September 11th: Thoughts and Remembrance
Positivity, Charity, Service & a Little Rant
It has been nine years since that awful morning when we all watched in horror as the Towers fell. Our world changed that day and over time we have all come to grips with what happened in our own way. Every year I write something to express my feelings for the victims, their families and to try to make sense of an incomprehensible act of evil.
This year we approach 9/11 with a couple of very heated political topics playing with our emotions and threatening to divide our nation. From the “Ground Zero Mosque” to the “Quran Burning” event we are torn between arguing political factions fighting hard to make us forget the real troubles we are in to scoop up a few emotional votes.
I have spent a lot of time on my Radio Dentata Show arguing the issues on both moral and political grounds and I’ll let you listen to those in the archives rather than go over them in details. Suffice it say I come down on the minority side on the GZ Mosque issue. I am a big fan of property rights and you all know how I feel about the First Amendment. That makes it kind of a slam dunk for me. No matter how bad we may feel about something like this, no matter how distasteful it may seem, we can not, must not sacrifice our First Amendment rights for the sake of stifling the same rights in others. That’s exactly what we do when we refuse to allow someone to build a house of worship on property they own.
Ditto on the Quran Burning. I have heard plenty of people criticize this “pastor” for his plans to burn the holy books in protest. I have even heard people go so far as to suggest that he should be arrested for the stunt. Look, burning books is bad OK? What that book is isn’t really the issue. Burning the Bible, the Quran, Catcher in the Rye or fucking Harry Potter is just stupid. It’s a waste of paper designed to insight guttural emotional responses. (Check out YouTube and watch all the stupid Wicca kids burning Bibles if you don’t believe me.) Setting something on fire as an act of political speech is an empty stunt, but it is a form or political speech and IS protected.
So this minister is a fuck nut, attention whore displaying some of the most un-Christian behavior I can imagine by planning to burn a holy book. I’ll sign up for that point of view. On the other hand, he’s allowed to do so. It’s his right and anyone who would take that right away from him is just as wrong as he is. He needs to remember that just because he has THE right to do something, it doesn’t make it the right thing to do.
If we could just get some perspective on this and turn the fucking cameras off, maybe it would all go away. Let this petty man have his silly book burning with no one watching. Let our eyes and hearts be on grander things while the petty play politics with their stupid props. Every time we point a camera at one of these ass clowns, his act becomes somehow bigger than it is. Every time we allow our emotions to get in the way of what we know is right, we lose a bit of ourselves.
Ultimately we do not honor the dead by threatening to take away the First Amendment Rights of law abiding Muslims who wish to build a house of worship a little too close for comfort to the site of something horrible perpetrated by criminal ass hats in the name of their religion. We do not do service to those who lost loved ones by staging a book burning that is the very antithesis of the religious tenants we claim to hold dear.
Then again, that’s just my opinion and I’ve been known to be wrong. As always, the floor is yours. Comment at will.
Now if you want to see a great alternative to book burning, hatred and anger, read the following article. 9 11 Father Doesn’t Understand All the Hate
This man gets it. He has more reason than any of us to be angry over the events of nine years ago, but he focuses on the good he can do rather than the hate he could unleash. I’m so amazed when I read stuff like this. It fills me with hope.
I love his site so much that I have made it the latest charity site. If you join the site below using this banner, I will donate $10 to the Tribute WTC charity. Thank you in advance for helping contribute to this fantastic cause.
