James Ford is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and also an ordained Soto Zen priest, and his take on religion is not exactly the same as, say, Franklin Graham’s. I think some of you might enjoy reading his most recent sermon — “Jesus Was a Carpenter: A Sermon on Religion and Politics.”

A hate-mongering “pastor” from Florida named Terry Jones is making himself famous by promoting his “Burn a Quran Day.” The best part of this story is that Jones is head of something called the Dove World Outreach Center. Some things snark themselves. But a little more snark doesn’t hurt —

News of the pastor’s hate festival has reached Afghanistan and sparked protests. Gen. David Petraeus said that the stunt puts the lives of U.S. troops in danger and damages the “war effort.

Whereupon some rightie bloggers began whining that they have a right to burn Qurans. For example,

For the record, I oppose book burnings on general principle. There are much more effective ways to fight Islamization and creepin’ sharia in the West.

But it brings to mind a question my pal Greg over at Rhymes With Right raised a while ago: If you can burn a flag , why can’t you burn a Qu’ran?

The answer of course is that you can.

It’s revealing that the Left is absolutely bat bonkers about the Qu’ran barbecue but has always been totally supportive of burning the American flag as a matter of Constitutionally mandated free speech if nothing else.

Of course the pastor has a right to burn Qurans. I haven’t heard of anyone, including any part of the justice system, trying to stop him. Further, General Petraeus was not ordering people to not burn Qurans. He was saying, if you do this, you are putting the lives of troops in danger and hurting the war effort. It was a statement of fact.

It’s also a fact that if Jones goes through with the stunt, and American troops die as a result, and the work to de-radicalize Afghanistan is set back, Jones will suffer no consequences. He will remain free to throw more public temper tantrums that hurt his country as often as he likes. Because this is America, and people are free to express themselves.

For the past several days, one argument being made about the Park51 development in lower Manhattan is that “just because you have a right to do something doesn’t make it right.” And of course, that’s true. You have a right to smear yourself with molasses and sit on an anthill, for example, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.

However, in the case of Park51, the arguments against the “rightness” of it are not just subjective; most of them are unadulterated bunk. There is no rational reason to not build an Islamic Center on Park Place. The building was functioning as a mosque, a place for Islamic prayer services, for several months before the controvery kicked off, and it didn’t bother anyone until a few hotheads decided to raise a stink about it.

But in the case of the Quran burning, there could be real consequences. U.S. troops could die. The effort in Afghanistan, into which this nation has poured considerable blood and treasure, could be set back.

We could argue, of course, whether anything tangible could ever be accomplished in Afghanistan through any sort of military action. I am skeptical. I personally think there was a window of opportunity that closed at least five years ago. General Petraeus, however, seems to think he can accomplish something, but the Quran burning will be setting him back.

One would think those people who have supported U.S. military action against Islamic radicals in the Middle East would think, wow, maybe the Quran burning is a really bad idea, and request of Pastor Jones that he cancel his plans. Just because someone has a right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

And I think if I had a son or daughter in Afghanistan right now, I’d be mightly pissed off at Pastor Jones.

I also think that people who have basked in the romance of living in a “time of war” — while they were safe at home, of course — would be eager to step in and do their bit. In past wars, the government often requested that citizens restrict their speech for the war effort. You know, make some sacrifices. I guess sacrifices aren’t fun.

So when John the Power Tool asks, “Still, is it not highly problematic when a senior military officer warns American citizens against exercising their undoubted First Amendment rights?” the answer is, I think it’s problematic that the Tool thinks this is problematic. Again, no one is stopping Jones from burning Qurans. But if we’re really taking this “time of war” mystique seriously, then civilians have a part to play.

I hate to think how the Tool would react if he were subjected to World War II-style rationing. The “free market” types would riot in the streets, or else at the sight of a ration book they’d melt into puddles like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Whatever happened to “let’s roll?”

Instead of thoughtfully considering what the General requested, wngnut responses range from So what? They’re killing the troops, anyway; what’s a few more? to The general is a good dhimmi willing to trash the constitution for the privilege of kissing muslim butts.

But the Constitution is not trashed here, because the government will not stop Terry Jones. Neither Petraeus nor anyone else is calling for the government to step in and arrest Jones so that he can’t hold his Q’ran burning. They’re just requesting of him to not do it for the good of his country.

So, dear wingnuts, no one is depriving Terry Jones of his right to free expression, which in this case will be showing the world that he’s a hypocritical buffoon. The general is just pointing out that this could get troops killed and set back the war effort. That’s part of his job.

But this is why I titled the post “emotional puberty and wingnuttia.” They’re responding like, well, juveniles. They wanna do what they wanna do, and if you say you think it’s a bad idea, you’re just being mean.

I need a vacation.

I’m having one of those mornings that the news seems to be a lot of same old, same old, and the topics being discussed on the other blogs are pretty much what they’ve been talking about for the past several days — whether the “tea party” movement will last and how Democrats are screwing the pooch. And I don’t want to write about any of it.

Kittens. I want kittens.

What’s on your mind?

An oil platform in the Gulf owned by Mariner Energy caught fie and exploded this morning. The platform is about 80 miles south of Louisiana. News stories say the oil rig crew were all rescued and so far no one knows if oil is leaking. Mariner Energy is owned by the Apache Corporation.

Already the usual tools are writing passionate screeds about why this doesn’t prove the oil drilling moratorium is justified. These screeds will be popping up online any minute now.

From Think Progress:

Just yesterday, however, the Financial Times reported that employees from Apache and Mariner, along with thousands of oil industry workers, rallied in Houston to protest the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium that was designed as a safety precaution after BP’s disastrous Gulf oil spill. A Mariner Energy employee chastised the Obama administration for its drilling moratorium, which would not have affected the rig that exploded today:

Companies ranging from Chevron to Apache bussed in up to 5,000 employees to the Houston convention centre to underline to Washington the industry’s contribution to the country. […]

“I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this administration is trying to break us,” said Barbara Dianne Hagood, senior landman for Mariner Energy, a small company. “The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the gulf coast, gulf coast employees and gulf coast residents.”

Apache Corp. recently agreed to buy BP assets in order to help the British oil giant meet its financial obligations as a result of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Excuses coming in 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 …

After years of hysteria that included calls to trash the 14th Amendment, we learn there are two-thirds fewer illegal immigrants in the United States today than there were ten years ago. The mighty flood was more of a swollen creek.

The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Put another way,

After years of rapid growth, illegal immigration is slowing down in California and across the country, with the state’s share of the nation’s estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants dropping to 23% from 42% in 1990, according to a new study released Tuesday.

The Pew Survey says the illegal immigrant population peaked at around 12 million in 2007 and has been dropping since.

Fewer illegal immigrants came to the U.S. every year between 2007 and 2009 than in the years in the first half of the decade, the study found. About 300,000 illegal immigrants entered the U.S. each year between 2007 and 2009, a drop from the 850,000 new unauthorized immigrants that entered each year between 2000 and 2005.

Our buddy William Teach notes that 300,000 is still too many, but that’s not going to slow to zero as long as the Koch brothers need someone to clean their pools.

What’s more, the biggest decreases have been in the states that have done the most squawking, including Arizona. Greg Sargent says,

The report also offers more evidence that the criticisms of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and other Republicans about lax enforcement on behalf of the federal government are overblown, let alone hyperbole about an ongoing “invasion” from across the border. While careful to state that “the data in this report do not allow quantification” of all the factors involved in the decline of the illegal immigrant population, it lists major shifts in the level of immigration enforcement and in enforcement strategies,” as one of the major factors that “undoubtedly contribute to the overall magnitude of immigration flows.”

My question is, what will California do if it can’t scapegoat illegal aliens for its economic crisis? Just go into denial, most probably. Maybe New York should send them some shrinks; I think we have a surplus.

Anyway, I submit this is illustrative of most “issues” emanating from the Right in the past several years. Time and time again, real crises are ignored while the Right gins up phony ones for which they propose radical solutions. In no particular order:

• They gin up a phony Social Security crisis and propose privatization.
• They gin up a phony “out-of-control lawsuits” crisis and persuade most state legislatures to pass “tort reform” laws.
• Oh no! Salt-of-the-earth family farmers are being wiped out by the inheritance tax! Not really, but the Right coined the term “death tax” and eliminated it.
• And need I say … Iraq?

And then there are the phony scandals designed to draw attention away from real issues, such as the “climategate scandal” to discredit the scientific data on global climate change.

Meanwhile, real problems fester. They pooh-poohed the health care crisis for years — America has the best health care system in the world, dontcha know? And all the data saying otherwise is part of the World Communist Conspiracy. The Bush Administration and most of the Right refused to take Islamic terrorism seriously until September 11. Then they quickly took possession of the issue and blamed it all on Bill Clinton.

And the timeline of most of these “issues” goes something like this — somewhere, out of sight, someone with control of vast wealth and with the last name of Koch, Scaife, Bradley, and a few others, identifies a “solution.” Then they put the word out to the vast network of think tanks, media outlets and politicians that they own to sell this “solution” to the public. Then it’s a matter of manufacturing a crisis, either out of whole cloth (as with the “death tax”) or sometimes by seizing on some news item that they can distort (climategate; the McDonald’s coffee episode). Then the Noise Machine goes to work beating the public to death with a highly, um, revised version of the story to make people believe something outrageous happened that didn’t really happen. But the “revised” version of the story will pass into public legend.

Pretty soon a small army of PR firms has created dozens of astroturf organizations, which work together with Fox and other right-wing media outlets to mobilize the, um, “low-information” voters who never quite got the critical thinking thing down. Then, with the right propagandists to lead them, the people will march to the voting booth and vote for more Koch-owned politicians to go to Washington and sell them out. Yee haw.

A Staten-Island group called Where To Turn, formed to provide assistance to 9/11 families, has asked that anti- and pro-“mosque” rallies scheduled for lower Manhattan on September 11 be rescheduled out of respect for the mourning families.

Well, you know how the “antis” responded. [Bronx cheer]

FYI, the September 11th Families Association has issued a statement on the Park51 controversy:

The September 11th Families’ Association represents a diverse, multicultural community with many different opinions and views pertaining to 9/11 issues. The Association’s main goal has always been to unite the 9/11 community and as such we recognize the validity of all sides in issues affecting it. We encourage and promote productive dialogue in the hopes of reaching a resolution to sensitive issues such as the proposed building of a mosque and Islamic cultural center near the WTC site.

I take that to mean they polled the members and there was no clear consensus among the victims’ families.

The Families of September 11 have yet to take a position. Same thing with the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network. As I’ve said before, the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows supports Park51.

I think a lot of why we can’t have a rational discussion about this issue is summed up in a comment on the Poltico, by someone who calls himself “Louisiana Broker” —

Lest We Forget… Allahu Akbar (God is great) were undoubtedly the last words uttered by the Islamic terrorist hijackers…as they they dove their fully fueled, fully loaded (with innocent passengers) airliners into the World Trade Towers…in rapid succession…on 9/11/2001. What irony now…to have a towering,13 story,100 million dollar mosque…casting an ominous shadow over this empty pit of sorrow and grief…where the dead must hear these same words over and over and over again…in a daily call to prayer…literally…”over their dead bodies.”

It’s like time froze for some people.

First: While we will never know for sure if every bone fragment that wasn’t completely pulverized when the towers collapsed has been found, at this point the pit itself has been pretty much dug out and sifted. They’re still sifting the Fresh Kills landfill, I believe, and occasionally finding remains. (Would Pam Geller object to a mosque at the Fresh Kills landfill?) Also, they occasionally find remains in lower Manhattan outside the “ground zero” area, such as bone fragments on roofs. But the Ground Zero site itself was scooped and scraped out awhile back, pretty much down to bedrock. It hasn’t been a smoldering pile of ash for several years now. By 2006, it was a 16-acre, 70-foot-deep hole. Now they’re starting to plant trees.

Second, yes, it finally is a real construction site. Barring unforeseen disaster, I predict that in five years it will mostly be built over, and in ten years it will be hard to tell where the parameters of “ground zero” were. Life goes on.

Anyway, “Louisiana Broker,” who obviously has never been to Manhattan, imagines that Park51 will “tower” over the Ground Zero site. That’s a joke, right? For anyone who doesn’t get it — see “The Usual Hysteria.” Note in particular the links to satellite image of lower Manhattan and the two really, really big buildings that are in between Ground Zero and the Park51 site.

Finally, the builders have been clear there will be no audio system blasting the “call to prayer” outside the center, and even if there were, no way would you be able to hear it two blocks away over the usual city noise.

But the point is that most of the opposition misunderstands the situation. They’re imagining a mosque towering over the Ground Zero they remember from a few years ago, which isn’t even in the ball park of what’s actually going to be built.

I’m still torn about whether to go down there on September 11 to stand with the “pros.” I’m leaving the date open.

Update: This is a very recent video showing the construction on “ground zero” that also shows what the memorial part of the project will look like. As you watch this, keep in mind that people are getting bent out of shape over a measly 13-story building.

The memorial part of the project, a “forest” of 400 trees surrounding two reflecting pools built on the “footprints” of the towers, is supposed to be finished in time for the 10th anniversary. The memorial museum and the One World Trade Center tower (I understand the name “Freedom Tower” is officially nixed) are supposed to be open to the public by 2013.

So the man says combat operations are finished in Iraq, and the nation shrugs. Like anything is going to change.

This doesn’t feel like the end of Vietnam. We were all so over Vietnam. Nobody wanted to talk about it, once it was really over. But Iraq isn’t Vietnam — no draft, no 58,236 U.S. military deaths, far less news coverage. Most Americans were not directly impacted by Iraq, and so it was more of an abstraction for most than Vietnam was.

Well, discuss, if you like.

“The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

An article by Chuck Collins and Sam Pizzigati at Common Dreams reminded me that one hundred years ago today Theodore Roosevelt delivered his New Nationalism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, to an audience of Civil War veterans. Weirdly, Collins and Pizzigati do not provide a link to the speech. So here it is: “The New Nationalism,” Theodore Roosevelt.

It’s sad to realize that much of what TR said in that speech would get him branded as a far-left Marxist extremist today, including the rather mild quote at the top of this post. Indeed, this speech makes our current president look downright conservative.

I once heard someone call the “New Nationalism” speech the foundation of modern liberalism, and I have to agree. That’s not to say that TR was completely liberal by our standards today. As a man of his day, he harbored some racist and sexist views. But then, so did Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. We are all creatures of our cultural conditioning.

But this speech lays out the broad principles of liberalism well, better than anything that came before it. And better that most stuff that came after it, for that matter. A shame nobody read this speech to the tea partiers this weekend. Many heads would have exploded.

Elsewhere — I’m a bit tired of doom and gloom, so I’m posting a couple of links to cheerful stories.

Not your ordinary horseshoe — the story of Molly the pony, with adorable pictures.

Shocker — a Christian minister who is actually, um, Christian.

Update: Yes! I knew it! Here is Glenn Beck from this past February at CPAC, calling Theodore Roosevelt a socialist. Beck pointed to this section of the New Nationalism speech —

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

Dana Milbank describes what happened next:

“Is this what the Republican Party stands for?” Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of “no!” “It’s big government, it’s a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer.”

Obama, no doubt, will be delighted to learn that he has been joined in the conservatives’ ire by the Hero of San Juan Hill.

Jonah Goldberg agreed with Beck, utterly mangling what Roosevelt was saying in the process.

At Salon, Mark Benjamin has a postmortem with video of Saturday’s Glenn Beck extravaganza. The piece underscores the point of the last post, which is that the movement has no cause.

[Update: A number of rightie bloggers, including the genuinely demented William A. Jacobson and this more articulate lady, have objected to the previous post as a mischaracterization of the “movement.” But you know what they can’t do? They can’t refute the premise and define the movement’s cause, because the movement doesn’t have one. It’s a movement that exists to fill a psychological need for a movement, and it’s a movement being bankrolled by people who think they can manipulate the mob for their own ends. And the true believers can’t face up to that.]

Members of the crowd seemed genuinely enthusiastic, but when I talked to them, they uniformly resorted to clichés to explain what the rally was about.

Gerald Chester, a truck driver from Elkhart, Ind., said he came because of Beck. “What he is about is a good thing, restoring honor,” Chester said. “Bringing God back into American’s lives is important. When asked what attendees should do to accomplish this, Chester replied, “That’s a good question.”

Note that the people in the video do not say anything hateful or crazy, and Mark Benjamin isn’t trying to demonize them. He just gives them an opportunity to explain why they are there. The most interesting thing, I think, is the way people reacted when asked what the movement is calling on them to do; what “call to action” they are hearing. You can see in their faces that the question surprised them. They hadn’t thought it all out that far.

Sorta kinda related — Paul Krugman, “It’s Witch Hunt Season.”