Hillary says proposed Koran burning is a “disgraceful act”

Decent people don’t need Hillary to tell them this.  From the Telegraph, Hillary Clinton commented on the planned burning of the Koran by a minister in Florida:

Clinton condemned the threat to burn the Quran during her remarks at a State Department dinner she hosted in observance of Iftar, the breaking of the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. “I am heartened by the clear, unequivocal condemnation of this disrespectful, disgraceful act that has come from American religious leaders of all faiths,” Clinton said.

This post is for all of our former friends who were Clintonistas in 2008 but somehow let their anger lead them in a different direction.

I know how pissed you were at the way your vote was taken away from you in 2008.  I know you feel disenfranchised by the one party you thought you could rely on.  You’ve been the invisible ones during this mother of all recessions.  You have lost your jobs or your family has.  You have seen government not working for you anymore where once it had.  You saw people come into office in 2008 promising change and then watched as they crumbled under the slightest wind of opposition.  They let you down, they’ve deprived you of a retirement free from worry and destitution.  They have been completely deaf to your pleas.

But don’t take it out on Muslim Americans.

The people who are channeling your rage towards Muslims are the very same people who are responsible for the mess you’re in now.  They are providing you with a distraction and an easy scapegoat.  They are pointing your rage towards destruction.  It is unproductive and won’t save your job, pay your mortgage or help you retire with dignity.  It simply takes your soul towards a dark place without the tempering spirits of civil behavior.

And men like Glenn Beck have been around for thousands of years.  They pop up whenever economic disasters lead to a power vacuum and a confused and leaderless people.  They talk about a return to “honor” and morality.  They proclaim “No to decadence and moral corruption!” and “Yes to decency and morality in family and state!”  Those last two quotes were from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, just before he consigned the works of Jewish authors to the flames at a massive book burning in 1933.

We all know better than to behave like this.  We were brought up better than this.  We’ve had our mouths washed out with soap for saying bigoted things when we were children.  That’s because our parents or grandparents saw the little indignities of segregation or the slow intensification of anger and hostility that lead to the holocaust agains the Jews in Nazi Germany.  And they wanted us to learn and become better people and “to not judge a book by its cover”.  I would hate to think that there are mothers and other members of our own family out there who taught us better who are now falling back into this backwards and ignorant behavior and are being taken in by false prophets like Beck.

Those Jews saw themselves as German citizens just as Muslim Americans see themselves as American citizens.  They expected the law to protect their rights, persons and property and instead, they saw ruthless, unscrupulous men take advantage of the despair and anger of a downtrodden nation.  Those men, those forerunners of Glenn Beck, unleashed that anger against their own fellow citizens.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we came together as a nation and for the most part did not give in to retribution against our Muslim American population.  Yes, there was a lot of hostility and anger and some innocent people were hurt.  But we held back because most of us knew that the attack on the World Trade Center was designed to undermine the legal barriers against our baser instincts.  It was an act of extremism, not an act of a foreign god.  Then we got to work rebuilding.

So, you should ask yourself why, after nearly 10 years, we are dredging up this old anger, refreshing it and placing the blame for a heinous act on innocent Muslim Americans who had nothing to do with it.  Does it really have anything to do with 9/11 or is it something much more sinister?  Is Glenn Beck’s call to restoring honor genuine or is it the tried and true formula of finding a scapegoat for people to beat up on while the bad guys continue to loot the country and cement their power in place?

Back then, a German citizen might have gleefully burned the books of Einstein and Freud thinking, “Oh, they are only Jews”

Today, do we follow in their footsteps and burn the Koran because it is only the Muslims?

If we do, then we have learned nothing from witch burning, segregation, the Holocaust or history in general.  We should be ashamed of ourselves.  It is disgraceful.

And for a nation that knows better, it is dangerous.  People like Beck are redefining decency.  He thinks you are weak and easily lead.  Beck is playing you for a fool.

Are you?