What's the moral of the story? That the [url=http://www.economist.com/comment/624250#comment-624250]logically incapacitated[/url] will rule the blogsphere.

Don't you realize that the [i]sans-papiers[/i] tend to [i]deport themselves[/i] when there's no money to be made?

Let me see if I understand the logic: through force of mind, brilliance, elan, and simply being European, they're stellar, and in a blinding lack of awareness of the German public's instincts about everyone else on earth, they should be admired for their economic success and wealth.

If they have any feelings that things are going badly, it's because of America. One of the normal stances employed: "(when) they are economically successful, it is due to exploitation, so we should detest them".

Got it. It's totally non-linear and self-serving. but I've got it.

Well, the level on which Americans can understand the German fascination with his is rather simple. The BZ headline "Daddy Cool" on the day after his election.

All he could be to them is at first glance is comparable to what I likely the first dark skinned person they've ever associated anything non-negative to: a guy named Boney M who had a number one hit in the openminded paradice of Germany: "Daddy Cool".

That really was all he meant to them: some kind of symbol of a racial-social divide that they magically whose form and shape they can "just imagine", and know what imaginary side they're supposed to take on it - because their last detailed portrait of this thing came from strange smear stories out of the notoriously small and insular German media, and from the 1950's.

Take a look at the comments where you get the typical leftist fountain of thoughtless invective:

[i]Looks like Uncle Sam's er I mean Uncle Tom's (Obama) finger prints are on this smear campaign.[/i]

etcetera, etcetera.

Actually, based on the stock litany of enemies, even dragging out the band's old standard, Eugene McCarthy, the one acting to silence the diversity of ideas is the likes of you.

My other question is: what [i]religious hate[/i] are you talking about? Some ginned-up theory from the ideological fever swamp?

People are entitled to oppose something like the O/T mosque that I think your compulsion is leading you to. No-one is suggesting that the first amendment be suspended. By the way, the separation of church and state is to protect governance FROM religion, not the intrusion of the state INTO the practice of any religion.

But if you MUST ask why it is that people would not want to see a mosque opposite the site of the bombed World Trade Center, you first have to ask yourself why it's being put there.

This, from my experience, is how it works in Christian villages in Lebanon. It is a practice that has been taking place for centuries in the near east: some mysterious character buys a piece of land, and before you know it, someone builds a mosque there, regardless of whether or not there's a muslim within miles of it. It's the marking of territory to intimidate, and with a view of the dichotomy as one of warlike hostility against any and all.

It's what happened in my mother's ancestral village, one established by people running away from a "covert or be beheaded" campaign of Muslim outreach. There literally aren't any Shia, Sunni, of Druze housholds within 20 km, and the residents of this village from which two saints have come from have to listen to a recorded Mu'azin's call blaired out. It was built by a "charity" funded by an association loosely connected with the Iranian government.

This is the marking of territory for the purpose of the medeivil practice of intimidating people into conversion. Surely that will do quite a bit to advance 1st amendment style rights!

Knowing how to mouth the words of interfaith empty babble, the word "reconciliation" gets thrown around, but virtually none among those involved in the building of the mosque believe any of it with sincerity.

This is the exact same thing. Some of them probably don't even think that no-one can hear them snickering. The gullible will buy any the trash talk about "reconciliation", as though they are at the annual interfaith society summer picnic and softball game hosted by the local Unitarian congregation.

They are inept and naive, and would throw not only their fellow citizens, but also co-religionists under the bus in order to tell themselves that they think they've bravely defended the right to free speech.

This is what piques my curiosity... Have you ever found yourself saying, oh, I don't know, that Fox, Sarah Palin, or any of the other symbols in your pinata party, should, perhaps - [i]cease to hold their opinions[/i]... [i]cease to air their views[/i], or [i]cease to exist[/i]?

Then I think you'll answer your own question as to who's first thoughts turn to totalitarianism.

Otherwise I invite you to air your feeling that any kind of American that doesn't support you politically is a totalitarian, and to do it from the tallest church tower in Saudi Arabia.

Let's get back to what we've really learned in this off-topic sub-thread... that there are people roaming this earth who believe that the only possible topic that could possibly matter would be their shallow invective of any fellow citizen of theirs who doesn't agree with them.

SO important that a discussion about someone trying to annualize a abberant quarterly GDP report into a treatise on teutonic perfection - has to magically become akin to a third-world village feud about a mosque - which really isn't about a mosque.
It could have been about a cheesy lamp made out of a pineapple, all that matters is that David has to take his peevish invective about other Americans beyond our shores where it seems even pettier.

It's because some people out there are just that broad. [i]respect[/i]