THE DAILY BLADE: Pork As Protest
Infidels (that is to say, Christians and Jews) in this country have wearied of tip-toeing around Muslim sensitivities when Muslims don't reciprocate by showing any concern towards their sensitivities. The "anti-Muslim backlash" that CAIR has been crying wolf over for years has come to pass, reports The Christian Science Monitor:
Nationwide, polls show a growing ambivalence – or even anger – toward Islam among Americans, which has in part explained the opposition to a mosque near ground zero and mosques elsewhere, as well as the aborted mass burning of Korans by a Florida preacher. But subtler, more psychological attacks against Muslims have also become prevalent, say Muslim groups.
In those attacks, pork – which Muslims are forbidden to eat because it is considered unclean – is being used as a primary weapon, sent in packages to mosques, invoked in sharply worded letters …
Like protests such as "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day," some Americans are needling what they perceive to be an over-sensitive Muslim population with acts that – to non-Muslims – seem relatively tame. In the process, they are exposing the vast difference between what is considered acceptable by the measures of American free speech and by the believers of Islam. …
Anecdotal evidence points to the use of pork as an anti-Islamic protest in recent years. …
The pork attacks come amid tensions in the US about how to talk about Islam in popular culture. A Seattle artist who proposed – then withdrew – a call for a "Everybody Draw Mohammad Day" in protest of a censored "South Park" episode, recently left her job, moved, and changed her name on the FBI's advice after radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki issued a fatwa for her death, the New York Post reported last month. Islam forbids the depicting of the Prophet Mohammed.
In light of such stories, as many as 1 in 5 Americans are incensed that they have to tip-toe around Muslim sensibilities in a country where the First Amendment guarantees nearly all speech, including hateful words and acts.
With few exceptions, everything Islam forbids is allowed under the U.S. Constitution. That’s the way we like it, and that’s the way it’s going to stay – despite fears of “experts” that the MSM always digs up when doing articles like this that insisting on our freedoms will incite homegrown terrorism. As for The Stiletto, give her liberty or give her death – which, in this context means
she will die kill before anyone forces her to wear a chador.
Two Years Too Late
Here's a David Broder column from October 2008:
[W]hat has dawned on official Washington is that one of our great political parties - Democratic - has undergone much more than the normal between-elections transition. And the other - Republican - is having a helluva struggle adjusting to the change.
The Republicans oscillate between depicting their Democratic opponents as know-nothing radicals, with barely a fragmentary [Constitutional] view of government, or as pawns of [George Soros]. They are happiest when the opponent permits them to dress him in [Muslim] garb (second item).
The Republican leaders have to take the question of who these people are much more seriously, because these freshmen will soon be sitting in and calling signals for their caucuses. The fact that so many of them are being financed in their races by new, non-party, interest-group political operations makes the options for wild political swings even greater.
I don't foresee a challenge to [Harry Reid] or [Nancy Pelosi] for the leadership in the Senate or House when the new classes gather in Washington. But I see a clear test ahead for those leaders.
This is not ultimately a radical nation, and those Democrats who are in love with radical notions of remaking the society to fit their own philosophy will have to be brought back in touch with reality.
When a party fails to do that, it can find the seeds of its own destruction in the victory banquet. Democrats, and the country, deserve better.
Oh wait ... it's the column Broder should have written in October 2008 to warn Dems and then-candidate Barack Obama (he wasn’t using his middle name back then, only “racists” were) against too much change too fast. All The Stiletto did to the column he wrote the other day was to substitute "Democrat" for "Republican" throughout and change a one or two words (placed in brackets).
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