don’t like when bloggers get together to rank “The 25 Worst Figures In American History” so that Jeffrey Dahmer, Eric Rudolph, and Timothy McVeigh rank far below Obama, Jimmy Carter, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt … but it is their constitutional right to do so.

And some may not like the idea of a group placing a mosque two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center, but it is their constitutional right to do so.

And when we talk about stripping a single right from one group, whether it is Muslims building a mosque, or giving children born in the US their citizenship, one can’t help but wonder … who’s next?

Your church? Your beliefs? Your rights?

Because then we’ve begun the unstoppable slide down the slippery slope to a place where your rights are guaranteed only if you are in the majority. And, further, to a place where your rights are only guaranteed if it doesn’t offend the government.

And then we’re not America anymore. We’re the Soviet Union.

And it can begin with one little step.