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I'm glad former Governor Howard Dean went on Keith last night. Too many people hide from the cameras when a controversy breaks out, so kudos to him for getting out there.Still, his position on Park51 remains ridiculous, indefensible, and frankly a little racist.
I hate to be brutal about it, but the in the scheme of things, the pain, the tragedy, the suffering of the 9/11 families, does not matter. I'm not dismissing their pain, I'm saying that their pain cannot be allowed to trump our Constitution.
More to the point, to maintain a position that says that a Muslim Community Center is disrespectful, you have to believe that Muslims genetically predisposed to being terrorists. Now, Howard Dean says (over and over again) that he doesn't believe that, but then why justify this belief by giving into it?
This is the same damn argument that was dropped on Civil Rights Protesters. Progress is coming, but you have to be patient. This is, in effect, Howard Dean's argument to America's Islamic Citizens. But as Thurgood Marshall said (at the time), "the Emancipation Proclamation was signed 90 years ago, I think Black Americans have been plenty paitent."
Either the First Amendment is going to apply to all of us, or it applies to none of us.
UPDATE: Saturday Aug. 21: Somehow the guy who once wrote a Screenplay about Thurgood Marshall thought the 90 years quote ws said by Martin Luther King. My utter bad.
