Posted by Wayne Root at RootForAmerica.com. Root is an At Large member of the Libertarian National Committee and the party’s most recent Vice Presidential candidate. IPR has also carried varying opinions on this issue by LNC member Daniel Wiener, Tom Knapp, Kristin Davis, Warren Redlich, Carl Paladino, and LPHQ interns Marissa Giannotta and Josh Roll.
As one of America’s leading Libertarian thinkers, perhaps I’m always expected to give the “Libertarian answer” to every issue. But sometimes one has to speak not as a Libertarian, Republican or Democrat, but rather as an American- preferably a common sense American. The issue of allowing a mosque to be built in the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist tragedy is one of those times.
The answer is simple for a common sense American- I support religious freedom, as all Americans should. But this is not a case of religious freedom. Yes, Muslims can build their mosque virtually anywhere in America- despite 9/11…despite the Times Square bomber…despite plots by Islamic extremists to blow up the New York subway system…despite everything happening in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. That’s what makes our country great. We do in fact support religious freedom. You can build a mosque virtually anywhere in America.
However, there are also the rights and sensibilities of others to consider in a free society.
Does “religious freedom” mean hate groups should build statues to Hitler in front of Jewish temples in America? Should Americans raise money to build Jewish temples and Christian churches at Mecca? Should Japan build a statue to the bravery of their pilots at Pearl Harbor? Should the U.S. build a statue to the bravery of our pilots at the site of Hiroshima? Aren’t those examples all about “freedom of expression,” “religious freedom” and property rights? Perhaps, but is it too much to ask for a little consideration and respect toward others?
This proposed building of a mosque on hallowed ground is an ATROSITY towards America. To build a celebration of Islam within steps of 9/11 does nothing to increase religious freedom…it inspires hatred, divides our cultures, and increases the odds of violence and hate crimes. Common sense suggests this mosque, being built in this specific location, is NOT being built as a sign of friendship between Muslims and Americans…but rather as a sign of the lack of respect…a belief in our weakness…and an attempt to embarrass and belittle us. The financial district of Manhattan is not a residential area with a large number of Muslim residents for the mosque to serve. Therefore common sense suggests that the only possible reason to build it there (rather than in Brooklyn or Queens where there are large Muslim populations) is to show Muslim contempt for Americans by building a monument to Islam in the shadow of the site of their greatest triumph over America.
It is an offense to build a mosque in that location- an offense to all Americans (including Muslim Americans), all Christians and Jews, all relatives of 3000 dead heroes at the World Trade Center.
Yes, private individuals and organizations have the right to build houses of worship with their own funds. But one has to wonder where the money is coming from to build a 15-story building on some of the most expensive real estate in the country. We Americans believe in the separation of Church and State. If it turns out that this project is sponsored by a foreign government — either directly or through a state-sponsored organization that engages in terrorism — than the idea of this being an issue of religious freedom is a sham and an argument can be made that our Constitution would actually prohibit this mosque from being built.
However, if this is privately funded by parties with no ties to a foreign government, I have to believe that we have enough people in this country who are offended by the prospect of a mosque at Ground Zero, that the money can be raised to buy this land at a fair price from the owners. I know I’d be the first to contribute to a foundation to keep this sacred land from ever being desecrated by a symbol of the very groups that attacked America on 9/11.
We can also put public pressure on the property owners to sell to this new patriotic foundation funded by Americans. We can organize massive protests, filling the streets surrounding this property with patriotic Americans concerned that the hallowed ground of 9/11 never be used as a political tool to taunt or embarrass the United States, or as a place to preach intolerance towards Americans. I, for one, am ready to fly 3000 miles to New York to join the protest.
These are the only rational answers for common sense patriotic Americans who still believe in a free society. In situations like this, none of us can afford to be Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, or politicians of any stripe. We are all proud Americans.
Wayne Allyn Root was the 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate. He now serves on the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) and as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee (LNCC). He writes for the Las Vegas Review Journal and is a regular guest on FOX News. His new book is entitled, “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gambling & Tax Cuts.” For more of Wayne’s views, commentaries, or to watch his many national media appearances, please visit www.ROOTforAmerica.com.
doesn’t represent libertarianism. Its no wonder I don’t vote for the libertarian party – you’re nothing but a slightly less evil GOP which is like saying your a minor demon in hell instead of the devil himself ……….
all parties [and that includes all alternative parties] have their own problems. Self inflicted wound after wound.
Hem Libs, daze not the dysfunctional Deformers, but on certain days they give the United We Fall types a run for their money on ineptitude ——- or is it sabotage?
With ‘friends’ like Root (less) and Cohen, and Knappster and Phillies, does the LP even NEED enemies?
Looks like the vast majority of posters here agree that Wayne Root certainly is no great thinker and doesn’t represent libertarianism. Its no wonder I don’t vote for the libertarian party – you’re nothing but a slightly less evil GOP which is like saying your a minor demon in hell instead of the devil himself.
If Wayne root truly believed in Libertarian and represented a leading libertarian thinker he would be so embarrassed by this claptrap that he would resign and walk away. principles. No chance of that happening as he a politicians trying to wear a coat that doesn’t fit him.
To Author, and young folks: PLEASE learn the difference between “then” and “than”, Brad… I’m looking at you…
Jake: “Is there no candidate who still thinks BOTH that our government should shrink to a size that we are willing to pay for each year with taxes, AND that the government should not be in the business of barring behavior simply because it is offensive and/or unpopular?”
me: Yes, there is such a candidate, or will be Darryl W. Perry 2016
http://dwp2016.org
jake: …now I can’t vote for one of the most prominent Libertarians either.
me: Then don’t. I probably would not vote for an abolitionist L, either. I have voted for pro-life and pro-capital punishment Ls, even though I’m (tepidly) pro-choice and (strongly) anti-capital punishment. But we all have our non-starter, litmus-test-failure issues.
I suspect most L candidates come down on the freedom side on CH, so not all hope is lost!
“It is an offense to build a mosque in that location- an offense to all Americans (including Muslim Americans)”
I can’t take any article seriously that includes this statement. Muslim Americans are precisely the people who are building the mosque in that location, how can it be an offense to them? This is another case where the majority finds it convenient to speak for everybody, tell everybody what they should be offended by, and conveniently wield the power of big government to shove their opinion down everyone’s throats.
What is a small-government advocate to do these days? Can’t vote Republican, can’t vote Democrat, and now I can’t vote for one of the most prominent Libertarians either.
Is there no candidate who still thinks BOTH that our government should shrink to a size that we are willing to pay for each year with taxes, AND that the government should not be in the business of barring behavior simply because it is offensive and/or unpopular?
First there is a mosque in the Pentagon from what I recall and if there is one in the Pentagon what is the big deal about having another one in New York?
Secondly some of us are working to grow the party and are not sitting on the sidelines pitching rocks at others.
Root’s position is completely contrary to our Party Platform:
3.5 We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.
1.1 We favor the freedom to engage in or abstain from any religious activities that do not violate the rights of others. We oppose government actions which either aid or attack any religion.
2.1 Where property, including land, has been taken from its rightful owners by the government or private action in violation of individual rights, we favor restitution to the rightful owners.
Our party is ill-served by having members of its national committee advocate Islamophobic racism. If one of the serious national parties had something like this happen, there would be substantial pressure to cause an apology or to remove the person from their national committee. Our National Committee should think seriously about its responsibility to its party.
Having said that, to give credit where it is due, I note Mr. Root pointedly telling his fellow National Committee members
In the past 2 weeks I’ve found 4 businessmen to join the LNCC and write
$1000 checks.
4 phone calls…$4000 for LP bank account.
$2000 is in the LP bank…$2000 is on the way.
Now $4000 is nothing major…but what these 4 big donors represent is that they pledged to contribute or raise much more for the LNCC. They’ll produce at least $40,000 to $80,000 for LP over next year or two.
Now how much exactly has anyone else on LNC brought in in last 2 weeks?
Of course, some libertarians will ask if that’s how much our principles are for sale for, or if the price can be bargained down.
This was just astonishingly stupid.
I was aghast when I read this. Root’s worse than I thought.
We have all been hearing the news about the mosque near Ground Zero….well the address of this Mosque is 45-47 Park Place – SEE–> (http://www.subchat.com/otchat/read.asp?Id=644868)
What I found very strange is the address….4 and 5 = 9, 4 and 7 = 11……911!
Note that Rockwell views the Mosque attack as a statement by an LNC official.
paulie:
I’m headin’ that way and will call when I get close (it’ll be from a 214 #). I should be there in about 70 mins. or so
@46
Email to contact.ipr:
There was some curiosity as to if the Lew Rockwell crowd had commented on the NY “Mosque”. Don’t know if it’s newsworthy, but Lew himself commented today, lumping Wayne Allen Root in with Newt Gingrich and Leonard Peikoff, calling them all “warmongers”.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/62598.html
tk, hmm, so it’s not a teachable moment.
Yes, carrying grievances around seems contra-indicated. Canceling out grievances with negation can be a helpful tactic.
Truth and reconciliation first require truth to be set free.
I vote for Snooki.
Definitely Snooki.
Voted most likely to succ-seed;
She could … go… all… the …way…..
However, Wayne’s lead is right.
It’s not about religious freedom. It’s about authoritarian hatemongers like Sarah Palin, the Republican racist branch of the Tea Movement (Accept only the real thing, the libertarian branch of the Tea Movement), et tedious cetera, staging a five week hate to rouse up the fear in Republican voters.
five bucks they loaned [..] in 1978 that he never paid back.
Uh….no….not even close to being close….many, many degrees of magnitude off.
No “loans” involved.
And it wasn’t Bill Redpath, per se.
Nor is it all in the past by any means on the other side.
But I’ll bite my tongue. Let’s not go there.
I agree about the excessive comments on unrelated threads, though. It isn’t doing me or my friends any good; quite the opposite.
Bob,
If you want truth and reconciliation, you might consider not constantly attempting to resurrect an issue which everyone who cares about (which, at this point, is very few people indeed) has already reached his or her own conclusion on, by inserting that issue into completely unrelated discussions, and then claim that an explanation which everyone except you has either accepted or reject but not pretended not to understand is “not lucid.”
You’re starting to sound like one of those petitioners who, if Bill Redpath dragged a nuclear weapon up to the torch of the Statue of Liberty and set its timer before setting himself on fire and diving naked into New York Harbor, would post 50 comments on the story about that five bucks they loaned him in 1978 that he never paid back.
eg 119, yes, 2% giving 50% seems highly unlikely. “Funny” I guess that you found only anti-Semites and Jews making the claim. If the number were 30% I’d think, hmm, seems high, but maybe…don’t know how you’d measure such a thing, but maybe.
Centuries of pogroms might make someone inclined to say “Never again.”
Centuries of crusades, ditto.
Adding fuel to either fire strikes me as contra-indicated.
And, while searching for that one, also found this.
LOL…..
EG 126
Aside from ability to donate, there’s also interest/willingness.
But, I agree with you: I would still be very surprised to find such an extreme disparity between Jews and Non-Jews in rate/amount of political donations.
It seems that, although Wayne and Carol take different sides in the mideast conflicts, they both probably assign disproportionate importance to that conflict and see it as being more central to American politics than it really is (or should be).
Sort of like….
tk: I said you were the only one still demagoguing the issue or pretending not to understand his [GP’s] reasons for those actions [narcing to the FEC].
me: Rather than view my little old self as a demagogue, I prefer to view this incident as a tailor-made teachable moment. I certainly did NOT find GP’s “official” explanation at all credible. I asked follow-up questions, and he has thus far not answered my questions. As for his “real” reasons, I don’t know. Could be a case of sour grapes, an overreaction. That’d be my guess, but I am open to alternative explanations.
I often praise GP, in part because he may well be the most in line with my personal political views of any major LP figure. His approach to teamwork, however, and ability to get along with others hurts the cause of centrist L-ism and TAAALism. Since I happen to believe that centrist L-ism is the path to the promised land, I’m hopeful that GP will cleanse the poisoned waters through an act of contrition.
We could use a little truth and reconciliation about now….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_reconciliation_commission
I probably check the site about 8-10 times a day, at maybe 4 or 5 different 30-minute interval blocks. Sometimes when there’s a brawl on the message boards, however, I would bet I visit during 10 different 30-minute intervals.
paulie @121:
Fair enough, I should have phrased it that way. It’s *maybe* possible that 2% could potentially make up 50% of the donations if said 2% was the wealthiest 2%. I still think that would be difficult though, seeing as we’re talking about campaign money, not general political money (like w/ PACs). Nevertheless, unless everyone’s buying into the conspiratorial idea that Jews disproportionately make up nearly all of said 2%, there’s no way. In 2000, for example, the National Jewish Population Survey found that,
“The median household income of the Jewish population is about $50,000, which is higher than the approximately $42,000 median for all U.S. households reported by the Census Bureau.”
That’s hardly the outrageous disparity that would be necessary to back up the claims of Root, Moore, and others.
Not that you’re making that claim – I’m merely providing further data as to why the Root claim is ridiculous.
LOL, he posted that on another thread 6 whole minutes after you. Maybe you should just not mention him from now on 🙂
Paulie: “I don’t know what percentage it is, but it isn’t that low. 1% of 1,500 is 15, and .016% would be 2.4 people. I haven’t counted, and not all days are similar, but I think it’s more than 2.4 and maybe even more than 15. ”
You’re right about this, Paulie. I meant 1.6%, not .016%; that was sloppy of me. Regardless, I suspect considerably more than 1.6% of unique visitors comment on this site.
George: “It’s like letters to the editor. 100,000 circulation, but <<100 letters a day."
I don't think the two are at all the same, George, for several reasons. Suffice it to say, if that ratio held here, there wouldn't even be any people commenting each day. Btw, where did you get that ratio?
Tom: "Any sequence of page views from the same IP separated by less than 30 minutes per view constitutes one “visit.”"
Oh, that's interesting. I'm glad you posted that, Tom.
Tom: "I doubt that even the most frequent IPR commenter visits the site 16 times a day, an hour apart, and stays on viewing different pages, posting comments, etc. for less than 30 minutes each time. My guess is more like 5-6 times per day, with some of those 5 or 6 coming within 30 minutes of each other."
I think there's quite a large percentage of IPR readers who visit this site 5-6 times/day, at least on most days, with each of those visits at least 30 min apart. Many times they just check out what's new for less than 5 minutes at a time. I'm one of them.
Tom: "I’d be surprised to find that even the most aggressive commenters constitute more than 10 “visits” per day. If there are 50 of us (my guess is more like 15-30), that would be about 1/3 of the site’s current “visits,” still leaving about a thousand “driveby” uniques per day."
You're talking only about *posters* though. As far as other regular IPR *readers* go, I believe a large percentage visit a bunch of times/day at least 30 minutes apart each time, as I said before. Each time a reader does, it would register as a different visit. So it's not unique.
Paulie: "Well, in my case, I rarely would count for 10 visits per day even under the 30-minute rule, since I usually have an IPR tab open and refresh it more frequently than every 30 minutes. Thus I may be only one or two visists a day, sometimes 3-4, rarely if ever more."
Okay, but I don't think more than a small percentage of IPR readers keep checking this site less than 30 minutes apart during the entire day (or almost). I'm sure Milnes logs on every 15 minutes though, usually posting an inane comment about PLAS or calling someone a loser.
EG 120, if you get the car and I’m off the computer give me a call at 415-690-6352. You’ll know I’m off the computer if I don’t respond within a few minutes. Exit 269B on 25.
Oops, not this article. Tom’s article. Still top of his blog.
@ 117 Kinsella has commented at the original version of this article, on Tom’s blog. The comment I saw didn’t really address your question. There have been follow up comments since then, but I haven’t read them, and the computer I am using crashed when I tried to do so right now.
@118 Granted. However, I get the distinct impression that Wayne’s idea of how Pro-Israel we should be takes it to a very different level than what you would mean by pro-Israel, and likewise I get the distinct impression that what he considers too pro-Muslim would include your description as pro-Muslim. But, if I’m wrong, it wouldn’t exactly be the first time.
@119. Yes, it is possible for 1 or 2% of the population to make 50% of political donations: the richest 1 or 2% wouldn’t surprise me. But Jews? I’ll believe it when I see concrete evidence from a reliable source.
paulie @109:
I shall make my best effort to do so. It’s her car, so it’s really her call, but I’d say it’s 50/50 if she doesn’t have any plans.
RC @114 / paulie @116:
The saddest thing about WAR’s logic there is that both he and Carol Moore (who has taken the liberty of printing WAR’s diatribes in this instance) think that Jews actually make up 50% of American political campaign donations. The second I read this figure, I found it instantly suspect, given that Jews make up only 1.2 to 2.2% of the population, but Carol told me to ‘google’ its veracity. Well, I can say after much googling, that the only people I see really making this claim are anti-semites (as ‘proof’ that Jews are too powerful) and Jews (as ‘proof’ that we should all pay attention to their views more than most). I know political giving isn’t something that a lot of people do, but there’s no f*cking way that roughly 2% of the population makes up 50% of the campaign giving. The only quasi-intelligible basing I found for this was that someone noticed that in 1993, in New York, Clinton’s non-institutional fundraising contributions were supposedly from Jews to the tune of 60% or so (in that state, in that year, and under that category). How people think that translates out into the rest of the country, I’ll never know. I found one list that’s supposedly of the top 10 contributors overall (people like Forbes), and only 1 person on that list was Jewish.
I realize that Jews are more influential than their demographic data suggests they should be (there are more Jewish senators than Black senators, for example, even though there are 6 or 7 times more Blacks than Jews), but 50%?!?!?! Please.
pc, hmm, two different things for me. Perhaps it’s my own detachment from either camp: pro-Israel or pro-Muslim.
I’d agree with Root that hyperbolic anti-Israel rhetoric is contra-indicated. I think it’s a mistake for US Ls to get into the weeds on this issue and the various sides of the ME quagmire. Myself: I’m pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian and pro-Muslim, because I’m pro peace.
tk, thanks…didn’t know about the shared lineage.
The AWC crowd and the LRC crowd certainly have MUCH overlap. Near as I can tell, the LRC crowd are much more about Austrian law and economics. The main difference is that LRCers seem to take Calhounian federalism as their primary prism. Hence, while the rest of the free market world was pretty outraged over Kelo, the LRCers were not.
I would actually like to hear someone like Kinsella or Shafer’s take on Cordoba. It MIGHT be quite different than Raimondo’s.
@114 Connecting the dots: As Carol quotes Wayne, he is saying that if we are seen as too pro-Muslim and/or anti-Israel, we’ll lose out on donors and/or votes.
Bob,
I didn’t say you were the only one who disagreed with Phillies’s actions or his reasons for those actions.
I said you were the only one still demagoguing the issue or pretending not to understand his reasons for those actions.
tms1: They can’t say that openly, so they come up with rationales like “We’ll lose votes if we stand up for Muslims,”
tms2: Root has hinted as much: http://carolmoorereport.blogspot.com/2010/06/wayne-root-shut-up-and-take-jewish.html
me: Perhaps Tom you mislinked, as a search of link doesn’t include Root using the word “Muslim” or anything close to your accusation.
Care to try again?
We get that you don’t like Root’s views. I’m not enamored with some of them as well, as this thread shows. Spewing wild accusations and mischaracterizations seem unlikely to win people over to your theories about Root, I’d strongly suggest.
Strawmen make weak opponents. Employing strawman arguments make even weaker advocates. They tend to destroy credibility.
Bob,
It would take an extremely narrow definition of “crowd” not to put LRC and AWC in the same crowd.
At one time, LewRockwell.Com, LvMI and AntiWar.Com were all under one roof, the Center for Libertarian Studies. I’m not sure why they reorganized, but I think CLS is defunct; AWC is now part (the bulk of) the Randolph Bourne Foundation.
To the best of my knowledge, all three sites still use the same webmaster; that webmaster is also the managing editor of AntiWar.Com.
The editorial director of AntiWar.Com, Justin Raimondo, is the biographer of Murray Rothbard and an adjunct fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Lew Rockwell and Burt Blumert (a key mostly-behind-the-scenes figure at LewRockwell.Com at one time; I seem to recall hearing that he died not long ago, though) are listed as serving on AntiWar.Com’s board of advisors.
tk104, the only people who seem OK with GP’s narcing to the FEC are you and GP, that I’ve seen.
I’d be shocked if the facts were laid out and 15K Ls were surveyed and more than 10% thought GP did the indicated thing in that instance.
The best thing I can say about said narcing is that it was thoughtless and reckless. I can’t say I’ve never been either, but my practice is to ‘fess up and make amends.
“if we do actually get 1,500 unique IPs a day, half, two thirds, or maybe even more could be bots and spammers.”
Unlikely. From the Sitemeter knowledge center:
“For the most part, Site Meter will not track robots (or automated programs) that come to your site. That is because Site Meter needs the ‘visitor’ to your site to run the javascript for Site Meter in your web page or at least load the image that is on your web page (the Site Meter counter). Most Robots do not run the javascript that is in a page or even load the images on a page so Site Meter never sees the robot viewing your pages.”
The same goes for most competent spammers. They use software to roundup comment links and then to push content into the comment posting forms of bazillions of pages without ever actually loading those pages. Loading/viewing them would be too slow. The money in spam is in bulk posting.
ap96, LRC posts many essays on the essay page, many of which are not Rothbardian. For ex., they post Pat Buchanan a fair amount of the time, and while Rockwell may agree with some of what Buchanan says, Buchanan is not in the Rockwell crowd, as I see it.
I monitor LRC’s blog page fairly closely. The LRC crowd — Rockwell, DiLorenzo, Kinsella, Block, now Kramer, etc. — have not been all over this Cordoba issue like they were on Kelo. Near as I can tell, Raimondo doesn’t blog on LRC.
Clear, I trust.
Fair enough.
In the meantime, if you can get the car and/or get your girlfriend to come along for the ride, stop by the Fort tonight…we’ll be headed out of state tomorrow (if not – I’ll be really mad, as I really should have left yesterday or the day before).
We may or may not be going through Denver on the way out, and if we do, I’m not sure if we’ll stop.
paulie @107:
When I’m settled more (i.e. when I have a job) and am into a regular routine I’ll be able to answer that. I probably won’t know for at least a month or so though.
I’m more than willing to be that person, I’m just still fairly young and have nowhere near the amount of connections one needs to begin pulling that off.
I can help you get a pretty good start.
How much time per day/week/month are you willing and able to spend?
paulie @92:
I’m more than willing to be that person, I’m just still fairly young and have nowhere near the amount of connections one needs to begin pulling that off. Give me about 5-10 years. 🙂
I’d be surprised to find that even the most aggressive commenters constitute more than 10 “visits” per day. If there are 50 of us (my guess is more like 15-30), that would be about 1/3 of the site’s current “visits,” still leaving about a thousand “driveby” uniques per day.
Well, in my case, I rarely would count for 10 visits per day even under the 30-minute rule, since I usually have an IPR tab open and refresh it more frequently than every 30 minutes. Thus I may be only one or two visists a day, sometimes 3-4, rarely if ever more.
Bob,
“And we’re all still waiting for a lucid explanation for why you narced to the FEC.”
Nope.
Pretty much everyone except you has:
– Accepted George’s explanation, or
– Rejected it while recognizing it as lucid.
You’re the only one still demagoguing it.
JT,
I had assumed daily unique because that’s how most stats work and because I’d seen nothing that said otherwise. But I was wrong.
I did some more reading, and found the answer in a FAQ:
Any sequence of page views from the same IP separated by less than 30 minutes per view constitutes one “visit.”
So, theoretically, one person/IP could constitute up to 48 “visits” per day by clicking once every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight.
In practice, though, the reasonable assumption is that even the most frequent IPR commenters:
– Visit the site over a 16-hour period, not 24, per day.
– Pick up most of their page views in “clusters” less than 30 minutes apart.
I doubt that even the most frequent IPR commenter visits the site 16 times a day, an hour apart, and stays on viewing different pages, posting comments, etc. for less than 30 minutes each time. My guess is more like 5-6 times per day, with some of those 5 or 6 coming within 30 minutes of each other.
I’d be surprised to find that even the most aggressive commenters constitute more than 10 “visits” per day. If there are 50 of us (my guess is more like 15-30), that would be about 1/3 of the site’s current “visits,” still leaving about a thousand “driveby” uniques per day.
It’s like letters to the editor. 100,000 circulation, but <<100 letters a day.
Well, somewhat, but not exactly. Even though LTEs can be emailed nowadays, it’s still at least a little more work than leaving a comment, and there’s a lot less back and forth, which encourages comments. Generally, the time delay slows down back and forth, and it is usually limited to a couple of rounds in the letters sections.
Also, most if not all newspapers still require a street address and/or phone number so they can verify the letter is genuine, and many actually have to get a hold of the LTE writer on the phone before they will publish. And, they receive varying percentages of letters they don’t publish. Many people won’t go to the trouble of composing a letter that they know may well not be published.
However, your overall point is correct: there are a LOT more people reading than commenting. This is also why letters to politicians and companies can have an impact – they know that for every person who writes, there are likely to be hundreds or thousands with the same problem/complaint/issue/opinion who don’t take the time.
However, I somehow thought that sitemeter like several other counters filtered out identifiable bots using reasonably reliable algorithms.
You may be correct.
Like I said, I don’t know.
“What I find hard to believe is only an average of.016% of unique visitors comment here each day.”
It’s like letters to the editor. 100,000 circulation, but <<100 letters a day.
However, I somehow thought that sitemeter like several other counters filtered out identifiable bots using reasonably reliable algorithms.
But spam comments would also count as site visits, inflating the total by a lot.
My point exactly. For instance, if we do actually get 1,500 unique IPs a day, half, two thirds, or maybe even more could be bots and spammers. That could account for some of the vast difference between recorded visits and number of people leaving comments that actually show up.
I know that. What I find hard to believe is only an average of.016%of unique visitors comment here each day.
I don’t know what percentage it is, but it isn’t that low. 1% of 1,500 is 15, and .016% would be 2.4 people. I haven’t counted, and not all days are similar, but I think it’s more than 2.4 and maybe even more than 15.
Also, as I mentioned, I don’t know what percentage of that 1,500 is automated bots and spammers, but they do leave significantly more comments than non-spammers do. So, even if Tom and I are correct about how the stats work, the number of non-spammer/bots leaving comments is well above 1%; I don’t know how much above, though.
Paulie: “We get hundreds of spam comments a day, most of which you never see because our automated spam filter catches them. It does miss a few, and mistakenly catches some legitimate comments, but that could have something to do with the discrepancy between visit stats and number of commenters.”
But spam comments would also count as site visits, inflating the total by a lot. My spam e-mails/day, of which I get very many, still count as e-mails/day. There would be no distinction if a site measured my total e-mails/day.
Paulie, “That should not be too difficult to believe, actually. A lot more people read articles – or even just read part of them or skim them – than leave comments.”
Actually, I know that. What I find hard to believe is only an average of.016% of unique visitors comment here each day. I suspect it’s a much higher ratio than that for people visiting IPR, almost all of whom are interested in independent and alternative-party politics, even if it’s less than just one-fourth of the total visitors.
Paulie: “However, I would not jump to that conclusion solely based on how many people leave comments.”
I didn’t. I concluded that based on what I saw on the site and my own understanding of it. I just said it’s hard to believe that only .016% of unique viewers have anything to say about what they choose to read here.
Robert @ 46: If you really wanted to know what the “Rockwell crowd” says about this issue, why didn’t you just go to his site and use the search function? Or do you have some other motive?
Also, it’s hard for me to take seriously your suggestion @ 57 that Justin Raimondo’s not “quite in the LRC crowd” – and by implication, doesn’t really represent their views – when his article was published on Lew’s website.
JT, one other factor in the readership stats: a lot of them are actually bots and spammers. We get hundreds of spam comments a day, most of which you never see because our automated spam filter catches them. It does miss a few, and mistakenly catches some legitimate comments, but that could have something to do with the discrepancy between visit stats and number of commenters.
That’s definitely true. But I’m guessing only about a couple dozen people/day on average comment on IPR. I have a tough time believing that’s out of 1,500 unique visitors/day.
That should not be too difficult to believe, actually. A lot more people read articles – or even just read part of them or skim them – than leave comments.
I would guess that the vast majority of our readers don’t even read the comments, much less leave their own.
I’ll concede that I don’t know for sure exactly how sitemeter works, so it’s possible that you are correct. However, I would not jump to that conclusion solely based on how many people leave comments.
Paulie: “If it counts as eight visits, then what are page views?”
As I understood it, the page views are the number of different pages you view when you’re already on the site. You click to different pages within the site, and it registers the number of different pages that have been viewed. It does this each time you visit the site/day.
Paulie: “The number of regular readers is probably a good deal higher than the number of people who comment (I have had a number of people tell me they read but don’t comment, and it’s not like I’ve met all the people who read IPR), but it’s nowhere near the number of casual/one-time readers.”
That’s definitely true. But I’m guessing only about a couple dozen people/day on average comment on IPR. I have a tough time believing that’s out of 1,500 unique visitors/day.
If I visit IPR, say, 8 times/day, where does it say that wouldn’t that register as 8 visits/day? Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just don’t see anything about *unique* IP addresses/day on the site. I’d like to be pointed to it, since you both have seen it and I’m missing it.
Unless I misunderstood how the sitemeter system works, if you visit IPR 8 times a day that would count as 8 page views but only one visit.
If it counts as eight visits, then what are page views?
I’m less clear on what happens if you come back the next day and still have the same IP. When it compiles page views per month, does it count you as a separate visit for every day you go to IPR? I think so, since the sum of the page views for all the days adds up to about the same as the page views for the month. But I haven’t added it up to see if it is exactly the same. It may just be that the number of people who visit more than one day a month is such a small fraction of the overall visits that it looks roughly the same.
Also, you may be correct: it may be that you count as a separate “visit” if you close the tab or window with IPR in it and then re-open it later the same day. That’s not how I’ve understood it up til now, but it may be that is what it is.
Even if so, I don’t think it would make a major difference in how many unique visitors per day we have. The vast majority of our visitors read one or perhaps 2-3 stories and don’t come back the same day.
The number of regular readers is probably a good deal higher than the number of people who comment (I have had a number of people tell me they read but don’t comment, and it’s not like I’ve met all the people who read IPR), but it’s nowhere near the number of casual/one-time readers.
All this quibbling about stats aside, Dr. Lieberman’s original point is valid:
How about learning how to get yourself interviewed by national cable TV networks and nationally syndicated radio talk show hosts, and then go out and promote your left-libertarian viewpoints in those media? That way, Mr. Root would not have a monopoly on being the “Most Visible Spokesperson” for the Libertarian Party.
I’ve been saying this for a while, even though for a variety of reasons I’m not the guy to take on that role. It remains true regardless of whether 10,000, or 300,000 people a year visit IPR. He’s also correct when he says,
I won’t say that your inability to get yourselves elected to Congress is BECA– USE of your left-libertarian philosophy. But – not being willing to learn how to get yourselves elected to even dog catcher type positions means that no one except us political junkies will ever get to read or hear about your left-libertarian views. If you start out at the local level, and work your way up to Congress, you will then have a national platform to espouse your left-libertarian viewpoint.
Again, I’m not the guy to take on the candidate role, although I am willing, able and have worked hard on behalf of candidates – sometimes for pay, sometimes as a volunteer.
The only place I can quibble with his statement is,
So – I have given all of you TWO ways to compete with Mr. Root: get into the national media, or get elected to public office.
In point of fact, Mr. Root has, to my knowledge, not been elected to any external public office either, although now he has at least been elected to internal office. But I understand that the overall point is still valid: if some of us get elected to office, we’ll have a more legitimate platform to spread our opinions both inside and outside the LP.
I think that the major points Dr. Lieberman made were accurate and important, and should not be lost in quibbling over stats.
Milnes: “If glbt vote is@5%, that could add 3% to the @40%.”
There’s no 40%, you nutcase. If you’re referring to the presidential election, the percentage of Libertarian + Green votes adds up to about 1% (except when Nader ran, in which case the sum was about 3%). In congressional elections, the sum is usually less than 10%. The percentage of Libertarian + Green votes is nowhere even close to the percentage of libertarian-leaning + progressive-leaning people in America. Dolt.
Paulie & Tom, thank you for your responses. Paulie, you didn’t need to copy all the graphs; the link works fine.
I’ll admit I don’t see anything about *unique* IP addresses/day on the site. I didn’t spend a lot of time looking for it, but I did look some. If I visit IPR, say, 8 times/day, where does it say that wouldn’t that register as 8 visits/day? Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just don’t see anything about *unique* IP addresses/day on the site. I’d like to be pointed to it, since you both have seen it and I’m missing it.
Root has hinted as much: http://carolmoorereport.blogspot.com/2010/06/wayne-root-shut-up-and-take-jewish.html
tms: They can’t say that openly, so they come up with rationales like “We’ll lose votes if we stand up for Muslims,”
me: Who has said this or anything like it? Or, is this (wild) overstatement for effect?
Root’s remarks are rather amazing. Whoever the perpetrators of 9/11, it wasn’t the Muslim faith or the Muslim religion. And Muslims have condemned these attacks as being contrary to their core beliefs and faith. This is guilt by association and has no place in libertarian philosophy or a free society. If “being an American” conflicts with that, maybe it’s time for a better look at what it means to “be an American.”
Although I do think Root’s priority is boosting his media punditry career, which means pleasing the neocon Fox News crowd, I’ve also always said that he does have some sincere beliefs.
I think Root sincerely hates Obama. Root sincerely wants to pay less taxes. And I suspect that Root sincerely wants to see the U.S. military kick the crap out of those “Islamo-facsist” nations. IOW, he’s a sincere neocon/liberventionist.
Of course, he lies about that whenever he wants something from LP peaceniks. He’ll claim to be a born again non-interventionist, for the moment, if he thinks it’ll get him needed delegate votes in an upcoming party election.
But I think that Root, and many of his supporters, are sincerely pro-war and anti-Muslim. They can’t say that openly, so they come up with rationales like “We’ll lose votes if we stand up for Muslims,” or “We’ll lose financial support if we oppose war on X nation.”
The LP has its “Vote Getter” faction. Then there are the War-Mongers who pretend to be Vote Getters, since the latter is more acceptable in the LP.
I don’t expect Root will apologize for his statement. I think he’s bursting to scream out statements that are even more extreme, aching to talk like Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, etc.
And when Root’s media punditry career is more secure, and he no longer needs the LP, he’ll drop the LP just like the space shuttle drops its booster rocket after the latter has served its purpose.
Then Root will take his place alongside Hannity, Savage, Beck, et al., misrepresenting libertarianism as just another neocon splinter group.
sc67, yes, Aaron seems to be finding an “out” for Root with that point. It really really really seems like a stretch to say that Cordoba amounts to establishing a religion in the US, since Islam is already quite established here.
If there is a suspicion that Cordoba is being funded by (let’s call it) dubious sources with nefarious motives, then there are two ways to address that: via the rule of law or using public opinion to pressure the planners of Cordoba to cease their plans.
Repeating the notion that it’s a “mosque” and that it’s being built on “hallowed” ground next to the WTC site diminishes the repeater of falsehoods. Not retracting those falsehoods FURTHER diminishes the repeater. We then have to question the credibility of the repeater, in this case Root.
Everyone makes mistakes. Not taking responsibility for those mistakes and making things right compounds the damage.
Memo to Root (and Starr): Look at the Tylenol/J&J as an example of the appropriate way to handle a mistake.
Man up!
Looks like a landslide to me.
If glbt vote is@5%, that could add 3% to the @40%. If women are 50%, that could add up to another 30%.- not likely though. But some of that 30%. Maybe another 3% so that puts a fusion PLAS ticket at 46% leaving the other 54% to the reactionaries-dems & reps to split 50/50= 27%. So PLAS/Fusion 46, dem 27, rep 27.
Tom, in addition to the progressive + libertarian vote, a radical fusion ticket might be able to “divide & conquer” the reactionary vote. e.g. appeal to the glbt vote & the womens’ vote.
gp61, when you are in your right mind, do you realize how non-responsive you are? You’ve ignored the point about racism entirely. You sidestep all the references to the fatwa being motivated in part by religious reasons, ascribing your interpretation to black-and-white words.
Attempting to clawback, you employ straw men. No one is disputing that US interventionist policy was a big factor in 9/11.
And we’re all still waiting for a lucid explanation for why you narced to the FEC.
No, you don’t “have” to. Nixon didn’t “have” to explain Watergate, either. He wrote books and attempted to burnish his reputation after leaving the WH. Yet, what’s he remembered for?
paulie @78:
That probably explains a bit. I’ve always found ‘Bama fans to be a lot more classy & cordial than Auburn fans. Auburn seems to be the Clemson of the state.
“I clicked on the link and checked out that site, but I can’t find where it says the visits are *unique* IP addresses.”
The “visits” are Sitemeter are unique on a daily basis.
So, if you had a thousand “visits” (as opposed to “page views”) in a day, they would all be from different IPs.
But you could have 30,000 “visits” in a month from those same 1,000 “daily unique” visitors.
Per sitemeter, IPR is averaging 1,651 visits — i.e. unique users — per day, and 5,361 page views per day.
My guess is that 1,500 of those daily visitors are coming in from search engines, etc. and visiting one page each, that another 100 are reading two or three stories, and that 50 users or so are visiting multiple stories multiple times a day to comment or read comments. So although the average page views per user is 3.x. the distribution is more like: A lot of people at 1 page view per day, a few people at 2-5 pages views per day, a handful of people at up to 50 page views per day.
BUT, in terms of unique IPs per year, that 1,400 or so who read a story each day are probably mostly a DIFFERENT 1,400 each day that happen to surf in off of Google News to read a story that caught their eyes. So I think we’re looking at 300k+ unique IPs per year, not 10k.
I suppose I didn’t think about my semi-hatred of Florida & Auburn, having gone to South Carolina
I went to Alabama, but I later lived in Auburn, so I became a lot more tolerant.
This month:
I clicked on the link and checked out that site, but I can’t find where it says the visits are *unique* IP addresses. I might be missing it though. From what I can tell, one IP address could log onto the site 100 times per month and be counted as 100 visits. That means the 1,500 per day figure is greatly exaggerated. Could you tell me where it says that each visit is a unique IP address?
There’s one measure of visits, which is unique IPs, and one measure of page views, which is how many different pages were loaded. Here’s how it breaks down:
I’m astounded at the number of so called “Libertarians” who buy into the official government approved conspiracy theory about 9/11. It is no wonder that the Libertarian Party doesn’t get anywhere.
paulie @71-72.
Hahahahaha. Although Auburn = gross (I suppose I didn’t think about my semi-hatred of Florida & Auburn, having gone to South Carolina).
Paulie: “About 1,500 unique IPs per day on average at present.”
I clicked on the link and checked out that site, but I can’t find where it says the visits are *unique* IP addresses. I might be missing it though. From what I can tell, one IP address could log onto the site 100 times per month and be counted as 100 visits. That means the 1,500 per day figure is greatly exaggerated. Could you tell me where it says that each visit is a unique IP address?
Snooki would be a fine choice, especially if we can pair her with Stan Jones.
Jones-Snooki ’24, a P*LAS ticket I can vote for
*Polizzi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Polizzi
This one has both orange and blue covered….
@69:
Snooki would be a fine choice, especially if we can pair her with Stan Jones. Orange & Blue people of the world unite!
I’ve seen Mel Gibson’s mug on the tube a lot lately. Maybe Wes Benedict should call him up and see if he’s interested in speaking for the LP. After all, he gets into the national media a lot, right? Or maybe you could get Joren van der Sloot. Or “Snooki.”
I vote for Snooki.
This blog is read by what, maybe 10,000 unique IP addresses per year?
About 1,500 unique IPs per day on average at present. I’m not sure how many unique per year. For the following, I don’t know whether the same IP returning the next day is measured separately or not:
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s48indpolrep&r=33
Aaron Starr @36 writes, in defense of Wayne Allyn Root’s suggestion that a mosque (actually a cultural center) at “ground zero” (actually a couple blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center) might be unconstitutional if “sponsored” by a “foreign” government:
“I’m not persuaded that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit a foreign government from establishing a religion in this country. However, I can easily imagine being persuaded that one government can within its territorial borders limit the activities of a foreign government.”
Aaron, of course one government often *can* limit the activities of other governments within the territory it controls. I assume you meant not “can”, but “should be able to”.
But even with the more meaningful “should be able to” phrasing substituted, your statement still fails to tell us anything particularly meaningful.
There are some activities — for instance, murdering random people — that virtually any non-anarchist would agree a government should have the power to limit within the territory it controls, whether they are carried out by individuals or by other governments.
What would make more sense for you and Wayne to address is when, if ever, you believe the U.S. government has, or should have, the power to restrict other governments from engaging in activities within the United States that are legal for U.S.-based individuals or organizations to engage in.
I’m sure Catholics will also be interested to know when you make up your mind about the question* of whether the U.S. government has the legitimate power to prevent their churches from being built in this country.
(*Raised by Thomas Knapp via Paulie @19 and taken a pass on by Aaron @24)
Tom, another way of sayinbg this is: The radicals are too good for their own good. By refusing to be vp on Barr’s ticket, Ruwart & radicals are saying they will not because it is not “pure” i.e. a radical/radical ticket. So, in effect they are also saying if Gravel had won the nomination, again Ruwart & radicals would not accept vp position on the ground it also would not be “pure” i.e. Gravel is not a radical but rather a progressive. YET, this flies in the face of my claim that this particular type of ticket-progressive/libertarian is a FUSION type ticket. Having a great potential as vote getter & possible close plurality victory in what would then become a 3 way race.
@61 It appears there were specific reasons for issuing the fatwa, however the call was to all Muslims to kill Americans and their allies wherever they may be found. I suspect the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks did what they did in response to the fatwa in the defense of Islam, but I may be incorrect.
What is not heard very often in mass media are voices in the Muslim community who disagree with the fatwa. It seems that is what this cultural center would be doing.
I can see why the knee-jerk reaction would be to be suspicious of Islam and the motives of its practitioners, but to oppose the center would be to draw the hard lines of division rather than extend the hand of reconciliation. I don’t think there is any harm in muzzling the dogs of war at this point. The alternative is perpetual warfare.
@61
It’s not racist to criticize or even hate a specific religion. Methinks you Libertarians have gone off the deep end with your liberal use of the word “racist”.
Getting electedgetting media=Catch 22.
Getting significant polling will get MSM attention. i.e. mximizing & ADDING LP + GP bloc votes.
Insteaad of minimizing & subtracting them.
Tom@59, LOL.
But the Dr. has a point.
& I have elaborated with you about a Strtegy to get elected to which you scoff.
Ever think maybe YOU are not perfect either?
Bin Laden is not even a sect; he is approximately as representative of Islam as Mr. Phelps is representative of Christianity. Bin Laden’s references to Islam are sort of like American WW2 references to apple pie; they were somewhat independent of the war aims.
@55
Apparently there is some challenge though you have the quotes that prove my point, namely the issues are
The United States is occupying the Holy Land (Saudi Arabia)
The United States is continuing the Bush war crimes campaign against Iraq
The United States is supporting the Israelis
Those are political issues, they are concrete rather than religious, and they are not the nebulous ‘for Islam’ claim that our party’s racists are advocating were the basis of the 9/11 attack.
TK @53 & RC@57:
I assume that was only on the LRC main page, because I’ve seen nothing of it on the blog (I only read the blog, but it’s possible I missed it). I’m with RC in that the lack of mention among the regular bloggers is disappointing.
Props to Raimondo for saying something though.
Dr. Lieberman,
You write:
This blog is read by what, maybe 10,000 unique IP addresses per year?”
My guess, based on Sitemeter numbers, would be more along the lines of 300,00, as the bulk of its traffic comes via Google News and is likely “one hit, see if the story is interesting, never visit the site again.”
Its frequent traffic, probably from 50-100 unique IPs on a regular basis.
I don’t know that anyone here has a desire to “compete” with Root in the sense of positioning himself or herself as de facto spokesperson for the LP. The point is not that Alternative X would be a better spokesperson, the point is that Root is an exceedingly damaging spokesperson.
I’ve seen Mel Gibson’s mug on the tube a lot lately. Maybe Wes Benedict should call him up and see if he’s interested in speaking for the LP. After all, he gets into the national media a lot, right? Or maybe you could get Joren van der Sloot. Or “Snooki.”
This blog is read by what, maybe 10,000 unique IP addresses per year? How about learning how to get yourself interviewed by national cable TV networks and nationally syndicated radio talk show hosts, and then go out and promote your left-libertarian viewpoints in those media? That way, Mr. Root would not have a monopoly on being the “Most Visible Spokesperson” for the Libertarian Party.
I won’t say that your inability to get yourselves elected to Congress is BECA– USE of your left-libertarian philosophy. But – not being willing to learn how to get yourselves elected to even dog catcher type positions means that no one except us political junkies will ever get to read or hear about your left-libertarian views. If you start out at the local level, and work your way up to Congress, you will then have a national platform to espouse your left-libertarian viewpoint.
So – I have given all of you TWO ways to compete with Mr. Root: get into the national media, or get elected to public office.
tk 53, thanks, though I don’t consider Raimondo quite in the LRC crowd, although they do refer to him on the blog and post his essays. For me, the LRC crowd is its regular bloggers.
Perhaps we need to break things down a bit more…
GP’s accusation: That’s racists like Dan Wiener, with his claim that the attack on the World Trade Center was done in the name of Islam.
Fatwa: …and in compliance with Allah’s order…
…The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip…
…fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together …
George, we really can’t know what’s going on with you. I’d be very surprised if a non-associated third-party observer would find your accusations wild and possibly out of control.
So, before you label someone a “racist,” or some other hateful label, consider putting it aside for a day, even an hour.
Time often does heal wounds.
@54 I thought the 1998 fatwa by bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri and others mentioned three things; the support of Israel, the presence of foreign military bases in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, and the enforced embargo on Iraq. I don’t know if the group called al-qaeda was using that fatwa or something else to justify their actions. This from the English translation of the fatwa I have:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
…
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million… despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
…
Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.
…
On that basis, and in compliance with Allah’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, “and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah.”
It seems to me thems fightin’ words. And fighting for the defense of Islam at that.
@51
You have many strange impressions.
Mr Bin Laden made, time and time again, statements of the explicit political objectives of the attack, which had nothing to do with a hatred of western culture. His objective was ending American intervention in foreign countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
Bob,
While LewRockwell.Com doesn’t seem to be taking up the matter as a primary focus, they’ve not been silent on it.
pc: I think they [the Rockwell crowd] see federal interference as worse than any tyranny by individual states. That does not mean that they approve of tyranny by states.
me: Fair, I think. They do seem to spend a lot of time on their technical, legalistic take on federalism and almost none on the tyranny of the states.
It’s interesting to me that they defended the Kelo outcome quite a bit and remained apparently silent on Cordoba. I’d be interested to know why that’s the case. One explanation is that it’s not gone to the Supremes.
gp: That’s racists like Dan Wiener, with his claim that the attack on the World Trade Center was done in the name of Islam.
me: I don’t know DW, but you might consider explaining this charge to those of us less in tune with the motives of the 9/11 terrorists. I was under the impression that the terrorists’ version of a religious-motive was part of their intent, along with a hatred for the western world’s culture.
You might also clarify what you mean by “racist,” since at least technically my understanding is that Middle Easterners and Europeans are considered to be of the same race.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
No, I haven’t. Honestly, IPR has been keeping me pretty busy, so I spend a lot less of my online time reading articles unrelated to alternative parties and independent candidates than I used to.
I think they see federal interference as worse than any tyranny by individual states. That does not mean that they approve of tyranny by states.
For example, would you want to give the UN the power to decide whether the US or its states are correctly providing for liberty and justice?
I think the point the Rockwell crowd makes here is that by giving the federal government the power to stop states from doing bad things, you also give the federal government the power to do worse things, and that on balance we are best off keeping government as local as possible.
That’s not the same thing as approving of eminent domain abuse per se.
Saying that Muslims attacked the world trade center, because the Al Qaida air pirates were Islamites, is like saying that Christians habitually lynch African-Americans, on the grounds that the KKK members staging those lynchings were members of a Christian Church.
It’s total nonsense
The people who are attacking the building of the community center are racist bigots. They are using the last refuge of the Bush Republican Party of Bigots, namely whipping up race hatred against a minority group. Libertarian Party members across America should feel disgraced that their National Committee is being over-run by these racists.
That’s racists like Wayne Root — see his post above
That’s racists like Dan Wiener, with his claim that the attack on the World Trade Center was done in the name of Islam.
That’s racists like National Secretary Alicia Mattson, with the blood libels against Islam of her message to the LNC:
From: agmattson@gmail.com
To: LNC-Discuss@hq.lp.org
Subj: Re: [Lnc-discuss] [APRC] proposed Intern Blog: Build the Islamic Cultural Center!
I must echo the complaints of my colleagues on this, and I’ll re-emphasize a couple of points.
While I agree with the freedom of religion and property rights aspects of the article, I strongly object to the LP website declaring that “Islam by principle is not an extremist religion…”
Do any of us deny that there ARE fundamentalist Islamic sects that are extremist, advocate and carry out terrorism, and randomly murder innocent people??? Not all Muslims do those things, but let’s not pretend the extremists don’t exist.
It was poor judgment to post this blog entry, and it harms the LP for this to continue to exist on our website.
I ask that our chairman direct staff to remove this article from our website.
-Alicia
RC @46:
I haven’t seen anything from the LRC blog, which is sad. I wasn’t even aware of their take on the Kelo decision, because I rarely read LRC until the past year or so (when I began reading all sorts of places, including ideologically extreme places such as DailyKos and RedState).
I suppose their inaction on this issue, coupled with what you’ve said of their Kelo stance, should be a severe disappointment. Part of the reason I’ve stayed away from Lew in general is his association with the Ron Paul Newletter race-baiting strategy of the late 80s/early 90s and the people I’ve met who’ve worked with him. The ’08 Ron Paul campaign was a real eye opener for me, as I was in South Carolina at the time. I thought it both shocking and horrifying that the state’s campaign director and much of the LRC crowd thought it perfectly acceptable to spend most of their energy seeking the League of the South endorsement.
Hi Aaron @18 –
Thanks for the catch on my spelling. I am often a victim of Muphry’s Law (and no, that’s not a typo!) 🙂
You are also correct that Mr. Root doesn’t refer here to government action. I apologize for that error.
As to foreign governments owning property, it’s not an issue. The Islamic Saudi Academy has been operating in the DC area for many years, and is funded by the Saudi government. I’m sure this isn’t the only example. As to foreign governments funding houses of worship, it doesn’t matter as it’s not a mosque, no matter how many times other people say so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Saudi_Academy
Has anyone seen whether the Rockwell crowd has opined on Cordoba? I’d guess they’d be opposed to applying the Constitution to the matter, since this — for them — would be a “states’ rights” issue, like Kelo.
If I get their “pure” L take correctly, states like NY could discriminate based on religion and could take private property without federal interference. (I’ve never been clear on whether they think NY [or CT in the Kelo case] should not do so or not. I guess they think NY insurance companies would decide that….) 😉
Aaron Starr: ““When [Root] writes about ‘the issue of allowing a mosque to be built’ he makes it pretty darn clear later on that he’s writing about private non-coercive means to achieve that aim.”
Even you were to find a “libertarian loophole” to justify Root’s statement, it’s still hate.
By your logic, if a neo-Nazi were to advocate “private non-coercive means” to prevent a synagogue from being built, it could also be justified as within the bounds of libertarian action. But it would still be hate.
Yes, haters too have rights. Nazis, Islamophobes, KKK, etc. But the LP should not elect or appoint such people to high party office.
“When he writes about ‘the issue of allowing a mosque to be built’ he makes it pretty darn clear later on that he’s writing about private non-coercive means to achieve that aim.”
Why would anyone waste their time on something that is so moronic?
Aaron @ 38: No, that isn’t clear, and it sounds to me like you’re the one who’s reaching.
Aaron Starr wrote (@37):
You seem to be implicitly nitpicking what I said, though you never explicitly said I was wrong and your statement above was factually correct.
To clarify, we are both right. I said there were two states with state religions at the time of passage of the 1st amendment (I should have said ratification), not the time of the country’s founding. Massachusetts and Connecticut had state religions then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion#United_States_of_America
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state_in_the_United_States#Tabular_Summary
Tom @ 39
Sorry, but you’re reaching.
If Congress wanted to establish and underwrite a national religion I could easily imagine being opposed to it on Constitutional grounds.
It seems pretty clear to me after reading up on the subject that the First and Fourteenth Amendments do not apply to a foreign government, but I’m simply not offended that someone is positing that an activity might be prohibited by the Constitution.
Wayne Root makes it absolutely clear that private individuals and organizations have the right to build houses of worship.
I still think that the more interesting Constitutional question involves whether Congress has the legal power to require a treaty before a foreign government can own any property in the United States.
[Ran across this item on the web! – Chuck]
“IMAM” BLOOMBERG & GROUND ZERO
Mayor “Napoleon” Bloomberg and his backstabbing cronies must have a $tupendou$ rea$on which they can’t reveal for wanting a sharia-hugging mosque near Ground Zero!
But the sharia “cobra” they’re toying with can quickly grow its fangs and then say “Smile, you’re on Candid Scimitar and will soon be buried in a scimitary, ha ha ha!” – proving that one good backstabbing deserves another!
God-haters and America-haters may not realize how high the collective temperature has now risen in the hearts of true American patriots – many of whom are now willing to die for America right here in America if they get pushed completely over the line!
Since the nation’s headquarters for treason is the White House, readers can enjoy related material if they Google “Obama Avoids Bible Verses” & “Obama Supports Public Depravity” and also Google “Sandra Bernhard, Larry David, Kathy Griffin, Bill Maher, Sarah Silverman” in addition to Googling “Obama…destined to become a black-slavery avenger.”
And by all means visit Googleland and type in “Government-Approved Illegals” and “Un-Americans Fight Franklin Graham.”
I hope Mayor Bloomberg, dressed as Napoleon, will thoroughly enjoy his mosquerade party!
PS – Since Jane Fonda still loves leftist causes, here’s a one-liner I penned during the Vietnam War era that the big Kansas City paper ran: “I’m not Fonda Jane; her Laosy remarks Hanoi me!”
PPS – Interestingly, many conservative evangelicals have lately given up belief in a “pretribulation rapture” (the 180-year-old, fringe-British-invented, escapist-and-thus-subversive theological aberration behind the rapture bestsellers by Lindsey, LaHaye etc.) and now believe they will be on earth, standing against evil, during at least a portion of Antichrist’s diabolical reign. Widely read Google articles like “Pretrib Rapture – Hidden Facts,” “Pretrib Rapture Secrecy” and “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty” have helped to bring about this “pretrib” mutiny.
A Kansas Patriot
Aaron @ 30,
Here’s the quote from Root’s op-ed:
“If it turns out that this project is sponsored by a foreign government — either directly or through a state-sponsored organization that engages in terrorism — than the idea of this being an issue of religious freedom is a sham and an argument can be made that our Constitution would actually prohibit this mosque from being built.”
Root does not explicitly call for a government investigation t
But, when someone poses an “if,” it’s reasonable to suppose that they want that “if” clarified one way or the other.
And if someone who frequently holds up the Constitution as the standard of government conduct, it’s reasonable to suppose that when they posit that Activity X may be unconstitutional, they’ll want it stopped if it is, indeed, unconstitutional.
Alan @ 33
I’m sorry, but I think it’s a reach to come to that conclusion about his thoughts here.
Could he have written this article more clearly? Absolutely.
But there are just too many places in his piece where he is specific about private individuals and organizations having the right to build houses of worship for me to draw the conclusion that you make here.
When he writes about “the issue of allowing a mosque to be built” he makes it pretty darn clear later on that he’s writing about private non-coercive means to achieve that aim.
Chuck @ 34
From what I read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Establishment_Clause_of_the_First_Amendment
It appears that at least six states had established religions at the founding of the country.
@28
Bob, just so I’m clear, I’m not persuaded that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit a foreign government from establishing a religion in this country.
However, I can easily imagine being persuaded that one government can within its territorial borders limit the activities of a foreign government.
It’s worth mentioning (and I’m surprised nobody has) that the rationale behind Muslims building the Cordoba Center and Muslims being involved with 9/11 is the same rationale that led to the internment of the Japanese during WWII, and the harassment of German Americans from 1914-1945.
Massachusetts and Connecticut had state religions at the time the 1st amendment was passed. The 14th amendment incorporated it to the states through the privileges & immunities clause. Nothing binds foreign governments.
Aaron @ 18: “I’ve read this piece several times and I do not find anywhere that Wayne Root states that the government should prohibit private individuals from building a mosque near Ground Zero.”
Me: He certainly implied that in his 1st paragraph: “The issue of allowing a mosque to be built in the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist tragedy is one of those times. ” Wayne clearly does not understand – or simply doesn’t agree with – the principle that private property owners should be able to do what they want with their land, within the limits of their purchase contracts (since the City of Houston, etc. allows citizens to regulate land use by voluntary deed restrictions rather than coercive zoning laws). Aside from enforcing contracts, the government should not have the power to “allow” OR “disallow” private owners from building a cultural center on private property.
Wayne: “I support religious freedom, as all Americans should. But this is not a case of religious freedom.”
Me: Correct, this is a simple case of property rights. And I have no use for anyone who pretends to speak for libertarians out one side of their mouth, while implying out the other side that the free exercise of their property rights should be denied. That’s not just a denial of libertarian principles, that’s a denial of conservative values as well. As such, it would make more sense if it came from a DEMOCRAT (or worse).
First off, Islam is violent ludditism, violent unreason, and dictatorship, combined. Agreed? Good. If you don’t agree with this premise, look up how coed schools and women’s rights have fared under the Taliban. This point should be fairly uncontroversial among those who keep up on current events and hold reason as their standard of argument.
Now then, the question —in my opinion— is this: is islam impotent (like the KKK) or is it dangerous (like suicide bombers are to Israel)? Or is it somewhere in between, depending on how much one-sided legitimacy and respect we afford it? (I say one-sided, because it’s clear that they do not respect women’s rights, gay rights, the right of speech, or individual rights of any kind.)
Let’s imagine that we’re engaged in fighting WWII, and the nazis want to build an “educational center” that “explans why the Jews and ‘mud races’ are the cause of the world’s problems”, and imagine that they just purchased the land for this purpose two blocks from Pearl Harbor.
…I don’t think that that would be tolerated, by the government, or the private residents nearby.
I also have to say that I kind of think that’s a good thing, regardless of which group (private citizens or government) prevents it. Obviously, in this case, there are several ways it could play out, the weakest of which is the government using obscure zoning regulations to deny their rights without giving a reason why. That would apply the obscure zoning regulations to all Americans, weakening individual freedom.
Since our government never declared war on state-financed religious tyranny, I don’t think there will be a rational solution to this problem (but I can hope).
Islam violently conflicts with property rights. Not only does islam advocate against property rights (and in favor of changing the whole world into backwardistan), they advocate doing that with violence. I guess that I think that if there’s a serious threat of that happening, then I think that those who advocate such serious and legitimate threats be deligitimized (in short, that their “universal property rights” —that they themselves advocate against!— not be respected).
Now, I don’t think that backwardistan poses a serious threat to the USA, …from backwardistan (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia). But what if backwardistan came over here, and began gaining a real foothold?
Then, I’d have to agree with George Carlin: We should defeat them, and survive, because otherwise, IPR won’t be allowed to continue as a place that can criticize islam. IPR would continue, but those critical of islam would be silenced for fear of a fatwa.
When messages of mindless hatred and violence are tolerated and treated as legitimate, they are taken up and implemented by people who lack a coherent philosophy. Since the government youth propaganda camps have eliminated philosophy and history from their miseducation and indoctrination system, even an enemy as impotent as islam is a threat to our existence.
That may be tragic, but I’m not willing to exchange my lifestyle for that of the one offered by islam just yet.
That’s the promise of a mosque/”bad meme distribution center” next to the site of victims created by mosques/”bad memes” (and synagogues and churches are the same thing, and have arguably degraded America equally, since America has really thrown out the separation of church and state. The only blessing is that the churches themselves don’t advocate violence directly). The only difference is that the synagogues and churches don’t loudly proclaim the right to directly use force, while islam does. This is the key difference between islam and christianity and judaism. All are equally banal, incorrect, and insane, but not all are equally dangerous.
…But islam states that the primates whose minds are contaminated with its message should engage in direct violence against any primate that remains uncontaminated. In short: islam understands the economics of disincentives acting among cowards and the criminally insane. The criminally insane will act, and the cowards will retreat.
I see nothing wrong with making a clear value judgment against it.
In fact, doing so might pressure our own government to separate itself further from the unreason of the other bad memes (religions like judaism, christianity, voodoo, etc…). This would be a good thing.
Also, this shift in thinking might help end the central bankers’ socialist pet projects that help keep us all hopelessly enslaved and victimized (drug and gun prohibition, FDA regulation, etc…).
As anyone who has been around politicians knows, the politicians all unite to save central banking, over all else. All the other bad ideas of government make little difference from one parasite to the next. But the power structure depends on the elimination of free markets that result from competition among banking. Such competition would usher in a new golden era of unlimited competition and productivity, which is why we are endlessly diverted with production-wasting unwinnable ‘wars’.
But treating war as a “make work” past time is not wise when it comes to life and death. Religion is so death-oriented (all churches continually battle life-extension, for instance, because they favor death and the imaginary “afterlife”) that it forms a “black box” in people’s minds. Everything that that person doesn’t understand, yet still has a strongly held emotional opinion on is placed into that “black box”.
Property rights are a mechanism for providing life under a wide variety of situations, but not all situations.
When a system stagnates by offering false property rights, it so weakens the system that it can fail from external attack and infiltration.
We are now so weakened that we are at that stage of the struggle.
Therefore, I suggest that we correct our path. We need to elect atheist libertarians to office who will eliminate unreason from our government. We need to define our external enemies. Then, we need to eliminate all interference with property rights at the individual level, for those who are not enemy combatants and sympathizers with enemy combatants.
But we cannot do that, if we are dead. So, first thing’s first: islam is clearly a menace, and cannot stand, if it becomes successful. We know the result of it becoming successful. Right now, it is not taken seriously. It becomes taken seriously only through threats and violence, killing those who oppose it, in backwards areas of the world where its opponents are not free to argue against it without threat of retaliation. New York and Chicago are now such areas, since they disallow the right to self-defense. This makes those who speak out against islam equally at risk as those who speak out against a public stoning in Kurdistan.
Now, let’s address the 9-11 truth movement. The truth movement appears to have some legitimate claims, and our government refuses to answer them, meaning that it cannot call itself an open and transparent democracy. Let’s say that muslims either worked in concert with our government or zionists within it in order to generate pro-war sentiment (possibly) or that they had nothing to do with the attacks (in my opinion, an overly generous assumption, but also possible).
Would a backlash in favor of violent islam then be justified? No. It would only be a second parasitic and destructive force directed at destroying America. …And this is the best case scenario for islam.
Paulie: If and when, and wherever, it can be proven that ANY church finances operations against American freedom with foreign money, that church should be considered to be comprised of enemy combatants, and charged with violating individual rights via treasonous legislation. The government is not capable of making this judgment. They lack the knowledge and philosophy to make this possible. This is the domain of the private citizenry entirely, and it is why revolutions against theocracy are fought.
Likely the institutions are too large to be battled using legal means, but maybe Hitchens will manage it (arresting the Pope in the UK, for instance). I hope he does.
Anything that can be done to call attention to the illegitimacy of all religion should be done. In the case of openly violent religions like islam, they should be treated with the same contempt one treats the criminally insane –not with respect, as George Bush and Barack Obama have repeatedly made the mistake of doing.
As an individual, if someone tells me they don’t believe that I have any property rights, and that they intend to act on that belief, then I am perfectly justified in shooting them, should their threat be realistic.
Example:
1) A radical muslim tells me he believes I have no right to live, and that I should be beheaded, in a public place, where I and everyone else have my gun rights. I and others laugh at him and insult him, as he rightly deserves.
2) A radical muslim tells me he believes I have no right to live, and that I should be beheaded, in a public place, where I and everyone else have no gun rights, under the law. I laugh at him, and a crowd of people begins defending him, and a bottle flies at me and misses. He takes a step toward me.
In situation #2, he’s not just a lone ignorant bigot with demented ideas. He’s a direct threat to my life, a threat that openly intends to encourage an unthinking mob of low-level intelligences to murder me.
Do I, in that situation, or does a teenage girl about to be stoned for “infidelity” in a similar situation have a right to self defense? Yes. But at that point in time, it’s too late, and those people die, and their rights are forever violated, and history chalks them up on the silent side of the ledger.
Well, I think we have an interest in acting before that point.
The USA has surrendered its individual freedom, property rights, and rightful standard of living that depends on both of those things. It’s gone. And it’s not coming back unless we bring it back.
This makes the USA a lawless country.
And in a lawless country, where there is only security and semi-freedom by default and expectation, anything can happen.
I encourage libertarians to adopt this worldview that places philosophy on equal importance with political result. Our enemies have long adopted this “zero sum game” approach, and they defeat us continually, because we look at politics as a hobby to be pursued immediately prior to election time. They, on the other hand, are content to murder us, and steal our life’s wealth, one at a time, in an uncaring political climate.
That’s what the IRS, DEA, BATFE, etc… are for.
Adding radical islam to that is simply like adding one more giant gang to the equation, and a particularly violent and insane one at that. If I see their colors near the location of their last 3,000 victims, it’s naturally going to arouse my contempt, and rightly so. If I see their colors near the location of their last 3,000 openly-adopted victims (assuming the 9-11 truth movement is 100% correct), it’s naturally going to arouse my contempt, and rightly so.
Either way, slash the gordian knot, and understand that this picture is reprehensible.
I do agree that, failing to prohibit the building of this bad meme generator near ground zero for legitimate reasons, it should be allowed, but vigorously protested to the maximum possible extent, short of initiating force, but certainly not short of responding to violence with self-defense.
This is a bunch of irrational, emotional idiocy.
First off, anyone who believes the official government story about 9/11 is rube. All of the evidence points to 9/11 having been an inside job.
Second of all, there are concepts such as freedom of religion, freedom of association, and property rights. Perhaps these are new concepts to some of you people, but they are essential elements of a free society.
@ 28
Root’s argument that “the government must look into the funding of this house of worship – there may be foreign money involved”
Bob, I’m looking for the quoted part and I don’t see it in this piece. Where is it?
In re my post at #22, I forgot to mention the Sikh Center closeby to me on Preuss Rd. Lots of them are libertarians!
Libertarians purport to believe that the Bill of Rights is meant to RESTRAIN the Federal government.
Root’s argument that “the government must look into the funding of this house of worship – there may be foreign money involved” is actually using the 1st Amendment to argue for INCREASING state power. A new low for libertarianism. (Want more time to think about that argument, Aaron?)
Remember when the LP referred to itself as the “Party of Principle?” Seems like a million years ago.
Perhaps Root and his supporters need to hear Thomas Jefferson’s ideas on Muslims’ rights in America:
“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it would read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;’ the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
Aaron Starr: “the United States or any state of the union is prohibited from constructing a church or establishing a religion….. I’ve never before heard anyone speculate as to whether a foreign government could do in the United States what our own governments cannot do.”
Not comparable. The Constitution forbids the state — which has the monopoly power of force — from favoring one religion over another, or from pressuring people to favor one religion over another.
Foreign governments have no such power to pressure or force people to favor one religion over another.
There’s a Korean Buddhist center near where I live. It may be that it was partially funded by Korean money. So what?
Although money generally flows from American Jews to Israel, it may be that some Jewish centers in American were partially funded with Israeli money. So what?
I’m sure money often flows back and forth from American and foreign Catholic sources, including the Vatican. I’m Catholic, and I’ve contributed to foreign missions. So what?
Aaron, I think you’re too smart to actually believe your own suggestion. But you’re a loyal Root supporter, always there to clean up his mess, I’ll give you that.
And you’re better at defending Root than is Eric Dondero or Bruce Cohen, who make more of a mess than they clean up.
@20
“It’s never crossed 99.999% of Americans’ minds, and of the remaining 0.001% who have entertained, 99.999% of them have dismissed it as too bizarre to waste time on.”
300,000,000 Americans multiplied by 0.001% is 3,000 Americans.
3,000 Americans multiplied by 0.001% is 0.03 Americans.
🙂
@ 19
I haven’t formulated an opinion on this yet.
Here is what Wikipedia has on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
“The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment refers to the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. Together with the Free Exercise Clause (“… or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”), these two clauses make up what are commonly said as the “religion clauses” of the First Amendment.
The establishment clause has generally been interpreted to prohibit 1) the establishment of a national religion by Congress, or 2) the preference of one religion over another. The first approach is called the “separation” or “no aid” interpretation, while the second approach is called the “non-preferential” or “accommodation” interpretation. The accommodation interpretation prohibits Congress from preferring one religion over another, but does not prohibit the government’s entry into religious domain to make accommodations in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause.
The clause itself was seen as a reaction to the Church of England, established as the official church of England and some of the colonies, during the colonial era.”
It writes further on how the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the First Amendment to apply to the States.
From what I can see, there is no mention of other governments, so my initial reaction is that the First and Fourteenth Amendments do not prohibit foreign governments from establishing a religion or owning a house of worship in the United States.
There was some controversy a few years back when the United Arab Emirates-owned company Dubai Ports World purchased a company that ran U.S. ports. They were eventually pressured to sell the U.S. operations to an American company.
Unlike individuals, governments do not have property rights, per se. Governments have powers, not rights.
It might be interesting to ask someone with more of a background in Constitutional law as to whether Congress has the legal power to require a treaty before a foreign government can own any property in the United States.
Anyway, as I wrote earlier, I have yet to formulate an opinion.
@18…ATROSITY is wrong…If you are going to use this in all caps…it should be spelled correctly.
And I still think WAR is an IDIOT for this type of BS.
Wayne Root is an albatross around the neck of the LP. Leonard Peikoff, who is even worse than Root on the phony “issue” of Cordoba House, is an albatross around the neck of the Freedom Movement in general, but he at least has the decency to deny to denounce libertarianism. Thank you, Leonard! It’s great to have an enemy like you!
Aaron, my neighborhood has everything from Mexican Pentecostal churches to St. Augustine’s Catholic Church to Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Synagogues to the King Fahd Mosque. (BTW, a “libertarian” who shall not be named was convicted of conspiring to bomb the mosque.)
I have no idea where their money comes from, nor is it any of my business, but I kinda suspect that Roman money is going to St. Augustine’s and Saudi money is going to King Fahd’s. But I know of no requirement that houses of worship report to government where their money comes from. If our government can really prohibit foreign governments from contributing to houses of worship in the U.S., shouldn’t they be required to report? Inquiring minds want to know.
“Few people would disagree that the United States or any state of the union is prohibited from constructing a church or establishing a religion.”
Actually, a lot of people disagree with that. For example, the entire religious membership of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, whose on-base churches are built by the government of the United States.
What the Constitution prohibits is CONGRESS (not the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Knesset or the Diet) making any law “respecting an establishment religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The reason you’ve never heard anyone speculate as to whether or not the Constitution could conceivably prohibit the construction of an Islamic cultural center is because it’s among the fucking stupidest ideas in the history of human thought. It’s never crossed 99.999% of Americans’ minds, and of the remaining 0.001% who have entertained, 99.999% of them have dismissed it as too bizarre to waste time on.
Aaron, interesting point. Tom Knapp addressed it in another thread by pointing to the connection between Vatican City, which is a foreign government, and the Catholic Church, as well as between the Anglican Church and the government of the UK.
Are you and/or Wayne saying that Catholic and Anglican churches could be banned in the USA?
@1
“2) That’s not how you spell “atrocity”.”
When I type “atrosity” in Word, my spell-checker catches it. However, when I type “ATROSITY” in capital letters for some reason Word does not detect the error. I can easily imagine myself making this mistake.
“3) The government refusing to allow owners of private property to do things that they do allow other similarly situated owners to do solely because of their religon is religous discrimination, by definition. It is wrong.”
You misspelled “religion” and “religious” – you’re missing the second “i” in each word.
But let’s deal with the substance of your third point, rather than the misspelled words.
I’ve read this piece several times and I do not find anywhere that Wayne Root states that the government should prohibit private individuals from building a mosque near Ground Zero.
He simply has a personal opinion that doing so is inconsiderate and disrespectful — his opinion, not mine.
He then describes what private individuals can do to prevent what he views to be a personal affront without violating anyone’s Constitutional rights (i.e. protesting, pressuring the owners not to sell the property, buying the property in a private transaction, etc.).
The most interesting part of this piece — interesting to me, at least — is Wayne Root’s discussion about separation of Church and State.
Few people would disagree that the United States or any state of the union is prohibited from constructing a church or establishing a religion.
I’ve never before heard anyone speculate as to whether a foreign government could do in the United States what our own governments cannot do. I suspect Wayne Root is right, but I would need to ponder that a bit.
I like Wayne Allyn Root and his energetic efforts to boost the Libertarian Party, but on this matter I don’t agree with him. Just because some Islamic people perpetrated 9/11 does not mean that the Muslim religion is responsible and that a mosque near the site in New York will be some travesty. Wayne, you need to step back and reconsider your statements in your article.
9/11 was an inside job. Anyone who doesn’t have their head shoved up their ass knows this.
Sh*t like this makes me wish there was a ‘center-left’ libertarian party. If the LP’s going to be irrelevant until the layers of corruption are undone anyway (ballot access, debate access, plurality voting, single-member districts, gerrymandering, etc.), I’d like there to at least be a party that consistently stands on principle. Efforts like this by WAR only smear what’s left of libertarianism’s semi-good name. Beck, Palin, etc. are doing a good job of burying it too.
If I’m going to stick with a third party through thick and thin, I’d at least like it to be represented well. If WAR becomes any more influential, compromising Ls may well be better off joining the Republicans or Democrats, as the LP would wind up only marginally different than them though with considerably less influence. Pathetic.
1. When did you become one of our leading libertarian thinkers? You don’t lead and you don’t think, and the debate is still open on the libertarian issue given what you just wrote.
2. It is about religious freedom and property rights.
3. It’s a community center, and it’s near ground zero. It’s not a mosque at ground zero.
4. As Mencken said, the problem with defending liberty is that you wind up defending scoundrels. If you only defend that which is popular you’re no defender of liberty. Popular speech doesn’t need defending, after all.
5. What the hell do you mean by calling the ground hallowed, and why is it an atrosity [sic]? And even if the ground is hallowed, that’s a religious belief and the government does not do anything with regards to favoring one religion over another.
6. As a proud American, I’m proud that we have so much religious freedom and so much property rights that this can be constructed in the first place.
7. So what if some of the funding comes from across our borders? The Statue of Liberty came from France.
8. Saying that this is a symbol of the group that attacked the US is collectivist thinking – it was one particular small group that coordinated the attacks. The whole of Islam did not do this. As a libertarian you should learn to judge individuals as individuals and not by what collective group they belong to.
9. If you still stand by this article after everyone has continued to correct you, are you going to continue to claim that the lurkers support you in email? Will you have enough shame to resign from the LNC?
Ridiculous article. This is yet another example of why I’m not on the Wayne Root bandwagon.
Some Animals are more equal than others in Root’s mind.
This seems to be very similar to the nonsense about the design of the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville somehow paying homage to Islam. Repeating things that are not true does not make them any more true.
Good points @1, no compelling arguments in the piece.
I’m glad this isn’t an ATROCITY to America.
Just being an ATROSITY is just an example that this guy is a DUMBAZZ.
I thought everybody had spell check…WAR get yourself a dictionary if you are still on an electric typewriter.
Wayne Root is a neo con. He is not a Libertarian.
Thinking like this has got us into all types of trouble.
This is how the Patriot Act got passed.
It’s not a Mosque and it’s not on hallowed ground or at Ground Zero. It’s more then two blocks from Ground Zero and nobody that goes to Ground Zero today, tomorrow or 100 years from now will even know it’s there.
The fact that you have to lie to try and make a point shows you’re full of crap to begin with.
Hello –
Thanks, Dale and Paulie, for your comments. I agree with both of you. My point about Jackson/Sharpton goes more towards Root’s portrayal of Obama as a race hustler of some sort in the Jackson/Sharpton vein. I haven’t searched his site, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find harsh criticism of Jackson/Sharpton for doing the very thing he suggests here. Of course, I could be wrong about that; I’d be glad to know if I am.
8)
…or all Christians for the Holocaust.
You forgot:
10) It’s not the “very same group” that attacked America. Muslims, like Christians, or any multi-million member globally-dispersed group, are diverse.
Blaming all Muslims with what happened on 9/11 is about as appropriate as blaming all Jews for the crucifixion.
Wolfefan,
Mostly good points. However:
7) How would marching, protesting, and putting pressure on the owners of the property to make a particular business decision make you any different than Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton?
There’s nothing inconsistent with libertarianism in having people march, protest and put pressure on property owners to make business decisions.
It looks like the site interpreted the number eight with a parenthesis as an emoticon – it hadn’t occured to me it might do that! 🙂
1) It’s not a mosque.
2) That’s not how you spell “atrocity”.
3) The government refusing to allow owners of private property to do things that they do allow other similarly situated owners to do solely because of their religon is religous discrimination, by definition. It is wrong.
4) The land isn’t sacred. I’m don’t think we Christians consider any particular piece of land to be “sacred” in the way that some other religons do.
5) As an American, I am not offended if a community center is built there, any more than I am offended by the presence of churches and synagogues even closer to the bomb site.
6) Even if it was offensive, the Constitution protects the right to be offensive.
7) How would marching, protesting, and putting pressure on the owners of the property to make a particular business decision make you any different than Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton?
8) Who has described Mr. Root as “one of America’s leading Libertarian thinkers”?
9) It’s not a mosque.