Sept. 11

Today is the ninth anniversary of the tearist attack on America, and things are aboil. First, a Muslim group wants to build what they call a cultural center, the Cordoba House, very near the site of the World Trade Center. A bunch of people are virulently opposed to the center for various good reasons. There is no doubt that the Muslims have a legal right to put the center up if they want to. Now 'Cordoba' draws a blank for the average American, but you'd better believe it means something to Muslims. Cordoba – that's in Spain – was a center of Al Andaluz, the Moorish territory in Spain. Muslims still speak longingly about the days when Islam ran up to the Pyrenees. Cordoba means nothing to those who know nothing of Spanish history, but it symbolizes a lot to Muslims who wish for dominion over non-Muslim territories. We would probably do well to eliminate completely Muslim immigration to the U.S. Friction is inevitable and undesirable.
Then some crackerninny preacher down in Florida has picked up oceans of ink by saying that he was gonna incinerate a copy of the Koran. [Aside: This guy has whiskers of the sort I've always thought should bring enhanced time in sentencing.] I despise book-burners of any stripe, but if it's his book, there is no doubt that he has a legal right to burn it. It's the First Amendment freedom of expression. Guy has been given vastly more publicity than he merits, and I blame the doofus media for giving it to him. Also, the fearless leaders of our society have wrenched their backs bending over to propitiate Muslim opinion over this, saying to Americans, in effect, 'Please don't make them mad, or they'll hurt us.' Seems to me that they're already pretty well set on hurting us, and piling on to deny this preacher his constitutional right to be an idiot is contrary to the intent of the elemental law of the land. The source of concern is what is called the Arab street, i.e., the masses. Why does nobody ever worry about the American street? I suppose because the American street is too weak to offer up much resistance to the mauling it's taken for the last 35 or 40 years.