This is a good question, since there seems to be precious little of it around these days.
So, in this long and rambling article, I will attempt to apply some to an issue which has had much blather and little serious discussion over the last few weeks: the mosque at Ground Zero.
But first, I want to begin by discussing a technique used by many hypnotists as a means of changing their subjects' views.
Whoa, gear change, right?
I promise, all will be made clear.
In the branch of hypnosis known as neuro-linguistic programming, NLP for short, there's a technique known as "reframing." Reframing is a method of altering the terms of the discussion in such a way that the subject is steered inexorably towards logic chains that contradict their previously held views.
In therapy, this is used to help patients overcome, for example, negative self-image problems. By altering the terms upon which someone defines the outcome of a situation, you alter their perception of that situation - and when that altered perception conflicts with their previously-held convictions, why, you have a marvelous lever with which to move their thoughts into healthier channels.
For example, if someone doesn't get invited to a theme party that all their friends are invited to, because the host thinks that the theme might offend them, they might believe that they were left out because they are disliked; applying the knowledge that the host was trying to avoid giving offense, the therapist can steer the patient into understanding that that decision was made as a gesture of respect and appreciation, instead of an insult.
Marvelously effective if used correctly.
However, like any technique which is founded on changing the perception of the listener, it is also marvelously easy to use for the wrong reasons.
And here is where we come to the Cordoba Initiative.
See, the liberals have been persistently and forcefully trying to reframe the debate surrounding the mosque two blocks from the former site of the Twin Towers; trying to alter the terms, so that it is not a debate about the calculated, magnificent insult expressed by someone so contemptuous of our value that they would build a monument, mere blocks away from the site of the deaths of thousands of innocent people slaughtered by fanaticism, to the source of that fanaticism itself; instead, it becomes a debate between people passionately believing in freedom of religion and Constitutional protections, versus illiterate, backwards cavemen who are trying to repress something they don't understand.
Thankfully, I am here to destroy that attempt at reframing, and cause the entire tangled mess to collapse upon its silly, misshapen, and ungainly head through vigorous application of the aforementioned common sense.
The first, and most obvious, flaw in this attempt at reframing is that there has been essentially no actual element of religious discrimination in the commentary provided by the Cordoba Initiative's opponents. They have called it an insult, a desecration, a sacrilege, and it is all those things; they have said repeatedly that it SHOULD not be built; but none of them have attempted to claim that the project's backers should be BANNED from building it.
In order to reframe, you dribbling dolts, you have first to provide information that is actually truthful; you cannot simply lie your way to success.
The second flaw in this attempt at reframing, however, is more disturbing; it is that the backers of the mosque appear to be doing everything in their power to thumb their noses at us; making the Cordoba Initiative a far greater insult thanks to their utter and oblivious tone-deafness than it would have been had they simply said something like "we got a great deal on the land and can't afford to build it anywhere else, so please work with us here."
If they had, I suspect that most Americans would still be grumpy about it, but I doubt greatly that we would see 68% of the American people publicly state that they think it shouldn't be built.
Why do I mention that?
Because that's the latest poll number. 68% of the American people think that mosque shouldn't be built.
"Aha!" Cries the left, "You're against it because you hate Islam!"
Then why aren't they picketing and protesting against the other - many - mosques in New York, hmmm?
It is not the religion people are protesting; it is the geography.
The proposed site of the Cordoba House - which will, itself, be discussed in detail shortly - is two blocks from Ground Zero.
"Aha!" Cries the left, "You're using charged language to try to force an emotional response!"
Do you have a better name for a site sanctified by the blood of so many innocent people?
Sanctified. Hallowed. Made holy; a place on which a sacrifice so great was laid that it scarred the people whose children, fathers, sisters, wives, and sons bore it forever, a place in which any disrespect of that sacrifice should not be tolerated - because no matter how great our devotion to toleration of others, as a people and a nation, in our bones we know that some things ought not to BE tolerated.
Building a Hitler Memorial Museum at Auschwitz, for example, or a Shinto shrine in memory of Emperor Hirohito outside of Pearl Harbor. Every people, every race, every nation, has places they consider sacred, for whatever reason, and some of those places have become the greatest battlefields in the world for the sake of protecting them from insult.
Perhaps Japan would like a Manhattan Project Commemorative Monument erected at Hiroshima.
But I doubt it very much.
See, the first question one must ask of the Cordoba Initiative is, "why there?"
Why MUST it be built upon ground that nearly every American sees as sacred? Is it not possible to erect a mosque, a cultural center, whatever they're calling it this week, on the other side of Manhattan, and provide the same "community outreach" its backers claim is its goal, without giving vast and implacable offense to the people whose relatives stained that ground with their blood that day?
Is it truly beyond the bounds of possibility to simply decide that whether or not it CAN be done, it SHOULD NOT be?
Having the legal ability to do something doesn't make it right.
For example, I can in perfect safety, enshrined within my legal right to free speech, walk up to you and call you names, provided I don't swear at you or make accusations constituting slander.
I could say - and I leave it to each of my three readers to decide which of these terms could ACCURATELY be applied to them, if they're honest enough about it - that you are a beer-swilling, apathetic, logically inconsistent, hypocritical, morally degenerate, lecherous, ethically challenged, self-interested, narcissistic, passive-aggressive, unattractive, loud-mouthed, opinionated, shiftless layabout who works no more than necessary and plots overwhelming vengeance for any slight, real or imagined, but rarely has the intestinal fortitude to actually carry it out for fear of the real-world consequences; guess what, that's perfectly legal.
That doesn't make saying it the right thing to do, no matter which (if any) parts apply to the individual to whom I'm speaking.
For the record, and to prove the unflinching nature of my own self-assessment, all those apply equally to me - although I note that that leaves out my many sterling qualities. For example, I am a good tipper.
...Because it pays to have happy servers; they are less likely to do bizarre and disgusting things to your food.
At any rate, the point at which I am rudely groping (and from which, might I add, dodging increasingly energetic slaps,) is simple: just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
The attempt at reframing the debate on the part of so many of our left-wing loudmouths is just that: an attempt to convince by twisting the debate until the original point is lost. This is not, and never was, a debate about religious freedom, First Amendment protections, or the "right" of the Cordoba Initiative to build their mosque wherever they want, because no-one has claimed they legally can't. No-one has tried to prohibit them from doing it; instead, they have sought to shame them into withdrawing.
And the imam Faisal Rauf has proven immune to shame.
Why?
This is a man who is trying to build a monument, he says, to "tolerance," which angers 70% of the people in whose hearts it is supposedly meant to inspire brotherhood; that fact alone should inspire him to, perhaps, put it somewhere else.
There is no shortage of mosques in New York.
Only the geography, and the price in blood paid for its sanctity, makes this location special.
But if "tolerance" and "brotherhood" were in fact the imam's goals, he would relocate elsewhere.
And he's not.
Instead, he has sought the backing of HAMAS, a recognized terrorist organization, which publicly announced their support for it just the other day.
He has traveled across the Middle East, raising funds to build it from the very nations whose children killed the thousands whose blood invest the site with such hallowed gravity, and to add insult to injury, he has done so on the U.S. taxpayer's dime.
Yet no taxpayer funds were released to help rebuild the church which stood equally close since the 1920s, a church leveled when one of the towers fell on it.
Why?
Many of us remember the fervor with which the Democrats demolished President Bush's "faith-based initiatives," once he was out of office.
Where is that anti-establishment fervor when it comes to funding for an Islamic "faith-based initiative," hmmmm?
Where is the sense of moral outrage, the fervent and furious denunciation?
There is none.
Because the Democrats are trying to side with the group they perceive as the victor in the upcoming cultural siege.
See, here in this country, we praise tolerance as though it has merit of its own not predicated upon the value of those things being tolerated.
Chamberlain found out the hard way that when you tolerate the wrong things, things which do not tolerate you, the price for that tolerance may be steep indeed.
We "tolerated" Islam, endlessly, in the wake of 9/11.
Muslims weren't hung in the streets; they weren't kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, as their coreligionists did to our soldiers, journalists, and innocent bystanders on live television.
They weren't even banned from businesses.
So where is their toleration for us?
Where is their much-vaunted religious toleration, when the majority of the people of our nation say to them, "this is unacceptable to us; move it somewhere - anywhere - else."
I wonder why it is that they who constantly demand toleration from others, so carefully avoid extending it to anyone else?
Islam preaches that gays should be killed; that women dressed immodestly should be killed; that unmarried fornicators should be killed; that those who do not believe as they should be killed, converted, or forced to live in servitude.
How can that BE tolerated?
Those who do not tolerate YOU, should not be tolerated.
I wonder what gives Obama the sense that it is simultaneously ok to demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu display "tolerance" by not building homes in the Gaza Strip - on the grounds that it is sacred to the Palestinians - yet deny New Yorkers the right to self-determine in the same way?
Explain it to me.
Why does Obama think that Palestinians deserve concessions not granted to his OWN CITIZENS?
THAT is what this debate is about. Not "rights," but the right thing to do.
Building a mosque at Ground Zero isn't it.
But it has even more significance than even this, yet to be revealed.
See, the very name of the project is part and parcel of the insult - the deliberate insult - that Faisal Rauf is inflicting upon the West, with the calculated support and defense of the politicians of New York and the nation, in defiance of the will of the people.
Cordoba was the site upon which, when Islam conquered Spain in the 700s, a gigantic mosque and "cultural center" was built - upon the site of the slaughter of thousands - as a symbol to the Spaniards that Islam had conquered them.
If this project had taken place under any other name, it could have been shrugged off as callousness alone; Faisal Rauf's tone-deafness to the nation in whose precincts he resides.
But under the name Cordoba House, there is no other way to construe it; the very name itself is a deliberate statement of calculated insult, intended to give us - and the world - the exact impression that it gives: "We win. Your politicians helped us, and continue to do so. You cannot stop us."
Because, you see, this is what truly gives the other team the edge in this little cultural contretemps; they BELIEVE that they are right, and we as a nation should be destroyed; and we BELIEVE that we as a nation should be willing to tolerate anything, under the guise of religious freedom.
There is, and can be, no "toleration" of a knife at your throat, if you hope to live.
They may not articulate it as such, but Joe American sees that.
And they are furious, for those charged with the sacred trust of defending us from foreign invaders, foreign oppressors, are aiding them in their invasion, abetting their oppression.
If Cordoba House were about peace, it would be somewhere else.
And it wouldn't be "Cordoba" anything.
The fact that it is as close to Ground Zero as possible, and named as it is, indicates that Faisal Rauf is not tone-deaf; he knows exactly how angry Americans are about it, and he is thumbing his nose at us, because he knows that our own doctrine of tolerating anything just because it's different bares our throats to the blade.
This mosque is his way of saying so, to the world.
It's legal.
He has the privilege of being allowed to build it if he wants.
But there is nothing, no force on earth, that can make building it "right," in any sense of the word.
And we ought to quit trying to disguise it as anything else but an offense.
