The Deplorable Newt Gingrich

ndm

The post by Ross Douthat was typically sloppy. The basic idea of the two Americas was interesting but Douthat was far too kind on the nativist strand that was and is more devoted to exclusion than inclusion.

There is a long and tawdry history of hostility behind that exlusion and Douthat ignores that history because in the end he comes out as a nativist. Of course, he doesn't want to tar himself with the sins of the nativists - the continuing poor treatment of blacks, the historic hostility to the Irish, the appalling treatment of Chinese immigrants, the internment of Japanese Americans, and so on. To give nativists credit for modern America in the face of that history is surely a "give everyone a gold star moment."

If Muslims need better leaders so do young Republicans who deserve better than the slop presented by Ross Douthat.

Occasional Ostrich

In Gingrich's world all muslims must, it seems, be held responsible for al-Qaeda's actions and should consider themselves tainted by their co-religionists.

Um, yes, but isn't that the overall sense of the 'Umma'? Bit like Star Trek's 'Borg'.

MaxSceptic

Newt's statement may be a little OTT, but he appreciates far better than that dolt Obama how the American people feel about this issue.

Islam has a long tradition of building mosques on sites that it has conquered (Think of Temple Mount, the conversion of Hagia Sofia, the Mezquita at Cordoba built on the site of the original Cathedral, etc).

And, even though most liberals are too self-delusional to admit it, the very name of the proposed Cordoba Mosque demonstrates how Islam - unlike other mainstream religions - has expansionist tendencies and objectives.

'Good muslims' don't separate between state and church. America should be rightly suspicious of the growth of Islam in their midst. (As should we).

ndm

MaxSceptic writes:

-- Islam has a long tradition of building mosques on sites that it has conquered

.. or bought 100 year leases to.

russell

You know Christianity would never build a church on top of something conquered, would it? The amount of bollix being talked about this non-issue is astonishing.

ndm

[via one of Andrew Sullivan's stand-ins]

Referring to a Jamelle Bouie post in The American Prospect, Jonathan Bernstein writes:

-- I think Bouie is a bit harsher than necessary to Douthat, who isn't exactly warm towards those who he says use discrimination and persecution to get their way. But I also think Bouie is correct: Douthat's claim that it's the nativists who have indirectly encouraged assimilation through intimidation may not be entirely wrong, but it's a somewhat strained reading of history -- the nativists didn't want assimilation, they wanted (and often got) exclusion. And Bouie is right that Douthat's history ignores that those in Douthat's "first" America (the one with the high-minded ideals) have almost always supported and worked to achieve assimilation.

A "somewhat strained reading of history" is a polite way to describe Douthat's argument.

Chris

What is this tit doing writing for the Speccie? Let him call for freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia, in Mecca, at high noon, and I will pay some attention to his witless prattle.

PaulG

Mr. Massie,

You say "In Gingrich's world all muslims must, it seems, be held responsible for al-Qaeda's actions and should consider themselves tainted by their co-religionists". Err, no! The question is much bigger than that. The debate is whose actions are consistent with the teachings of Islam? al-Qaeda or the majority of muslims who live peacefully?

Your allusion to the Shinto Shrine within miles of Pearl Harbor is misleading. The Shinto Shrine was built in 1920 some 20 years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. So I hardly think there were many grieving in 1920 over the deaths during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Craig Strachan

"That is, the blending of cosmopolitanism with integration is precisely what's produced the American ideal"

Indeed. I see no reason why a liberal/permissive form of Islam cannot be successfully integrated into American life.

ndm

Chris writes:

-- Let him call for freedom of religion in Saudi Arabia, in Mecca, at high noon, and I will pay some attention to his witless prattle.

There is some irony in Chris prattling on about religious freedom in Saudi Arabia while presumably seeking to restrict religious freedom in the United States of America.

Baron

ndm @ 8.33:

when the domain of Saudis freedoms equals that of the Americans your argument would be valid, not before. More to the point though. Nobody’s arguing for the mosque not to be built, just shifted abit. Is the genius brain of yours capable of comprehending this?

what’s so sacrosanct about the place the mosque is being built anyway? Surely Allah would hear any prayer from another place just as well.

durandal

A stupid and ugly thought remains stupid and ugly even when delivered by Alex Massie.

Who are the cretins supporting your daft article, your mates from the pub?

ndm

Matt Zeitlin writes of a 2008 news story about the name of a school in Jacksonville, Florida:

-- Can anyone explain why Nathan Bedford Forrest has *anything* named after him? Being a Confederate general is bad enough - like, really, really, History Greatest’s Monster bad - but being a Confederate general who was one of the most important members of the early Ku Klux Klan, perhaps the most pernicious, anti-American organization in our country’s history. Oh yeah, and the Fort Pillow Massacre.
http://whippersnapper.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/really-really-2/

Matthew Yglesias expands:

-- The school board voted 5-2 to keep the name, with all five white members in favor of Forrest. Of course lots of things in the United States are named after people with a bad record on racial issues, but not only is Forrest an unusually egregious case in this instance it’s clear from the timing that the school was given that name specifically as an f-you to blacks and supporters of racial equality.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/nathan-bedford-forrest-high-school/

THIS is the "second America" that Ross Douthat holds in such high regard when he writes:

-- But both understandings of this country have real wisdom to offer, and both have been necessary to the American experiment’s success.

The man is an intellectual fraud.

Stephanie Tohill

"when the domain of Saudis freedoms equals that of the Americans your argument would be valid, not before."

@ Baron

Why, of what relevance is Saudi Arabia to anything? You do realise that the vast majority of muslims are not Saudis? Please say you do...?

Augustus

In October 1951 in Pearl Harbour Hawaii the finishing touches were being made on the building of the Harbor Sushi Complex, known
colloquially as the Admiral Isoroku Yamaoto
Temple. The building stands a couple of hundred yards from the harbour front. A few
Japanese had got it into their heads to build an appartment complex on a piece of land on which an uninhabitable building stood which had been bombed in the war. The new complex would contain a large sushi restaurant, a Japanese imperial temple, a swimming pool, a relax and massage area, a photographic museum about the Japanese marines. All in all an impressive enterprise. But why did these Japs want to build the complex there particularly, so close to the harbour? The spokesman for the
contractors had announced that it had to do with a peace gesture, or at least a gesture of reconciliation. Peace? Reconciliation? Yes, because ten years before there had been a war between America and Japan. But Pearl Harbor was an open wound. On 7th December, 1941, Japan, without declaring war
had destroyed Pearl Harbor in which scores of ships and planes had been destroyed and
2,402 Americans had lost their lives. The area was one large cemetery for the Americans.

Fiction? Yes, because no Japanese
would have even taken it into their heads to have built such an idiotic and insulting complex on that spot so soon after the war.
The difference between that story and this one, however, is that this war is still being waged.

Chairman of Selectors

Massie is only banging on (and on) about the Ground Zero mosque as it means more people comment on his endless, tedious blogs and he hopes this increased interest will mean a renewed gig as and when Fraser really starts to make some changes. As usual, you log on to the Speccie homepage and all you see is Massie's gurning mug all over the bottom section. Massie, I've said it before - you need some other work. Stop cluttering up a good website with your student drivel. And yes, I realise the irony of adding to the posts.

Paul Carlin

Perhaps you would explain - or counter - Gingrich's staements that:

"There are many reasons to doubt the stated intentions of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Ground Zero mosque. After 9/11 he did not hesitate to condemn the United States as an “accessory” to the attacks but more recently refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization. This is unsurprising considering he has well-established ties to U.S. branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has also refused to reveal the sources of funding for the mosque project, which is projected to cost $100 million.

More importantly, he is an apologist for sharia supremacy. In a recent op-ed, Rauf actually compared sharia law with the Declaration of Independence. This isn’t mere dishonesty; it is an Orwellian attempt to cause moral confusion about the nature of radical Islamism.

The true intentions of Rauf are also revealed by the name initially proposed for the Ground Zero mosque—“Cordoba House”—which is named for a city in Spain where a conquering Muslim army replaced a church with a mosque. This name is a very direct historical indication that the Ground Zero mosque is all about conquest and thus an assertion of Islamist triumphalism which we should not tolerate."

I for one am happy that much of what he says is absolutely in order. As a former participant in Northern Ireland's 'troubles', I would be extremely worried if any republican group (let alone the Provisional IRA) were to set up an office in the vicinity of, for instance, the seat of the explosion in Inniskillen, or Warrington shopping centre.

Vern

If only we were all as enlightened as
Saint Massie of the Sacred Church of the Holy Bien Pensant.

Curious how rather than address Obama's sudden backtracking on the Mosque, St. Massie rapidly swerves into an attack on Newt Gingrich.

Actually it's not curious at all. Mistaken as usual about the nation he purports to be some kind of authority on , Massie seeks to divert attention from his earlier flub with another bit of misdirection/demonisation.

Also, for the geographically challenged Mr. Massie, there is a vast difference between 2 blocks (GZM Mosque) and a 'a few miles' (Shinto shrine). But of course he knows that and is merely seeking to score a demagogic point (and a very weak one at that).

Speaking of ugly thoughts, something like 65% of Americans think the Mosque is tasteless, while not disputing the legal right to build it. Are they all braying beasts, Saint Massie? If only they were as noble and pure of heart as you!

One of them is Harry Reid apparently. What a dirty fascist! He must hate all Muslims!

Looking forward to your next witless post on this topic.

DavidDP

"—“Cordoba House”—which is named for a city in Spain where a conquering Muslim army replaced a church with a mosque. "

Ah, a follower of the Gingrich abridged version of history. You may want to actually look up what happened.

There really is no doubt, what with this from Gingrich and the equation of Muslims with foreigners against Americans by Mike Huckabee. This is not about the feelings of those affected by 9/11, this is about bigotry plain and simple.

Stuart Seacole Smith

Interesting to see the liberal-left tie themselves up in unpickable moral knots on this issue. This is what the fifth column on the march looks like - shambolic and confused, but dedicated and poisonous.

The lefty amateur islam scholars are a hoot, and a moronic thought is still a moronic thought, even when it's delivered by a high minded liberal who thinks making nice will bring islam into the western fold.

Rhoda Klapp

Are we to get a 'deplorable Harry Reid' post, or are the disparaging adjectives reserved for anyone on the right?

Derek Pasquill

Oh! Oh! Oh! what a lovely war!

What joy to be alive at this moment and watch liberals froth at the mouth at the mere mention of Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, and Newt Gingrich.

Suck on that lefty liberals morons -

Who wouldn't join the army?

That's what we all inquire,

Don't we pity the poor civilians sitting beside the fire?

David Bouvier

The mosque at Cordoba is one of my favourite pieces of architecture anywhere. Shame the cathedral the Christians stuck back in the middle of it messed it up and that they closed up the outer walls. Though on its own the wall-less "floating" catherdral in the middle is quite interesting.

In general a reference to Cordoban muslim society (which went through a variety of political affiliations including claiming to be a break-away Caliphate in its own right at some times) would be to one of a fusion of muslim, christian and jewish communities and a period high aesthetic and social development. It was at the time one of the greatest cities in the world.

You can decide that it is insensitive to reference Cordoba, but no more than any Christians who refer to a New Jerusalem, Crusades, etc etc. I look forward to Newt apologizing on behalf of all Christians for the Crusader Kingdoms.

And since the Roman temples, every conquer there - visigoth, muslim, and spanish has "re-purposed" the site. Nothing really to shout about.

revolution

Gingrich will be proven correct when twenty years down the line American drones are firing missiles into muslim ghettoes in America and Europe.

Indy

It's not just that all Muslims are assumed to be supporters of Al Quaeda. It is that the threat posed by Al Quaeda is to be considered as being on a par with the threat posed by Nazi Germany.

I don't want to start a debate about exactly how many deaths the Nazis were responsible for but if you add together the military casualties of WW2 with all the victims of genocide it's got to be in the region of 80 million or more.

Anybody comparing Al Quaeda to Nazi Germany is an idiot.

Stuart Seacole Smith

Someone posted this link on another thread:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/obama_is_colluding_with_a_new.html

Can't say I buy into all of it, but at least it provides an entertaining counter-perspective to Massie's half baked namby pamby whitterings.

Augustus

"Anybody comparing alQuaeda to Nazi Germany is an idiot." Correct! But don't try and compare Muslims to the nice post-war Germans either, for they certainly wouldn't have tried to provoke the Allies and make use of constitutional rights in the process.
Even after 65 years, discussions still take place whether Germans should be allowed to attend certain memorials. But they don't push the matter, while such debates are conducted by others, the victims of Nazi Germany. So are Muslims simply more vocal than Germans? No, the free world has become
cowardly.

Frank P

Stuart Seacole Smith

The 'someone' was me; moreover I tried to post it here, but it was 'moderated'. Let's try Lewis's follow through and see whether that gets censored, too.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/bam_to_new_york_drop_dead.html

Wonderful!

Indy

Augustus I wouldn't try and compare Muslims to post-war Germans for two reasons.

1. Germany is a country. Muslims are individual people who belong to many different countries.

2. As a country, Germany was responsible for WW2 and the Holocaust and many tens of millions of people died because of the actions of the German Government and the German Armed Forces and their allies.

Muslims on the other hand are, as I have said, individuals who practice a particular religion. It is not reasonable or logical to expect all of them to take responsibility for something that a group of terrorists did because the terrorists were Muslims too.

Or to look at it another way the Nazis were Christians. Did that make the Christians Nazis?

Augustus

Indy - I don't care if the Nazis were really Christians or not, there isn't such a thing as a moderate or an extremist Muslim, there is only the Islam of the prophet Muhammad ibn Abd'allah.

daniel maris

More Highland Mud Flinging...

No Gingrich didn't have a relative die at 9-11 but he does have a gay sister and perhaps he doesn't like the idea of Shariah law's prescription for lesbians (unruly daughters) - indefinite or lifelong house arrest. Shariah law in case our esteemed columnist doesn't realise,is not something that Al Queda invented it is what is promulgated and taught in every Mosque across the planet.

To deal with some of the red herrings. Gingrich and other Islamosceptics are not saying that individual Muslims are to be discriminated against, they are asking "What does Islam teach and is what it teaches a form of aggressive totalitarianism?" - to which the answer can only be yes. And it is not as though its ideology is some kind of historical fossil...the 15000 plus terrorist attacks undertaken by followers of Islam since 9-11 demonstrate that.

Why does Mr. Massie NEVER address what is taught in the great Islamic universities, in the Madrassas and in the Saturday and evening schools for children in Mosques in this country? Why does he avert his eyes? Because he wants to indulge himself in that warm soapy liberal bathwater that tells him all is well with the world and what we are dealing with here is a socially conservative religion, a bit like the Wee Frees who will come round in time and catch up with the rest of us. But that is so divorced from reality as to constitute a pathological delusion.

Baron

‘You do realise, Baron, that the vast majority of Muslims are not Saudis? Please say you do...?’, asks the gentle educator Stephanie Tohill @ 11.06.

You know what Stephanie, I didn’t, would ya believe it?

what would the world do without people like you, more to the point, what would I do without your prescient generosity. Am so very very grateful to you, without your hint I would have died in shameful ignorance, knowing not that the majority of Muslims ain’t Saudis. Ta again, my dear blogging friend.

in regard the relevance of Saudi Arabia to anything on a blog sparring over the issue of freedoms and stuff, you’re also so charmingly right. The country’s completely irrelevant, and even more so for the phylum of your gender. What sort of a woman would like to drive a car, miss voluntarily being clad in a black tent, walk next to her beloved, or hold hands with him? Only a deranged non-feminist of a woman would like to celebrate the Valentine day, give or receive a gift of a teddy bear, a doll, or God forbid, fall in love with a man other than the one her parents married her to. If she did, it might be the full Monty of ‘sharia be upon you’, you know, burying up to the neck, gentle stoning to follow… (doesn’t your heart rejoice to know that the stone sizes are prescribed? How considerate can Sharia get, ha?)

ever thought of emigrating to Saudi Arabia then?

William Jay

Mr. Massie,
Do you now, or have you ever, posted rebuttals to Amazon reviews especially about the numbers killed in certain camps during the Holocaust?
You sure do sound like a lot of them nuts.

ndm

@William Jay

Can you explain the intellectual process that led you from Alex Massie's post to holocaust denial?

Derek Pasquill

Are the six 'mystery' floors of the fifteen-storey Ground Zero mosque to be devoted to the Sharia Index Project?

Read more here http://tinyurl.com/22wrwl6

ndm

followed Derek Pasquill's link through a typical thread of wacky right-wing wingnut sites going on about hidden websites with "cleansed" pages retrieved from internet archives. All a cross between James Bond and Sherlock Holmes. Just what will be in the six hidden floors - scary. I think they should form the offices of a new organization named the Anti-Defamation League that takes its name seriously.

As to the "hidden" webpage you can find it openly on the internet here:

http://www.cordobainitiative.org/recent_programs.html

And there you will find scary, scary things like an account if the "2006 August: The Shariah Project - Initial Meeting in Kuala Lumpur" and the "2006 July: Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow (MLT): The Copenhagen Conference" devoted to "nurtur[ing] a global Muslim leadership that employs Islamic and pluralistic values to enhance peace and tolerance" and so on.

The greatest threat to America comes from those nativists on the right who hate the freedoms expressly provided in the Constitution and seek to continue the historic supremacy of whitey.

Augustus

ndm - yes we all know you're as left-wing as they come, but for your information the greatest threat to any society comes from those who seek to ignite dangerous divisive
debate, and that is what those who imprudently seek to place this particular mosque headed by this particular imam are doing.

Beefeater

Indy:
"Anybody comparing Al Quaeda to Nazi Germany is an idiot."

Anybody comparing the opposition to the GZM to Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish policies is also an idiot. (Not that you do, but has become a talking point among leftists in this debate, who see in America the makings of a "racist" holocaust against Muslims.)

The left is jumping on this controversy to whip up sentiment against Amerikka, with which it is in sympathy with AQ.

ndm

Beefeater writes:

-- The left is jumping on this controversy to whip up sentiment against Amerikka, with which it is in sympathy with AQ.

This controversy is entirely the product of a nativist right whipping up an irrational and bigoted hysteria. The left quite appropriately condmens the hysterical bigotry.

Noa Zrk

ndm writes

"This controversy is entirely the product of a nativist right whipping up an irrational and bigoted hysteria. The left quite appropriately condmens the hysterical bigotry".

Rather, the Right has voiced a warning to the people of the world's greatest democracy of the threat that faces it within from the exponential growth of this this primitive, irrational and unreconsructable belief system.
The Left is, as ever, happy to collude with its perverted bedfellow, in the piecemeal destruction of western thought, values and freedoms.

daniel maris

The General Manager of Al-Arabiya television, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, has written an article entitled "A House of Worship or a Symbol of Destruction?,"

(Aug 16) He says:

"[...] I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime. At the same time, there are no practicing Muslims in the district who need a place of worship, because it is indeed a commercial district. Is there a side that is committed to this mosque? The fact is that in the news reports there are names linked to this project that costs 100 million dollars!
The sides enthusiastic for building the mosque might be building companies, architect houses, or politicized groups that want suitable investments?! I do not know whether the building applicant wants a mosque whose aim is reconciliation, or he is an investor who wants quick profits. This is because the idea of the mosque specifically next to the destruction is not at all a clever deed. The last thing Muslims want today is to build just a religious center out of defiance to the others, or a symbolic mosque that people visit as a museum next to a cemetery...."

(Thanks to Jihad Watch for that).

So the idea that only an Islamophobe would see the Ground Zero Mosque as an offensive and dubious intrusion, as promoted by Mr Massie, is well and truly shot to pieces.

ndm

Noa Zrk writes:

-- The Left is, as ever, happy to collude with its perverted bedfellow, in the piecemeal destruction of western thought, values and freedoms.

Funny that - and there I thought it was the left that believed in defending the consitution that is the bedrock of American "thought, values and freedoms." In this case it is the right which once again seeks to impinge on the constitional rights of Americans to practice freely their religion.

Noa Zrk

ndm writes

"I thought it was the left that believed in defending the consitution that is the bedrock of American "thought, values and freedoms." In this case it is the right which once again seeks to impinge on the constitional rights of Americans to practice freely their religion".

The Right of course, has rightly expressed the moral outrage of the American people at the grotesque perversion of religious liberty by a belief system that, ironically, has only contempt for it, as of course has the Left, which seeks the progressive destruction of the protections afforded by the Constitution and the supremacy of the state over the freedom of the individual.
It will be interesting to see the reaction of the many useful idiots of which the modern left is comprised when their current Islamist allies decide their usefulness has run its course and dispenses with them.

Derek Pasquill

Unfortunately, people like ndm and Massie are up to their necks and beyond in dhimmitude - one of the symptoms of dhimmitude, of course, is the inability in those afflicted to recognise the condition: a bit like the game of blind man's buff and trying to pin the tail on the donkey.

Sure - it has some entertainment value, but ultimately repetitive and monotonous.

Clear Memories

"..the notion that Islam is some kind of monolithic, malevolent force is as widespread as it is ignorant ..."

Massie, have you read the Koran and the hadiths? Do you understand their structure? Do you realise that all the later statements (those that call for death and slaughter etc) override the earlier ones? That lying to non-believers is encouraged and, as a consequence, any muslim who quotes the earlier passages to you is both lying and following his faith?

Take yourself across to thereligionofpeace.com and you'll discover whether you or Newt are the most ignorant on the subject as well as the true meaning of Islam.

Noa Zrk

Baron August 17th, 2010 5:36pm

‘You do realise, Baron, that the vast majority of Muslims are not Saudis? Please say you do...?’, asks the gentle educator Stephanie Tohill @ 11.06.

You know what Stephanie, I didn’t, would ya believe it?

But of course Stephanie, all Saudis are muslims, except women married to Saudis don't have to be. Their children do though.
Indeed, have you ever been to this Islamic paradise? If so you would know that your male child, husband or blood relation would have to drive you everywhere and best escort you too for your personal safety.
You would have to wear your abiyah whilst you were out and about, or you would be arrested by the Muttawah, the disgusting religious police. Regular public beheadings most Fridays, surgical amputation of limbs. The persecution and imprisonment of Christians is commonplace.
Of course you could not meet a male friend without being chaparoned.
In fact, welcome to the 14th century, just your sort of place?!