You may have heard about some remarks by Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), who told a Republican women’s club that the November elections are a choice between Christianity and godlessness. Here’s what he said:

We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we’re going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation. So we’re going to have to win that battle, we’re going to have to solve that argument before we can once again reach across and work together on things.

You can find a similar statement on Rep. Fleming’s website, on a page headlined “America’s Religious Heritage and Religious Freedom” (emphasis added; pay close attention to how he uses the words “rights” and “freedom”):

The American people, in the vast majority, are a profoundly religious people. We must never allow the noisy liberal minority and radical groups like the ACLU to impose their secular vision on the majority. We must resist the oppression of religious liberty.

We must never allow the Liberal, anti-God, anti-religious freedom minority to remove the words Under God from the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. We must never allow them to abolish our National Motto: In God We Trust.

The Ten Commandments are the very foundation of the American system of law and justice. I will vigorously defend the rights to display the Ten Commandments in our schools, city halls, courthouses, and other public venues. He will stand up for the right of public officials to acknowledge God.

I support the right of students to pray in our schools. I support the rights of students, parents, teachers, and members of the community to pray at graduation ceremonies and school sports events.

Rep. Fleming is, of course, is not just revising history (the Ten Commandments are not the “very foundation of the American system of law and justice,” for example); he is turning the founder’s concept of “rights” on its head. The guys who wrote the Constitution added the Bill of Rights as limitations on government so that government cannot deprive individual citizens of their rights. Among their concerns was that a religious faction might gain control of government and use government to force their beliefs and practices on everyone. As James Madison wrote in Federalist #10:

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.

Madison goes on to say that there are two ways to prevent a majority faction from tyrannizing a minority. One way is to somehow prevent people from forming passionate opinions and interests that cause them to form factions. The other is to prevent the effects of factions, depriving them of the means to tyrannize the minority. And the eventual remedy was the Bill of Rights, which lists stuff that government may not do even if a majority wants to do it.

In other words, putting limits on the power of government is the chief means to prevent large factions from seizing the means to tyrannize everyone else. In the case of religion, government may not interfere with everyone’s free exercise of religion, which is the same thing as saying a majority religious faction may not use government to interfere with other peoples’ free exercise of religion. (See also Jonathan Turley, “James Madison and the Mujahedeen.”)

But “rights” according to Rep. Fleming is the right of the majority faction to maintain tribal dominance by erecting its totems in government buildings (the Ten Commandments in courthouses) and to force everyone to participate in its religious rituals (prayers at graduation ceremonies and football games).

I think too many Americans have no idea what “rights” are. They throw the word around a lot, but they have no idea what it means. As in the Park51 controversy, even people who pay lip service to the rights of a Sufi congregation to build an Islamic center on their own property seem to think that others have a “right” to stop them by force, either legal or physical. In this context, “right” seems to mean “power.”

See also the last part of Fleming’s web page:

The Constitution gives Congress the authority to limit the jurisdiction of federal judges. We must stop radical judges from legislating from the bench, destroying revered American religious traditions and religious symbols that have been part of American life for 230 years.

Limit the jurisdiction of federal judges? The Constitution gave Congress the authority to establish federal courts inferior to the Supreme Court, but it doesn’t give Congress the power to take authority away from the courts. Again, there’s much waving around of the Constitution without actually understanding it. (See “Truth and Totems.”)

As usual, the story of the Muslim cab driver stabbed by a passenger is more complicated than first appeared. At the Village Voice, Foster Cramer has learned that the alleged attacker, Michael Enright of Brewster, New York (about an hour’s drive north of Manhattan, assuming light traffic) works for an Internet media company and recently spent time in Afghanistan filming military exercises. He was also visibly drunk when he got in the cab. So this may not have anything to do with the “mosque.” The guy may just be way screwed up.

Still, as Steve M. says, if the Muslim cabbie had stabbed Enright rather than the other way around, by now the righties would be calling it an act of “jihad” or “terrorism,” because when a Muslim does something, it’s always assumed to be a political act. Muslims don’t get the benefit of just being screwed up. And by now the Right would also be loudly demanding that every Muslim, liberal, and Democrat on the planet be loudly denouncing the act. “Being non-Republicans, you see, we’re partly responsible for all non-right-wing acts of political violence,” Steve says.

I’d add that these days we’re also held responsible for right-wing acts of political violence, because whenever a right-winger does something ugly, he is instantly tagged as a liberal infiltrator. Anyway, Steve continues,

So shouldn’t the press be demanding statements of condemnation from Pam Geller? Sarah Palin? Newt Gingrich? Rick Lazio? Rupert Murdoch? Roger Ailes? Debra Burlingame? Rick Scott? Can’t we say they’re condoning vigilante violence if those statements aren’t forthcoming by sunset?

Well, we can say that, but they’d just deny it. And in their minds, they are always right.

Be sure to read “Muhammad Comes to Manhattan” by Mark Jacobson in New York magazine. Some high points —

The Park Place property already is a mosque, if we’re calling any space dedicated to Muslim worship services a mosque. I’m sure you’ve seen the exterior photos showing that the building looks pretty shabby, but New York has photos of the interior that show it’s been fixed up, painted, carpeted, etc., and Muslims go there for prayers and to listen to sermons. So it’s already a “mosque,” and I’m sure will continue to be a “mosque” even if the community center plans are blocked somehow.

The guy who arranged to purchase the building, Sharif El-Gamal, was born in Brooklyn and graduated from a public New York high school. He takes his daughter to swimming lessons at a Jewish community center in his neighborhood, and that center gave him the idea of a Muslim commnity center. Also, the congregation’s current mosque can only hold 70 people at a time, and they needed more room. About the money to finish the project, he said,

Asked about the money issues, Sharif El-Gamal, with an exasperated sigh, said, “I don’t know where the money is going to come from. I don’t have it. I have to raise it. We will hire private auditors and cooperate with all governmental authorities and not take a penny from any group flagged by them.”

Not that any of that will penetrate the blockheaded bigots.

September 11 falls on a Saturday this year, and I’m afraid every crazy in the country is going to show up and demonstrate against the “mosque.” It could get ugly. I can’t find any group who is organizing a formal counterprotest, but if someone is I would probably show up for it.

The local TV news [and the New York Times] reports that Mayor Bloomberg had a Ramadan dinner tonight, in which he told Manhattan’s Muslims to not back down from building on Park Place.

Speaking at a traditional dinner at Gracie Mansion as part of Ramadan, the mayor sought to tamp down the opposition and regain control over a national debate that has escalated by the day, starting as a local zoning dispute and becoming a referendum on the limits of religious tolerance in an age of terrorism.

Mr. Bloomberg, flanked by the center’s developer and the wife of its imam, said he understood the impulse to find a different location, in the hope of ending the controversy.

“But it won’t,” the mayor said. “The question will then become, ‘How big should the ‘no-mosque zone’ around the World Trade Center be?’ ”

He added: “There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it, too, be moved? This is a test of our commitment to American values. We must have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy.”

Way to go, Mayor Mike! Unfortunately, a lot of other New York politicians, including Democrats, are doing what is easy and timidly calling for the center to be moved.

Meanwhile, in the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg takes victimization to new heights, or depths, if you will.

Here’s a thought: The 70% of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth.

But is that a thought, though? Or is it flatulence? Hard to tell. And what does he mean by “an Islamic Niketown”?

But you see where he’s coming from — only patriotic, flag-waving, right-wing Americans get to be victims. Everyone else in the world just picks on them for no reason. (See also Alex Pareene.)

I think that if John wayne were still alive, and he got a good look at Jonah the Doughboy, he’d turn liberal.

Many opponents of the Park51 center being built on Park Place say they wouldn’t object to it if were further away from the old World Trade Center site. But apparently Murfreesboro, Tennesse, isn’t far enough away, either. Alaska? No, forget Alaska. Maybe Hawaii. Maybe Mongolia.

The question is, why is so much raw bigotry erupting now, nine years after the terrorist attacks? Not that there haven’t been examples of it all along, but not as much as now.

And the obvious answer is that until recently, or at least until Barack Obama became president, it wasn’t really all that useful to conservatives and the Republican Party to whip up the sheep into rage about Islam. But now it’s very useful, so they’re doing it. They’re probably slapping themselves for not having gotten the anti-Muslim propaganda cranking at full speed a lot sooner, like about May 2008.

Ben Evans writes about the hypocrisy of conservatives on Constitutional issues. The people who go about waving copies of the constitution as badges of their patriotism and call themselves as “constitutionalists” are the same ones pushing for the biggest changes to the document. They not only want to repeal the 14th Amendment, but they also want to revise a lot of the provisions in the main body of the Constitution. They want to require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, for example (the same provision that is killing California).

Weirdly, some of them are saying they want to change the Constitution to make it closer to what the founders originally intended. The original provisions don’t express what the founders originally intended?

[Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia] who is among the most conservative members of Congress, said he sees no contradiction in his devotion to the Constitution and his desire to rewrite parts of it. … “It’s not picking and choosing,” he said. “We need to do a lot of tweaking to make the Constitution as it was originally intended, instead of some perverse idea of what the Constitution says and does.”

This reminds me of the folks who want to erect monuments to the Ten Commandments at schools and courthouses but who cannot name all ten of the commandments if put on the spot to do so. And of Bible-thumpers who evoke the Bible as their bulwark against Evil but who don’t know the Beatitudes from a McDonald’s dollar menu.

I’ve written before that righties tend to interpret events through myths and symbols rather than facts. Just so, I think they also tend to regard documents such as the Bible and the Constitution more as totems than texts. The documents are cherished as icons of whatever it is they think America or Christianity is, not for what they actually say.

And if you understand that, you can see how it isn’t inconsistent for them to, say, claim they believe in religious liberty while forming a mob to stop the building of what they think is a mosque. “Religious liberty” is something iconic to them, but they don’t understand or appreciate how it is applied to real-world situations.

Along those lines, there’s a “small government” teabagger running for governor of New York (no chance he’ll be elected) who not only promises to use the power of his office to stop the building of Park51; he wants to convert state prisons into work camps for welfare recipients. Apparently “small government” is just another totem, a meaningless phrase that commands loyalty but doesn’t have any fixed meaning.

Sorta kinda related must read: Paul Krugman’s column today.

… our political culture has become not just dysfunctional but deeply corrupt. … What’s at stake here? According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, making all of the Bush tax cuts permanent, as opposed to following the Obama proposal, would cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. For the sake of comparison, it took months of hard negotiations to get Congressional approval for a mere $26 billion in desperately needed aid to state and local governments.

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent

He goes on to say that the same kind of campaign of lies and deception that sold America on the Bush tax cuts were then used to sell America on invading Iraq, and now the same kind of campaign is being used to sell America on reinstating the Bush tax cuts for the rich. As I wrote earlier, the Usual Rubes are being scammed into thinking that the Dems want to raise everyone’s taxes.

I realize I’ve been something of a stuck record lately, but I really hate bigotry. And while I’m far from an expert on Islam, I’ve come to realize that compared to most people in the U.S. I’m a bleeping Islamic encyclopedia. Which is pretty pathetic.

This knowledge came slowly, though. The first time I can remember the Middle East conflict getting my full attention was during the Munich Olympics. I was in college at the time, and I remember going to the Hillel House on campus for a memorial service for the slain Israeli Olympians. Like a lot of people, back then I associated Palestinians with terrorism. It was quite a while before more information seeped in and I realized the Palestinian-Israeli issue wasn’t nearly as black and white as I’d assumed.

Now, fast forward to the Gulf War. You might remember that at one point Iraq launched Scud missiles into Israel, and television news showed Palestinians dancing in the streets because Israel was being bombed. I was really angry at this, flashing back to the Munich Olympics. But by then I was a Zen student, and part of the practice is to not harbor anger.

The local Ethical culture society was hosting a series of lectures on Islam, so I went to as many as I could as a kind of anger therapy. The lectures were given by Muslims who were professional people in the community. One fellow I remember was a heart surgeon, originally from Afghanistan, who had lived in the U.S. most of his life. I liked this guy, because I recognized he was a real spiritual seeker, not a dogmatist. For example, he explained that he understood “jihad” to be the spiritual struggle with oneself, not “holy war” with other people.

The other thing I got out of the lecture series was an appreciation of the power of Islamic practice. I could see that the daily prayers and other practices would not only make the religion the center of one’s daily life — for good or ill — but also forge a deep sense of communal bonding with other followers around the world. So although I was not at all tempted to adopt it for myself, I certainly developed a deep respect for it. And folks, it ain’t going to go away.

In a weird kind of way I got to know Sufi Islam through Buddhism, in particular Sufi poetry published in Buddhist journals. A lot of mystic Sufism comes uncannily close to some aspects of Buddhism. I also understand that Sufism was an influence on G.I. Gurdjieff, who was something like the father of New Age spirituality, or at least every hippie New Ager I ever met told me they’d started by studying Gurdjieff.

Something else I learned along the way is that Wahhabis really hate Sufis. In fact, Abdul Wahab (1703-1792) began his movement primarily to “cleanse the Arab Bedouins of Sufi influence,” it says here. To this day, Wahhabis consider Sufis to be dangerous heretics. As I’ve said earlier, the rise of jihadism and fundamentalist Islam in recent years has brought a lot of punishment to Sufis. Mosques and shrines have been attacked by suicide bombers, and lots of Sufis have been killed by Jihadists. And the fundamentalist Shia regime in Iran doesn’t like them either and tends to round up Sufis for detention from time to time, just because.

So, you would think that the same people who are perpetually sniffing out evidence of the depravity of fundamentalist Islam would have some sympathy for the very non-fundamentalist Sufis and their frequent victimization by jihadists. But no. Because, you know, all Muslims are alike to them. For example:

Who is investing in this project? I doubt many moderate businessman will want to attract the sort of publicity swirling around this, but I bet there is plenty of Wahhabi money in Saudi Arabia that would love to get behind the Victory Mosque.

One does want to pound one’s head against the wall in frustration sometimes. If you have any appreciation at all for the situation of Sufis, you could argue that putting up a big Sufi “mosque” near Ground Zero amounts to sticking Wahhabis in the eye, since Sufis and Sunni jihadists are pretty much natural enemies. But try explaining that to the bigots.