There's Too Much Intolerance Out There

I'm hearing a lot of discussion about a Muslim Community Center proposed in Manhattan, New York, two blocks from the former World Trade Center. Apparently, 7 out of 10 Americans think it should not be built. Well, count me as one of the remaining 3 who feel that freedom of religion is important enough to be defended. It's not violating any rules, and most of the attention is a result of right-wing bloggers who are phobic about Muslims. What -they- need is psychiatric attention, not approval.

If you want to discredit someone, the first thing is to make them odious to the public mind. Usually, you start with an existing prejudice and then magnify it in public, ie. by putting up negative posters, writing articles, vandalizing, etc. This is what happened in pre-WWII Germany to make Jewish people more disliked. They were blamed for the country's financial ills, made to seem non-human, ridiculed, and then after awhile it became easy to scare employers from hiring them, and pass laws restricting their movement, forcing them to wear a yellow star on their clothes, etc.

Everyone has something different about them, whether it's their skin color, their sexual preference, their beliefs, economic status or the lack of it, etc. So it's easy to feel intimidated when another group is singled out for negative attention. You don't want to stand up because you're afraid someone will come after you. In fact, it's when people don't stand up that eventually the extremists win. Usually, it's the conservatives who attack others because they are the ones who have money and power and they're always afraid it will be taken from them by the "others", whomever they are afraid of.

So don't be a hypocrite who says "My extremists are OK, but get yours out of here." All extremism is bad. As the ancient Greeks would say, "Everything in moderation."