{"id":4413,"date":"2010-08-01T06:28:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T06:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4413"},"modified":"2010-08-01T06:29:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T06:29:07","slug":"your-feelings-dont-matter-if-youre-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/your-feelings-dont-matter-if-youre-conservative\/","title":{"rendered":"Your feelings don’t matter if you’re conservative"},"content":{"rendered":"

One Especially Silly Aspect of the Ground Zero Mosque Fight<\/a>:<\/p>\n

–The mosque would be an “unnecessary provocation.” (Sarah Palin)<\/p>\n

–“It\u2019s not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.\u201d (Newt Gingrich)<\/p>\n

–Abe Foxman said in an interview on Friday that the organization came to the conclusion that the location was offensive to families of victims of Sept. 11.<\/p>\n

Are these not the exact same sentiments that were voiced by people who thought that Salman Rushdie should not have published The Satanic Verses, and that Danish newspapers should not have run cartoons featuring The Prophet Muhammad? The idea that people have some sort of right not to be offended is one the many silly and pernicious things about these arguments.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My first reaction to the story, or the idea of an Islamic cultural center, etc., at that that particular location was offensive. I am admittedly not a person who is very well disposed to the Islamic religion, and my attitude toward religion as a whole is biased toward personal disinterest at best. Upon further review I can see a pragmatic medium\/long-term case for the center’s existence for a variety of reasons. More broadly I think there are more important things (e.g., our fiscal situation!) which we might focus on. And I think using the current laws in place to block the construction of the cultural center is not in the broadly liberal tradition of the United States when it comes to religion.<\/p>\n


\nBut the specific opinion about the cultural center is not the primary issue here. Rather, I do believe that there is something to be said here for the elevation of perceived offense<\/em> at the center of our culture.<\/strong> My friends on the Left tend to be very indulgent\/understanding of offense on the part of women and minorities. The far Left has been preeminent in constructing the concept of Hate Speech, which operationally seems to be a secular form of blasphemy. One issue which has been communicated to me is that people’s feelings and visceral responses, their perception of the object or action to which they take offense, has to be taken seriously,<\/strong> no matter if you judge the response meritorious or not. You don’t know their experience, and their perceptions of discomfort are tangible and real negative outcomes.<\/p>\n

The response to the “Ground Zero Mosque” indicates that this really isn’t the ultimate core of the Left’s acceptance of the code of sensitivity. Rather, there are particular things that one can acceptability be offended by, and other things which one should not be offended by. The “post modern” interpretation is actually simply a superficial gloss over the reality that there are things we value, bright lines we draw, and those which we do not value, and bright lines we do not draw. The cultural Left seems to find the cultural Right’s offense without merit, open to deep criticism of motive, etc. Some of the criticism is grounded in lines of argumentation which I find plausible. Much of the logic against the cultural center seems post hoc<\/em> rationalization of a conclusion which derives from an emotional response. But the genuine, if often inchoate, offense of many cultural conservatives, is the target of skepticism, contempt and dismissal. That’s because the values of cultural conservatives are in a deep way perceived to be wrong, without value, on the cultural Left. The fact that some people have different values is without value or importance. The Left lives in just as black and white a moral universe as the Right; the color coding is just different.<\/p>\n

The “Ground Zero Mosque” affair then shines a light on the reality that America is a large nation, with diverse values and priorities. What may be offensive in one part of the nation is not offensive in another, and vice versa. For a unitary political order this is a long term structural problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One Especially Silly Aspect of the Ground Zero Mosque Fight: –The mosque would be an “unnecessary provocation.” (Sarah Palin) –“It\u2019s not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.\u201d (Newt Gingrich) –Abe Foxman said in an interview … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[588],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4413"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4417,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions\/4417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}