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Last night’s Countdown had a fairly extensive interview with Dean last night and he continually fails to get it. Dean keeps referencing a compromise and getting everyone to talk together about it.
Here’s the problem: there has already been a review process for this site. It’s called zoning. While Dean may have good intent, he’s buying into what basically boils down to a right-wing scheme to gin up controversy where there should be none.
Oblermann does try to push him on this issue, asking him if the civil rights movement should have simply engaged in dialogue– Dean’s primary response is that if a lot of people oppose the community center, some of them must be reasonable and we should engage them and respect their point of view.
Dean’s wrong. We have to stop coddling bigotry, even unintentional, well intended bigotry. It’s dangerous to allow this nonsense to move on under cover of Dean calling it an honest point of view. Even with Dean’s positive intent, his response does not sufficiently distinguish him from those who have intentionally created this controversy.
When faced with rhetorical adversity put on the surrender monkey suit and under no circumstances take a principled stand … ala Peter “The Weasel” Welch and his continuing use of radical, right wing lies straight from the mouths of bigots to defend his assault on ACORN (a group devoted to empowering the disempowered).
If you’re supporting the likes of Welch, you’re agreeing with Dean.
Both Dean and Welch are bascially conservative moderates who parade under the progressive moderate flag whenever they can. Neither is liberal or even a moderate Democrat.
..was a Christian, veteran, and patriot (I’m going by his description of himself, since we clearly are supposed to let terrorists’ self-labels, rather than a criminal mindset, explain their crimes). Therefore, there must be no churches, no government offices, and certainly no offices dealing with veterans or the military built anywhere near ground zero at the Murrah building. Ground Zeroes are so powerful that the “respectful” space seems, according to commentators, to extend over several states. And no YMCA with a POOL for Pete’s sake — we know pools are bad if they are built near ground zeroes. All possible uses of this kind must be discussed and decisions made on the emotions of people involved, since apply local zoning ordinances, state laws, and the U.S. Constitution will leave us with “no winners.”
[The people of Oklahoma City must be proud that they are considered so tough that they’re supposed to just get over it while the entire nation dissolves into hysteria over everything that happens in NYC. Or maybe they’re supposed to be thankful that “their” terrorist was not, after all, a foreign national, but merely a home-grown traitor who had benefited from his government’s training.]
The time has come to ask: who sucked Dean’s brains out his ears and injected his cranial space with bananas pudding?
It’s OK to sell products at the site of a tragedy. No big outrage over that. It’s sad to see our humanity and consciousness assaulted once again in the name of Patriotism. What a shame to see another step backwards, when we’ve lost so much already. We are smarter than this. Dean is smarter than this. Not a nice thing for little kiddies to see.
If you were around when Dean was governor you know something that people in the rest of the country don’t:
Howard Dean is not a liberal.