In his speech in Cairo, President Obama just declared, “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
That sounds nice, doesn’t it. I mean, who likes negative stereotypes?
Actually, the people who hold negative stereotypes appreciate them. Only, they don’t think of them as negative stereotypes.
What one person calls a “negative stereotype” might be considered a principled criticism by another person. It’s a matter of perspective.
It’s also a matter of free speech. All those who fall under the jurisdiction of the US government are supposed to have the freedom to criticize what they will, whether their criticisms are popular or not. There is nothing in the Constitution that indicates that religion ought to be exempt from criticism.
There is also nothing in the Constitution that suggests that it is part of the duties of the President of the United States to fight against criticisms of religion in general, or criticisms of particular religions. Barack Obama has it wrong when he says that to fight criticisms of Islam is his responsibility as President.
In fact, it’s Obama’s responsibility as President of the United States not to fight against criticisms of Islam, or of any other religion. The President is the Executive leader of a secular government that is supposed to respect the religious liberty of everyone in the USA and its territories. An essential aspect of that religious liberty is the right of people to criticize religions without government suppression of their dissent.
Please, President Obama, do not “fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear”. It’s none of your business.
I did not hear or read the speech in its entirety yet but I was wondering. Could it be that he was refering to the fact that many Americans strongly dislike Islamic people and believe they are all terrorists. He was promising to work for peace and not let Americans in general think that everyone in the middle east is a terrorist. Maybe not, like I said I havent heard the whole thing yet, but this feels like a line taken out of context
I did hear the speech. Live. How is this taking things out of context? It’s a direct, word for word quote.
It’s not the business of the President to worry about whether people strongly dislike Islamic people. The President of the United States is not supposed to use the power of government to manage people’s opinions about religion.
The Middle East and Islam are two separate things. For that matter, Afghanistan, one of the countries where we’re at war, is not in the Middle East.
He referred at one point (about 37 minutes in, talking about democracy) to “trusting in the rule of law” which he conveniently fails to engage in the prosecution of the Bush crimes – both Constitutionally and in foreign and domestic policy – and through continuing the Bush policies of illegal spying on the American public, expanding the fiasco of a war on terror into Afghanistan and now Pakistan, and, most aggregiously, by allowing completely illegal torture(both here and by international law) to continue!
All in all though, i enjoyed listening to his speech, realizing how many orders of magnitude further this man is as a president than was (the complete lack of character, brains and morals displayed by) his predecessor.
You’ve really hit on the character of the Obama presidency, Tom. Obama engages in many of the same rotten and illegal actions of George W. Bush, but he speaks more fluently, and so he makes people feel better, while the underlying problems are not fixed.
To be fair, i’m still going to give him his four year term before passing final judgement (through my vote).
i want to see progress on health care and our energy policy, to see these ridiculous wars and the wrong-headed homeland security spying ended, and i want to see corporate (especially financial) power and the military industrial sector REGULATED and restrained so that the wealth may be distributed better to the citizens of our country. There’s a long list of items i want to see dealt with during his term and i’ll be watching and commenting to Obama and the blogosphere about his ongoing policies, while writing, e-mailing and calling my congresspeople to effect progressive change the way it’s supposed to work in our democracy. i’ve been very frustrated over the past 10 years at how the government has gotten away from representing us and more toward being the lackey of the corporate sector. This, above all else, MUST be fixed or we are no longer living in a democracy.
I’m glad to see that you’re working on this with such attention, because I think that the key is for more Americans to become like you, Tom, disgruntled, and sometimes despairing, but never really giving up, and remaining true to a higher set of ideals.