sisu

One person's assimilation is another's appropriation

"Indigenous leaders from across the world requested that the UN outlaw cultural appropriation." Elizabeth Warren aka Fauxcahontas was unavailable for comment.

"Mosaicist vs assimilationist: On the multiculti side, there were smug, self-congratulatory sermons scolding melting-pot types like ourselves for xenophobic/racist views we do not hold," we blogged back in February of 2014, quoting a holier-than-thou Daily Beast opinionator:

At this point, we shouldn’t be shocked by the intolerance of some towards immigrants and other cultures. 

As our Shakesperaean actress sis always says, nothing changes but the date. In the wake of the latest iterations of the national "debate," we've narrowed the question down to fewer than 140 characters:

One person's #Assimilation is another's #Appropriation. Discuss

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) June 17, 2017

That appropriation bit is but the latest iteration of the Gramscian March through the institutions, and Sara Hoyt has been on the case forever. This from her November 2015 "Prepare to be Assimilated":

Humans are tribal, and living in a multi-ethnic society doesn’t make you less tribal. This is why people keep looking for racists under their bed, because you know, it’s baked in.

And from just the other day:

The problem is the left has bought into Marxism and its pseudo-scientific lies. And the system despite many past failures to predict anything, purports to predict our emergence into a paradisaical “perfect communist state”. Everything, from leftist “science” to leftist “art” (that is to say the establishment versions of those, since our establishment is solid left) is designed to hasten the coming of that ah, eschatological result. According to Marxist/leftist/progressive exegesis, of course.

Because their minds were not trained in flexibility and they’re something of a cult, they are having a nervous breakdown.

In cults, this usually ends up in koolaid. In nations, too, when a paradigm (yes, sorry, but it’s the right word) breaks in a way perceived as sudden.

As we blogged back in February of 2005 in our post "Bloggers are 'cracking, popping, drilling and peeling their victims open":

The leftist utopian dream was doomed from the start because it denied the economic logic of nature and human nature. The long-repressed voices of opposition in a free society, now ringing loud and clear through talk radio, cable TV and -- of course -- the blogosphere, will force the left to rethink its arguments or go extinct.

His major coup "was getting women to smoke"

"With no phone to call for help, I used my bobsled push training to break out," quipped Olympian Johnny Quinn this morning, adding his voice to the latest Twitter trending topic, #SochiProblems. We love Quinn's All-American, can-do (pun intended) solution to post-Soviet lavatory logistical problems being encoutered by athletes and visitors alike at the winter Olympics sponsored by former KGB officer Vladimir Putin's Russia.

We're no fan of moral-equivalency guru Noam Chomsky's. But what he had to say a few years back about public relations as propaganda in fancy dress rings true and sheds light on the recent controversy over that Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad with its dreamy cinematography of doe-eyed children singing "America the Beautiful" in seven languages. All sugary innocence. Why did it make us feel as though the good folks at Coke were rubbing our noses in it? Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart explains:

The ad instantly provoked a deeply polarized response on social media, with conservatives ripping the ad for promoting multiculturalism with a deeply patriotic anthem. 

On the multiculti side, there were smug, self-congratulatory sermons scolding melting-pot types like ourselves for xenophobic/racist views we do not hold:

At this point, we shouldn’t be shocked by the intolerance of some towards immigrants and other cultures.  But who could’ve predicted the outrage we saw over the Coca-Cola commercial that aired during last night’s Super Bowl?!

Mosaicist vs assimilationist:

And to be honest, the notion of “E pluribus unum” is more relevant today than it was in 1782 because of our nation’s evolving demographics…

In the years to come, it will be a learning experience for all [of] us as our nation evolves into an even more beautiful mosaic.

Eye of the beholder, but even among allies there is dispute. When we learned this morning that Coke had belatedly added E pluribus unum to the opening frames of the commercial, we twittered our delight. But some on our side of the aisle were calling the whole thing a distraction, protesting that "making a fuss" over the Coke ad was distracting social-media voices from their primary task of holding Republican leaders' feet to the fire over Obama & Company's "comprehensive immigration" campaign:

I'm all for adding #EPluribusUnum to anything but I can't see making a fuss about a coke ad in the first place @SissyWillis @Drudge_Report

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Far more important to keep the pressure on @SpeakerBoehner than on coke in terms of the issue @mtranquilnight @SissyWillis @DRUDGE_REPORT

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) February 8, 2014

Which brings us back to Chomsky and Edward Bernays and the title of this post. Chomsky writes of Bernays:

His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn't smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.

Similarly, those charming hyphenated-American children are trying to get LoFo (low information) Super Bowl viewers to absorb Coke's amnesty agenda:

The controversy surrounding Coca-Cola's Super Bowl ad has focused public attention on the company's pro-amnesty agenda. With the majority of its revenue coming from its international business, the company has long been known for its globalist rather than American world view.

As Andrew Breitbart famously tried to teach conservatives, culture is upstream of politics.

Update:

@mtranquilnight Me too. Tried to broach the subject among friends the other day, and no one was interested :)@DaTechGuyblog

— Sissy Willis (@SissyWillis) February 8, 2014

Olympics coverage: "Abide with me," but don't tell the great unwashed.

"Our program is tailored for the U.S. television audience. It’s a credit to [London Olympics opening ceremony producer] Danny Boyle that it required so little editing,” an NBC Sports spokesperson smarmily responded to critics of the network's cutting out — for their American audience — a tribute to the London terrorism victims of 2005 ("Abide with me" above).

"Get used to stuff like this," writes USA Today Sports reporter Michael Hiestand, explaining why CBS decided to skip the UK's Olympic tribute to victims of the Jihadist London bombings of Summer '05 and go straight for the ratings jugular:

Which is more likely to encourage U.S.viewers to stick around for your feel-good TV show: chit-chat between mega-celebs Ryan Seacrest and Michael Phelps or a tribute to victims of an overseas terrorist attack that happened seven years ago?

"An overseas terrorist attack that happened seven years ago"? How yesterday is that? Not to mention the International Olympic Committee's decision to bow in dhimmitude to our Islamist masters and pretend the first shot across our bow back in ancient history — the horrific Munich massacre of 1972 — never happened.

 

We're obviously not CBS Sports' target audience — much less an acolyte of the Church of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil of Islam — but thanks to Mediaite we've got the story:

During the portion of the performance that was not broadcast in the U.S., the BBC announcer asks the audience to observe a moment of silence. “The excitement of that moment in Singapore seven years ago when England won the games was tempered the next day with sorrow from the events of July 7th that year,” says the BBC announcer. “A wall of remembrance for those no longer here to share in this event.”

The poignant "Abide with me," sung by Emeli Sande in the Olympic tribute, is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte, most often sung to William Henry Monk's tune "Eventide":

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me …

Thou on my head in early youth didst smile,
And though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Have yourself a merry little blogiversary: Now we are eight.

Little Kitteh, above, trips the light fantastic in our Christmas card, now in production. The message inside: "Let your heart be light." Next year all our troubles will be out of sight?

In celebration of our blog's eighth anniversary tomorrow, December 12, we proudly republish our very first post ever, "The tidings that dare not speak their name." It features our Christmas Card of that year, an image of the homestead festooned with the lights fantastic, and a fearless, politically incorrect challenge to those who would wilfully misrepresent the Establishment Clause of our Constitution's First Amendment. An early stirring of the Tea Party spirit that would rise up to disintermediate the powers that be via the internet?

"Chelsea-by-the-Sea at Christmastime"

December 12, 2003. We wish you a Merry Christmas!

As we wrote last year, that was it, a blogpost of exactly 68 characters that could hold its own today in the fast-moving, 140-or-fewer-characters world of the Twittersphere. We were delighted to note that Glenn Reynolds has more or less declared victory in the war this Army of Davids was waging back then:

I GUESS THE "WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS" HAS BEEN LOST, THEN: Obama lights the National Christmas Tree, says ‘Merry Christmas’ three times.

Not that there aren't still some air-headed holdouts.

Update: Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit — the fellow who named the blogosphere — sends "Best Wishes To An OG Blogger:

Happy Anniversary, Sissy!

You’ve made a difference!

Update II: Fun and funny Chris Muir of Day by Day in the comments:

We need wonderful writer young'uns like you! ;)

Good tidings we bring to you and your kin

In celebration of our blog's seventh anniversary day after tomorrow, December 12, we proudly republish our very first post ever, "The tidings that dare not speak their name." It features our Christmas Card of that year, an image of the homestead festooned with the lights fantastic, and a fearless, politically incorrect challenge to those who would wilfully misrepresent the Establishment Clause of our Constitution's First Amendment. An early stirring of the Tea Party spirit that would rise up to disintermediate the powers that be via the internet?

"Chelsea-by-the-Sea at Christmastime"

We wish you a Merry Christmas!

That was it, a blogpost of exactly 68 characters that could hold its own today in the fast-moving, 140-or-fewer-characters world of the Twittersphere. We were delighted to note that Glenn Reynolds has more or less declared victory in the war this Army of Davids was waging back then:

I GUESS THE "WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS" HAS BEEN LOST, THEN: Obama lights the National Christmas Tree, says ‘Merry Christmas’ three times.

Not that there aren't still some air-headed holdouts.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Amazing Grace: Libertarians in bed with Gary L. Bauer?

"Kindness effects more than severity" is the moral of the story of Aesop's Fable "The Wind and the Sun, exemplified in our own day in the coming together without compromise of social and fiscal conservatives (see below for more) in the fight to reignite the lights of the Shining City. Above, a retelling of the ancient tale in The Baby's Own Aesop (verse fables by W.J. Linton) 1887. Illustrations by Walter Crane.

Gary L. Bauer, President of American Values — "Your Voice to Help Protect Life, Marriage, Famly, Faith and Freedom" — is following us on Twitter, an unlikely bedfellow for this Darwinian Libertarian. [See our post of last summer, "The opiate of the dopamine-dependent blogger," for what we mean by that.] We've always shied away from what we took to be social conservatives' impulse to impose upon the rest of us their family values — whether or not we agreed with them, it wasn't government's job to force entry into our private moral universe — a kind of obverse of the left's impulse to impose their politically correct moral-equivalence "values" upon the rest of us. But we're seeing Mr. Bauer & Company with new eyes in the morning light of the Third Great Awakening that is the Tea Party movement, as Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote last February in what we called "one of Instapundit's great distillations of what's 'happening here'":

America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature. Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it’s different. It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble: It’s America’s politicians and parties. They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent. So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Back to our strange new bedfellow, Gary L. Bauer, who opens our eyes further with an intriguing thought experiment in his latest Human Events column, "GOP Establishment, RIP?:

Imagine if an inside-the-Beltway consultant met with national Republican leaders and presented an innovative strategy to develop a new political movement that would add millions of voters to the Republican coalition. And what if that consultant assured those GOP leaders that their party would not have to alter its views in order to capture and retain those voters.

He's talking, of course, about the Tea Party itself:

The Tea Party movement has attracted millions of new voters (as well as millions of formerly disaffected Republican voters) to the GOP. And all that Tea Party members ask of the GOP is that it acts according to its own principles by supporting lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and less government. So why are many in the Republican establishment recoiling in horror at the most powerful new force politics has seen in at least a decade? Perhaps it is because these self-appointed leaders are beginning to realize that a fundamental change to the party’s power structure may cause their own political demise.

The Republican establishment’s response to Christine O’Donnell’s surprise win in the Delaware Senate GOP primary was symptomatic of the change. Instead of embracing O’Donnell, the initial reaction of some Republican figures was to impugn her character and write off her chances of victory. This is a page from the same playbook that's been used to marginalize social conservatives.

Not that social and fiscal cons will ever be soulmates. It's a matter of emphasis. O'Donnell herself captured the momentary Zeitgeist — to a standing ovation! — at the Value Voters Summit in Washington Saturday, where Gary L. Bauer was a featured speaker:

But Ms. O'Donnell … has already said social issues won't top her agenda if she wins in November, despite her prior work speaking against premarital sex and masturbation. Instead, the first thing she wants to do is repeal the new health-care law and fend off cap-and-trade climate legislation.

Ms. O'Donnell's appearance …  put a spotlight on the challenge facing social conservatives, prominent in GOP politics earlier in the decade, as they try to hitch themselves to the fiscal insurgents of 2010. They may [or may not!] be ideological soulmates, but that doesn't mean they'd govern the same way.

"My sense of the average tea party-endorsed candidate this year is that what motivates them is their concern over spending and the national debt," said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. "If a gay-marriage ban came before Congress, they'd probably vote for it, but that's not what motivates them."

Update: Instalanche!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

A momentary flash of insight into that great abyss, the "progressive" mind

"I don't think you know it yet, but you have won," Glenn Beck tells viewers this afternoon, understandably gloating a bit at the collectivist navel-gazing left's continuing incomprehension of this "predominantly white" "Restoring America" thing that went off without a hitch — not a scrap of litter left behind for others to pick up — on Saturday (above). "They believe in the Liberation Theology of oppressor and victim. You don't. You don't have self-pity," he added. "The top GOP leaders in Washington need to prove that they are worthy of it. The Third Great Awakening is what it's all about, and you are living history."

"From within her effete elitist bubble Arianna Huffington preaches open-mindedness," we twittered awhile ago in a momentary flash of insight into that great abyss, the "progressive" mind. The words of Yale President Rick Levin's welcome speech to her daughter's class of incoming freshmen —  boilerplate to this tragic-view tea partier's tempered ears — had touched something deep within the dense utopian thicket of Mrs. Huffington's narrative-spinning apparatus, leading her to conflate Glenn Beck and President Obama in a grand unified theory about "the Hunger for Purpose in Times of Transition." Apparently unaware that "diversity" on campus is code for color of skin rather than content of character, she gushed:

Levin pointed out how the students "come from all 50 states and 58 nations" and urged them (and their parents) to go "entirely outside the range of your past experience," and "stretch yourself." "If the friends you make here are exclusively those who come from backgrounds just like your own and went to high schools just like your own," he said, "you will have forfeited half the value of a Yale education. Seek out friends with different histories and different interests; you will find that you learn the most from the people least like you."

As long as you toe the pc party line, of course. Diversity of world views need not apply. From there the HuffPo poobah-ette stumbled unwittingly into an embryonic if inchoate premonition of subsidiarian federalism:

"It's becoming clearer by the day that whatever 'good life' the country is going to have in the future, it's not going to be delivered by consumption — and, in the foreseeable future, it is unlikely to be delivered by Washington. The new "good life" will have to be "reasoned together" by all of us and forged together in our own communities and in our own families. As Obama said in 2006, "solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds."

That's where the rest of the country — Obama's "backwoods" tribes of bitter losers who "cling to guns or religion … as a way to explain their frustrations" — have been forever. You just weren't listening, Arianna & Company, including the Northeast Corridor fuddy-duddies of the establishment GOP, who still don't seem to get it. That's why it's a revelation for Arianna to have once been blind but now she sees:

"The challenge is to imagine a politics that takes moral and spiritual questions seriously," says Sandel, "but brings them to bear on broad economic and civic concerns, not only on sex and abortion." Justice, he writes, "is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

The Democrats' message? "FU America"

"Peace be upon you, screamed the headline in Arabic on Drudge this morning, linking to the story of a political war of words that refused to go peacefully into the Friday-afternoon bad-news dump": Mosque controversy swirls around Obama." Drudge is known for what Ann Althouse calls his "devious subliminal attacks," artful juxtapositions of words and images. By chance we caught a "Change It Back" t-shirt ad in our screengrab (above), adding insult to self-inflicted injury. The subheads tell the story: "Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site … Controversy swells," "O FALLS TO NEW LOW AT GALLUP DAILY," "FED OFFICIAL WARNS OF 'DANGEROUS GAMBLE." "I'm dizzy from the shadenfreude," wrote twitterbuddy Kevin Whalen.

"The message? FU America," twittered Kevin Whalen — aka Pundit Review of Boston's WRKO — early morning in response to a House Democratic leadership aide's unwitting revelation of our political establishment's cravenness, responding to a Washington Post reporter's question about President Obama's waffling remarks regarding the appropriateness of what is now known in twitterspeak as #gzm (Ground Zero Mosque):

It's just another day off message. There've been a lot of days off message.

Fun finding from the Site Meter stats: A TripAdvisor New York City forum on "Ground Zero Noise" veers off into reality with two things of note (above): 1. An Aussie's total cluelessness about the meaning of the expression "Ground Zero" in the hearts and minds of everyday Americans like ourselves: "I think the term stops people being able to move on" and 2. A link to our own "Obama: 'Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground, but.'"

The great unexamined issue of our time — how to acknowledge and engage in a reasoned debate about the role of Islam in the scourge of Islamist terrorism — is finally on the table thanks to #gzm (see above), yet our myopic friends on the left side of the aisle, those "vulnerable" Democrats looking towards November and not beyond, are obsessed with their President's being "off message." Our own Liberty Pundits Mama Grizzly Melissa Clouthier cleanses the palate of all who would continue to swallow the politically correct swill being peddled by the "religion of peace" snake-oil salesmen. A couple of excerpts, and then read the whole thing:

This is basic human psychology. Thank God the vast majority of Americans get it, while the Smarty Pants Set, including the President, once again talk in theory as if a real building a real block away from a real graveyard doesn’t exist.

Americans are not anti-Islam, but maybe they should be. They live and work with Muslims peacefully. They are pleased that Muslim women and children are getting educated and freed from the evil of totalitarian domination. They are happy that Saddam Hussein isn’t around to torture, kill and bury whole communities for some sadistic reason.

And the GOP is no more anti-Islam than the American people – which is to say they aren’t. They are being rational, though. They understand what’s happening in New York and finally, they’re fighting back against the political taboos – willing to stand and be outraged at the outrageous.

As for Islam. I suspect that the GOP and American people aren’t anti-Islam because they don’t know enough history.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Ground Zero Mosque: It's not easy being green

Central Park, Manhattan, USA.

"Parks are for the public. Parks are fun. Parks are green. And parks are not controversial," gushes Ibrahim Abdul-Matin in a Daily Beast "Exclusive: Ground Zero Mosque Goes Green," telling the online publication's readership — card-carrying members of Angelo Codevilla's "America's Ruling Class" — what they want to hear. According to his DB blurb, Ibrahim is "author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet," as well as "an environmental policy consultant" who has worked for something called "Interfaith Leaders for Environmental Justice." Buzzword alert alarm! Here's the Taqiyya — the Qur'an-sanctioned practice of misdirecting the Infidel's attention away from the faithful's insidious mission of imposing Shari'ah law on "the planet" — they're peddling:

Amid the uproar over the Cordoba House project, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin reveals that it will be the country's first certified "green mosque," named Park51 to connect faith and the environment.

Court of the Lions, The Alhambra, Spain.

Isn't that special? Ibrahim Abdul-Matin paints pretty pictures for our friends on the left side of the aisle who would accuse us of bigotry for fighting back against the grave robbers of Ground Zero:

In the midst of the drama around the mosque that’s being erected two blocks from Ground Zero, a few details have been left out that provide some clarity as to the purpose of this project. Specifically, the project will be the country’s first certified “green mosque,” in full compliance with stringent LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, which is why organizers have named the project Park51, rather than the oft-cited "Cordoba House."

The mosque (which is more accurately a community center with a prayer space) is located on Park Place in Downtown Manhattan, but the new name also reflects a desire to emphasize the intricate (though widely unknown) connections between Islamic teachings and environmentalism. For example, Islam calls upon people to be "stewards of the Earth" and to treat all things in nature as sacred.

All things in nature except the Infidel, not to mention the female of the species, of whatever faith. Why can't we all just get along? Al "Sex-Crazed Poodle" Gore was unavailable for comment.

Update: Sunday morning, trending on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Ground Zero cry from the heart: "It means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace"

"As if anticipating the left's insidious attempts to steal their fire — by turning their sacred precinct into an anti-American bully pulpit — the angry gods of Ground Zero blew up a sandstorm of warning on the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks," we wrote in our June 2005 post "The grave robbers of Ground Zero." A leftist "tolerance" museum was on the table then. Now it's a left-sanctioned "Islamic center" that sticks in the craw of a lot of our fellow Americans, who sense yet another insidious attempt by our "betters" to hijack what we now recognize as "the narrative." (Merlin-Net Photo)

"I have always been moved by the site; it means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace," writes Neda Blourchi, a Muslim who lost her mother to Jihadist terrorism on 9/11 in a WaPo op ed:

I was born in pre-revolutionary Iran. My family led a largely secular existence — I did not attend a religious school, I never wore a headscarf but for us, as for anyone there, Islam was part of our heritage, our culture, our entire lives. Though I have nothing but contempt for the fanaticism that propelled the terrorists to carry out their murderous attacks on Sept. 11, I still have great respect for the faith. Yet, I worry that the construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site would not promote tolerance or understanding; I fear it would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims around the world.

 

"Looks like a surgical covering leaving only the part to be operated upon exposed: Eyes the windows to the soul," we twittered Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs this afternoon in response to our Sistah Grizzly's latest post "Cultural Jihad: Burka Couture Coming to a Department Store Near You."

Head cheerleader for the p.c. kumbaya narrative Mayor Michael Bloomberg is having none of it:

We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.

Oh, what a slippery slope we trod when first we practice to defraud. Well, it rhymed, but of course it's not fraud so much as self-delusion, the stock-in-trade of our fellow Americans on the "unconstrained vision" side of the aisle. Evan Sayet got it just right in his Big Hollywood debut back in January of 2009, as we blogged in our post "The look of love":

The “culture war” that we hear so much about is, to borrow Thomas Sowell’s phrase, a “conflict of visions.” Visions, Sowell explains, go deeper than mere policy – in fact they are the font of where we stand on the issues – and they are founded on some of the most basic and fundamental beliefs the individual holds about the nature of man and, in turn, the role and purpose of government, family, religion and all other influential forces that society has evolved. Sowell called the conflicting visions the “Constrained” and the “Unconstrained” and offered Jean Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith as primary examples of the visions in conflict [as we are forever blogging here] …

Sowell recognizes that, at its most basic level, this conflict of visions revolves around what one believes to be man’s innate nature. Is it, as the Neo-Liberal believes, that man is born good and then corrupted by the institutions of society or, do the Conservatives have it right and man is born with a dual and conflicting nature — capable of good and evil and everything in between — requiring cultural forces to help him tamp down the darker side and cultivate the good within?

In case you weren't sure what side of the narrative to come down upon, Time gives you a few linguistic nudges: Mayor Bloomberg "spoke passionately" in support of a proposed mosque near Ground Zero, while his predecessor Rudy Giuliani "claimed" the project would be a "desecration." Time goes on to call dissidence "Islamophobia." Journolisticoid proselytizer Mehdi Hasan at the UK's Guardian picks up the ball and runs with it:

Outraged rightwing protesters have spent several months trying to block the construction of what they call the Ground Zero mosque, claiming it is an "insult" to the victims and a "victory" for the terrorists.

Ignorance and bigotry abounds. Cordoba House is not a mosque but a cultural centre, which will include a prayer area, sports facilities, theatre and restaurant. The aim of the project is to promote "integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion … a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a centre of learning, art and culture". Nor is it being built at Ground Zero. The proposed site is two blocks to the north.

Why can't we all just get along?

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Trending on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.