Ground Zero mosque hypocrisy from the GOP, Tea Party and Fox News

Yesterday, Fox News ran this map showing the proximity of the Park 51 center to the location where remains were found after 9/11.


The implication is simple - this is sacred ground where no mosque should be built. Of course, the hosts of Fox and Friends didn't imply anything. To them, this was a simple matter of right and wrong and all Americans should be opposed mad insulted OUTRAGED.

However...

I took this map from McClatchy D.C. and overlaid it with this map from the N.Y. Post, which was the source of the Fox map, and this is what I got.



What I got was hypocrisy. According to Fox and most of conservative America, it's wrong to build a mosque near Ground Zero because it's sacred ground. I have no argument with the special place that ground holds in the hearts of millions. My issue is that it is apparently OK with the right to have a Burger King, a strip club, a betting parlor and it's doubly OK to have plans to build a strip mall, with a McDonald's, ON the remains of the trade center towers. But it's not OK for our fellow Americans to build a place of worship. And please be correct, they are not Muslims trying to build that mosque, they are Muslim-Americans.

"I’ve got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan in the uniform of the United States armed services. They’re out there putting their lives on the line for us, and we’ve got to make sure that we are crystal clear, for our sakes and their sakes, they are Americans, and we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don’t differentiate between them and us. It’s just us. And that is a principle that I think is — is — is going to be very important for us to — to sustain. And I think tomorrow is an excellent time for us to — to reflect on that."

President Obama

So which is it? Is it sacred ground? If so, there shouldn't be any strip clubs or crass tourism or fast food. But you can't logically justify a titty bar where human remains were found. But since when has the right been logical? For them, it's all black-and-white (often literally), right-and-wrong.

However, consider this quote from David Foster Wallace, framing 9/11 as the sacrifice that America must sometimes make:

“Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”? In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?”

David Foster Wallace

h/t Hammerito