In terms of music, there are better festivals to be found. Woodstock Station showcases mostly rock, folk and industrial music bands, which are either still before or already after their prime; but this is only part of what makes the event special. The other is Owsiak himself and his charisma, which constantly attracts different types of people unhappy with “the system,” the political order, social norms and conventional careers. Woodstock Station provides them with a space without checkpoints or metal barriers, but instead offers one where they feel at ease and where they can do whatever they want. And indeed, the place has the feel of youth, punk rock and anarchy.

Yet, what you do find in the chaos is a quite surprising sense of mutual responsibility and a sympathetic awareness of others. During a concert you might need to elbow your way to get close to the stage, but if you feel gloomy, someone will ask if you are OK. The crime rate is ridiculously low: about thirty thefts in three days for half a million people.

Apart from two main stages and tent fields, which make the huge space look something of a favela, you can also find the so-called villages, spaces with big tents organized according to a particular theme. Apart from those organized by the sponsors—a mobile phone service provider, an international beer company and an on-line auction service—where you can buy drinks, exchange plastic bottles for water and charge your phone, there are others such as the religious Hare Krishna, and Catholic Church’s Jesus Station, another one created by the Polish National Bank, and the “Academy of Beautiful Arts,” a space for discussion where talks with public officials (this time the presidents of Poland and Germany), journalists, athletes, and even members of the army are held, and questions are taken from the critical but carefully listening audience. Smaller tents house NGOs such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, souvenir and jewelry shops, phone charging stations and the Christmas Charity Grand Orchestra (Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy), Owsiak’s original brainchild, now over twenty years old.

The Christmas Orchestra, created in the early 1990s—not long after Poland’s democratic transition—was supposed to be a one-time event to collect money for medical equipment for newborns. Owsiak, then a TV host, famous for his show for teenagers, managed to create a one-day celebration of charity, hosted about two weeks after Christmas, broadcast live on television, with fund-raising music concerts held and televised all over Poland. The music festival Woodstock Station was created later as a thank you for all the volunteers who participated in the Christmas charity event.

It is now eighteen years old and has become internationally famous. German fans claim it would never be possible to create such an event in their country; Ukrainian fans are trying to adapt the charity and the music festival at home. And in a recent report on international religious freedom, the US Department of State mentioned Woodstock Station as the host of an ethno-league multicultural soccer match with players made up of Polish residents from foreign countries, including Nigeria, Togo, India, Italy, and France, showing it as an example of Poland’s anti-racist movement.

There are many music festivals in Poland where after paying for your ticket you can see all the new exciting stars in a controlled environment, and self-consciously observe other festival-goers to check if your taste in music and fashion is up to date. Perhaps because it is much less commercial and perhaps the bands there are not as new or popular, Woodstock Station attracts a different crowd of people. They seem to come there to participate in a shared feeling of liberation, spontaneity and few rules. At the same time Woodstock Station is a rare example of an event in which people granted freedom to do whatever they want choose to put their best, punk-rock combat-boot clad, foot forward.

As a foreigner, I am sometimes mystified, and sometimes awed, by the radical consequences of the foundational freedoms in the U.S.. For instance, the freedom to say anything, including, to cite a recent Supreme Court decision, the freedom to hurl anti-gay slurs at mourners attending a funeral. Even such speech acts are protected under a firm system of liberties, the firmest that I know of. On the other hand, I am also bemused when friends at a restaurant divide the bill to exactly reflect what each one of the eaters has consumed, dollar by dollar, with due attention to the price of each and every item. A “depraved taste” for equality, de Tocqueville would say.

De Tocqueville argues that liberty and equality are always in tension in America; economic liberty, for example, may go against the principle of equality, as it often does. Or, vice versa, the push for equality may curtail some liberties. But the system, he adds, has built-in mechanisms designed to keep the needed equilibrium in place. Again, I am being schematic: of course the system is more complex and there is more to America’s history than the principles of equality and freedom.

My point is that Obama is right about the strength of this country. As Max Weber has demonstrated in his great comparative studies of the world religions and in his investigations of economy and society, ideas matter. The powerful Soviet empire collapsed not only under external forces, but primarily because its institutional order was based on unsustainable principles. The same can be said about right and left-wing dictatorships, which also tend toward instability and collapse. And also in the U.S, the basic political principles and ideas matter as they have proven to provide stable support for the institutional system, and thus underlie the country’s considerable strength.

With this in mind, let me follow Sherlock Holmes’s method and think like a terrorist. If it is true that ideas are the main strength of, arguably, the strongest country in the world, then, the terrorist’s primary targets should not be military, economic or infrastructural. They would have to be ideological. If de Tocqueville is correct, as most experts agree, the terrorist would focus his or her attacks on the principles of equality and liberty to erode the country’s institutional apparatus, to create unrest and systemic instability.

To accomplish this, the terrorist would have to target key decision-makers, beginning with the President and the members of Congress. The terrorist would try to encourage them to change the basic rules, t0 diminish the role of the judiciary, to suspend principles such as habeas corpus,  to undermine the fair treatment of presumed criminals and the humane treatment of actual criminals, and to undermine the principle that the country has to wage wars according to established rules and conventions. A goal of such an extremist would be for the U.S. to wage war following undemocratic means, fostering a sense that legality can be dispensed with. Another front of attack would involve freedom of expression and the free circulation of ideas. The terrorist would hope to increase the degree of policing and surveillance of private information. Executive capacities should be transferred to specialized branches in the military and to intelligence agencies, as dictatorships do. Freedom of worship should be dealt with also, preventing religious groups from houses of worship, for example.

For all this, the terrorist would have to enlist, above all, his or her most radical opponents. With their help, the terrorist can weaken the foundations of democratic practice and social order of America, turning the country against the very principles that sustain its distinctive social order.

Years ago, I would have been convinced that such a plan would be impossible, even ridiculous. But after George Bush, I began to wonder. And even under Obama, I am concerned.

The streets of Tehran had turned into free public spaces days before the 2009 Presidential Elections. The vibrant scene of groups of people with antagonistic political ideals arguing and debating with one another was truly amazing and unique. After the elections, in a spontaneous concerted act, three million people walked in silence, protesting the results of the election. Those who walked up from Enghelab (Revolution) Square to Azadi Square experienced a sacred time and space. They experienced for a few hours a power that has been engrained forever in their minds. The actors involved created a story and have “started a chain of events,” as Arendt put it in The Human Condition. While they did not walk the path of revolution to freedom, they did experience freedom when they were debating in public corners.

On the days prior to and after the elections, Iranians experienced the extraordinary, because they challenged the “commonly accepted.” They “acted in concert” and owned the streets of Tehran from which they had always felt alienated. The streets of Tehran, ever since, have gained a different meaning. They are a reminder of a moment of “greatness” that will never lose its new acquired significance. It is “greatness” because it breaks through the commonly accepted and reaches into the extraordinary. Whatever is true in common and everyday life no longer applies because everything that exists in the extraordinary is unique. Following Arendt’s political thought and rejecting the tradition of means and ends, Iranians in those days were obsessively involved in the process of the “living deed” and the “spoken word,” the sheer act of performance. They did not knowingly organize and manage the events; rather they were spontaneously involved in actions and words. It is important to acknowledge the meaning of this experience, because it alludes to the “potentiality” of power that can be realized and in fact, was realized, however briefly, in actuality. For Arendt, the end is not the outcome or the result of political action, but the act itself, the coming together of men and women from all walks of life. The act of protests, as means to an end, which could have been protesting until the collapse of the state, would not be political action as Arendt defines it. For her, the men and women walking together is the end of politics and freedom, “because there is nothing higher to attain than this actuality itself.”

The pure moments of freedom and politics, if and should they occur again, are forever to be cherished in memory but cannot be sustained. This temporality could of course be due to the brute force that Iranians face. Perhaps the temporal can be permanent in another context, although I highly doubt it, as every place has its own brute forces and complexities. … In any case, what is at stake here is that the ideal public sphere that many Iranians experienced was only temporary. This temporality does not reduce from the significance of the phenomenon. Yet the bitter reality is that once their sphere of public was crushed they had to look elsewhere, other places where they had always performed politically. Facebook is one of those places. As people resort to this alternative sphere of publics with newly developed political consciousness as a result of their post elections experience, I think, potentially, there may be better days in the future.

Two Examples

Once word spread around Facebook and opposition news websites that Habibollah Latifi, a Kurdish student, allegedly affiliated with separatist and terrorist organizations in Iran’s Kurdistan, was going to be executed in three days, almost everyone in my social circles was sharing the news. Most news feeds on my Facebook page were related to him. Discussions on how to prevent his execution were going on everywhere. A Facebook campaign page called Save Habibollah Latifi- Do Not Execute Habibollah Latif was created; one hundred people became members of this group in an hour. Members shared updated news on his status, relayed his family members’ anecdotes through personal communication with them, and suggested ways to stop the execution. Members suggested calling the Iranian Department of Justice, Kurdish parliamentary representatives, the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and in general, any organization that could bring this local problem to the international public. It was hoped that international pressure would affect the state’s decision. Dozens of petitions were created and sent to the Supreme Leader (Ayatalloh Khamenei), the Head of the Judiciary (Ayatollah Larijani), the United Nations (Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon), and any so called “important person” that could have influence. The words and actions of the Facebookers spread ever wider. Iranians inside and outside the country were engaged in a single cause: stopping Habilollah Latifi’s execution.

A few hours before his execution, word spread out on Facebook that crowds of people, including Latifi’s extended family, had gathered in front of the Sanandaj prison calling for the execution to stop. While only a couple of hundred people at most demonstrated, it did have an effect. At five in the morning, the head of the prison came out and urged people to leave the scene, insisting that their presence would have no effect,  promising them that the execution will be carried out as planned. The crowd did not budge. Later, the sentence was postponed and Latifi was transferred to another location.

Facebookers were extremely excited; their intense efforts had worked. They could see themselves as part of a movement. It’s not clear that it were Facebook, news websites, news channels (BBC Farsi, VOA and so on), bloggers and the virtual world that had stayed the execution. It is also not clear that the family’s outspokenness had led to the Internet spiral. Yet a contrasting case is suggestive.

A day after the Habilollah Latifi affair, another Iranian citizen was sentenced to death. Ali Saremi was allegedly a member of Mujahedin, an organization infamous for their terrorist activities right after the 1979 revolution. Mujahedin is officially despised by the Islamic Republic. Although word spread and news was shared on Facebook, not much momentum was created. Perhaps it was too late, or maybe it would have had no effect anyway. In any case, Saremi was executed as planned and not much was done to save him.

Of course there is no way to know what would have happened if more action was taken to stop his execution. However, at the time these two stories were compared and many believed if there had been more action, Saremi could have been saved also.  Such action would have had meaning, as has been indicated by the actions preceding and following the last elections.

Amy Stuart in her reply to my response to President Obama’s speech on the deficit pointed out the need to clarify what the political left, right and center mean. I think she’s right. The terms have been used loosely and quite imprecisely. But on the other hand, their continued use suggests that there may be good reasons for the continued use of the schema.

I, myself, became convinced, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that the terms left and right were obsolete.  I thought (it turns out incorrectly) that since it was becoming clear to just about everyone that there was no systemic alternative to capitalism, to the modern market economy, and since there really were simply alternative capitalisms, that we might best abandon the terms. Then we would pragmatically address the practical problems of the day, and express, identify and pursue various specific political commitments, e.g. individual freedom and social justice, and not put them in the large baskets of the left and the right. I thought that the terms hid more than they revealed, that it was too hard to find and consider specific commitments in these very large bins.

Yet, given the systematic polarization of our political world, I am convinced that I was wrong. These old categories still have life, helping illuminate distinctions and commonalities in the political landscape. And there is an additional benefit as it applies to the present American scene. The distinction between left, right and center provides a way to understand the creative political action of Barack Obama, who in this regard is a leader.

The notion of the political left and right has a history, dating back to the French Revolution: Monarchists, right; revolutionaries, left. It was used to understand the Manichean battles of the Twentieth Century: Communists and their sympathizers, left; Fascists and their sympathizers, right. And it also has been used to understand ordinary domestic politics: Republicans, right; Democrats, left, very conservative Republicans, far right, very progressive Democrats, far left (though I think this is a small group at best).

The notion of center is less sharp. Vaguely, it means in between left and right, but I think it can be more than this. It’s not only in between, but also what happens in between, in a meeting ground. In the sense of reading Elzbieta Matynia’s reading of bridges with kapias, it is a principled commitment to kapias. Obama is a centrist of this sort, and I don’t think he can be understood without keeping this in mind.

American rightists believe in the market. They follow Reagan. Government is the problem. American leftists believe in the power of the state. They follow Roosevelt and his descendants: government is a primary means to establish a sound economy and social justice. Centrists are agnostics, believing neither in the government nor in the market, pragmatically committed to one or to the other on instrumental grounds, whether or not they work to achieve given goals. Center-right then includes those who tend to think that on controversial issues the market is likely to work to the exclusion of the government, center-left tends to think that the government can play a significant role. Obama then on pragmatic grounds is center-left.

But he is, more creatively, primarily a principled centrist. He is not just in between, leaning left (or leaning right according to his leftist critics). He wants people with different convictions to come together, discuss their differences, find a way to agree to some common position and act on it. His desire for open debate and open negotiations is not instrumental. It is a fundamental commitment, very difficult to execute in these polarized times. He is more than willing to compromise on practical matters. He judges that on the grounds of social justice and pragmatic economic performance Republican policies advantage the rich, do not adequately address the needs of the middle class (this is the political mantra), but crucially the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. The state is needed for this. The market doesn’t do the trick. But he seeks engagement with his opponents.

His project, which I fully support, is to move the center left. I am torn between the judgment that he is sometimes not tough enough in executing this project, and an appreciation that he balances the most desirable with the possible and succeeds in the long run. I am not sure.

But I am sure that in order to make sense of Obama as a political leader, it is absolutely necessary to understand his principled commitment to the creative center, which is, as he puts it, not in the blue (on the left) states or the red (on the right) states, but in the United States, in the center.

Many commentators on the Democratic side (including Jeff) are mesmerized by the fact that most in the Tea Party movement, and the Republican Party at large, seem completely delusional, asserting facts that are not so and assuming ideological positions that distort reality almost as a matter of sport. The problem is not, however, one of simple dichotomies between reason and un-reason, and of truth and fiction, the problem resides in the dynamic that is slowly transforming our political regime.

French philosopher Merleau-Ponty explained this in the epilogue to his Adventures of the Dialectic. At two different moments in that text he uses two phrases in an almost indistinguishable way. At one point, he says, in condemning the Soviet dictatorship, that a different regime is needed, one that makes room for opposition and freedom. Later on, almost as if he were saying the same thing—and he was, in the context of his philosophy—he calls for a regime that welcomes opposition and truth. For Merleau-Ponty, truth is opening, or what he calls hyper-reflection and hyper-dialectics, which means opening to both other perspectives and the unfolding of time. Put straightforwardly: hyper-reflection means that even “reason”—or what he calls “the point of view of reflection”—needs to understand that it has its own blind spots. Therefore, it needs to be opened to contestation. Hyper-dialectics, on the other hand, means that whatever is the case today, may not be the case tomorrow. Therefore, present circumstances should never be expected to remain unchallenged.

In this context, the problem with Republican illusions, and lies that are mostly self-delusions, is not simply that they are wrong and untrue. The problem is that they find no opposition, that Democrats are afraid of confronting them openly and on principle, with positions that would have the potential of revealing other, better sides of the phenomena at stake. Republican illusions and self-delusions almost never have to face the clear opposition of those who would render visible, to them and everybody else, the huge blind spots of their narrow-minded perspectives. This lack of opposition, thus of “truth” in Merleau-Ponty’s sense, allows Republican highly idiosyncratic and ideological positions to become not true, but plausible. And this does not only improve their credibility, but, most importantly, transforms the state of opinion at large.

Somebody could legitimately say that the dynamic I am describing is not really taking place, that there are plenty of places in which the Tea and Republican Parties’ positions get challenged and contested. On the Thursday before the mid-term elections, for example, in the MSNBC program “The Last Word,” four Tea Party leaders were relentlessly challenged in their claim that they were fighting against the “socialistic” taking over of the country. Much more sophisticated critiques could be also found in magazines such as The Nation or The New York Review and even in The New York Times; and, of course, here in the blogosphere.

The problem is that when those challenges take place in the current, highly fragmented media landscape, no one who does not already see things from that critical perspective is watching or reading. The fragmented media do not, indeed cannot, stage for the broad public the play of opposition and freedom, and therefore of opposition and truth. The contestation to radical ideologies has to come from the other relevant political positions struggling for power—and, moreover, only this open contestation can force the media to momentarily “defragment,” so to speak. This is one reason why the two-party system may simply not be plural enough, because it simply fails in delivering the democratic regime’s need for opposition, freedom, and truth.

Of the two volumes in Tocqueville’s classic, I enjoy most reading and discussing Volume 2, which is more a critical examination of the promise and perils of democracy and its culture, less about the institutional arrangements and inventive practices of the Americans, which Tocqueville celebrated and which is the focus of Volume 1 of his masterpiece.  But this year, Volume 1 has become especially interesting to me.  I hope for the students also.

I have taught the course many times.  The way it develops always depends upon what’s going on in the world, who is in the class, and how they connect their lives with the challenges of Tocqueville.  We don’t read Tocqueville for his insights and predictions about the details of American life, judging what he got right, what he got wrong.  Rather, we try to figure out how his approach to the problems of democracy can help us critically understand our world and his, democracy in America back then and now.

Assigning the Constitution

This semester, indeed, for the past two weeks, the course has taken an interesting turn.  As we have been reading Tocqueville on the American system of government, political associations and freedom of the press, i.e. Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2, I felt the need to assign an additional shorter reading, The Constitution of the United States of America.  I did this not because I feared that the students hadn’t yet read this central document in the story of democracy in America and beyond (they had), but because I judged that it was time to re-read the text, to note what is in it and what is not, to critically appraise the use of the document as a confirmation of the partisan passions of today, and also to appraise what Tocqueville had to say about American political parties of his day and how his observations apply to our circumstances.

A few days after assigning the reading, Ron Chernow’s op-ed piece in The New York Times underscored my motivation for the assignment.  The Constitution is a complex political document, the product of serious political confrontations and compromise.  “The truth is that the disputatious founders — who were revolutionaries, not choir boys — seldom agreed about anything… Far from being a soft-spoken epoch of genteel sages, the founding period was noisy and clamorous, rife with vitriolic polemics and partisan backbiting. Instead of bequeathing to posterity a set of universally shared opinions, engraved in marble, the founders shaped a series of fiercely fought debates that reverberate down to the present day…Those lofty figures, along with the seminal document they brought forth, form a sacred part of our common heritage as Americans. They should be used for the richness and diversity of their arguments, not tampered with for partisan purposes.”

Thinking about Political Parties

Because the Constitution was a rich political document in its time, it does not decide the major political confrontations of our day.  Rather, it fuels them, as it did in the first years of the Republic in the tension between the primary advocate of an activist government then, Alexander Hamilton and along with him George Washington, and their primary opponent, Thomas Jefferson and later Andrew Jackson.  The competing readings of The Constitution served as the basis of the American party system (much to the regret of the Founders, opposed as they were to factions).

As my class and I moved on in our discussion of Volume 1, we considered the nature of the American party system.  Was it primarily about petty politics, as Tocqueville thought, in contrast to the big issues of European parties?  Or are there fundamental principles embedded within American partisan contests?  Obviously this is a matter of judgment of the observer. Tocqueville thought that Americans agreed on fundamental principles and argued only about details, that the days of great politics in America were over.  While my students generally agree with him, I don’t.

Considering the Constitution carefully and identifying what it has opened up, it is clear to me that major debates have raged about it since.  The relationship between the government and economic life is not settled by the document but raised.  The role of federal and local authorities is not decided, nor at first was the question of the relationship between freedom and slavery.  Such issues have led to competing legal opinions and decisions, but it seems to me, even more significantly, it has led to big politics, including civil war, major social movements and fundamental changes in the relationship between culture and power, in political culture.  Such issues have animated the actions of political parties in America, including right now.

It may seem that politicians are in it for themselves and that advancement in life is based upon not what you know, but who you know.  It may seem that American political practices are petty and cynical. Indeed, they are.  Tocqueville thought that major issues of governing fundamentals were settled in America and therefore it was the conflict of narrow political interest that would be the basis of American political conflict.  Some would advocate a more active role for government because it was in their immediate interests and others would advocate for minimal government, also based on interest.

But then as now there are those who see the political contest as a matter of fundamental principles, and they debate it accordingly.  There are those, such as Barack Obama and before him Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, indeed all the Democratic Presidents since FDR, who as a matter of principle see the democratic government’s positive role in the pursuit of the common good, and there are those who think the common good is best achieved by the invisible hand of the market.  This was the position of Reagan and his revolutionaries, and with post Reagan Republicans, at least in their rhetoric.

And now it is the position of The Tea Party, but they are on steroids.  The present day Tea Party Patriots seem to forget that there is an important distinction to be made between protesting the actions of a tyrannical government, and protesting and criticizing a democratic elected government that follows all the rules and procedures of the Constitution which they purport to revere.  There are competing principles and judgments, and not just competing interests.

What worries me most about the Tea Party and the Republicans and Independents that support it, aside from the craziness, is that they pretend that the debate was settled two centuries ago, in favor of minimal government and the invisible hand.  What worries me about my students’ appraisal of American politics, which I think they share not only with Tocqueville, but with the majority of their fellow citizens, young and old, is that they don’t appreciate what is at stake in the big political debate.

There was an interesting article in The New York Times last Sunday about a poetry salon in Damascus, Syria.  It reminded me of the theater movement I studied in Poland in the 1970s.  Both the theater movement and the poetry salon are examples of constituted free zones in repressive societies.  I think they demonstrate the possibility of re-inventing political culture, the possibility of reformulating the relationship between the culture of power and the power of culture.

The secret police are present at Bayt al-Qasid, the House of Poetry, in Damascus today, The Times reports, but it is also a place where innovative poetry is read, including by poets in exile, politically daring ideas are discussed, a world of alternative sensibility is created.  Not the star poets of the sixties, but young unknowns predominate.  The point is not political agitation nor to showcase celebrity, but the creation of a special place for reading, performance and discussion of the new and challenging.  The article quotes a patron about a recent reading.  “‘In a culture that loathes dialogue,’ the evening represented something different, said Mr. Sawah, the editor of a poetry Web site. ‘What is tackled here,’ he said, ‘would never be approached elsewhere.’”

Cynics would say that the Polish theater and the Syrian salon are safety valve mechanism, through which the young and the marginal can let off steam, as a repressive political culture prevails.  But in Poland, the safety valve overturned the official culture, even before the collapse of the Communist regime, as I explained in my book Beyond Glasnost: the Post Totalitarian Mind.

I don’t want to assert that this happy ending is always the result of such cultural work.  Clearly, it’s not.  But I do want to underscore that the very existence of an alternative sensibility in a repressive context changes the nature of the social order.  Poland was not simply a repressive country then, and Syria is not simply repressive now.  They are places where the possibility for dialogue was established, places where poetry can prevail, and because of this, political culture can be reinvented – in Syria, at least for a discrete number of people in a particular location at a particular time.  But the limits of today may be very different tomorrow.  This I learned as I observed my Polish friends.

While I have been observing  Feisal Abdul Rauf’s actions and reactions to the public controversies surrounding his work as the the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative and the imam of the Farah mosque in Lower Manhattan, I have been thinking a lot about my book, Civility and Subversion: The Intellectual in Democratic Society.  I think that in democracies, intellectuals are talk provokers who help the general public confront and address serious political problems by informing discussion.  I think that they do so by civilizing differences so that enemies can become opponents and opponents can become collaborators, and by subverting commonsense that hides problems, so that these problems then can be discussed.  I, of course, know that no one intellectual is always a subversive, and no one intellectual is always an agent of civility.  Yet, certain key intellectuals have primarily played one or the other role.  This for example is how I think about the intellectual work of Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King Jr.

The tragedy of Feisal Abdul Rauf is that he has intended and has dedicated his life to the role of civility, while more brutal figures in our public life, perhaps Newt Gingrich is the primary culprit, have intended to turn the persistently patriotic imam into a subversive.  He has been labeled an agent of Islamic, indeed radical Islamist, subversion of the good moral order, just when he has done everything in his public pronouncements and actions to support the good pluralistic moral order that he understands, along with many of his fellow Americans including his President, to be the great American achievement.

Thus consider deliberately Feisal Abdul Rauf’s words in his recent op-ed piece. He is even willing to see this episode in which he has been systematically and viciously slandered as a positive development in the project of civil religious interactions:

“Lost amid the commotion is the good that has come out of the recent discussion. I want to draw attention, specifically, to the open, law-based and tolerant actions that have taken place, and that are particularly striking for Muslims.

President Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg both spoke out in support of our project. As I traveled overseas, I saw firsthand how their words and actions made a tremendous impact on the Muslim street and on Muslim leaders. It was striking: a Christian president and a Jewish mayor of New York supporting the rights of Muslims. Their statements sent a powerful message about what America stands for, and will be remembered as a milestone in improving American-Muslim relations.

The wonderful outpouring of support for our right to build this community center from across the social, religious and political spectrum seriously undermines the ability of anti-American radicals to recruit young, impressionable Muslims by falsely claiming that America persecutes Muslims for their faith.”

Yesterday, in an interview on the ABC news program, “This Week,” the imam expressed his dilemma.  He is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t, and therefore he states if he had known the controversy he has provoked would happen he would have never proceeded.   He wanted to civilize differences, instead he has provoked them. He has against his own sensibility revealed the ugly virus of hatred, as he was trying to nurture civilized understanding. This is tragic for him as an individual, but reveals something critical for us, his fellow citizens.

In order for us to be true to our principles, Park 51 must be built, as President Obama suggested in his most recent remarks at his news conference.

“With respect to the mosque in New York, I think I’ve been pretty clear on my position here, and that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal; that they have certain inalienable rights — one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.”

I fear that this clear message we should tell ourselves and others about ourselves may not be sent.  American civilization warriors, those who seek a war with a world religion, may get their way.  It may be suggested that moving the mosque just a bit uptown is a reasonable compromise, a small price to pay for social peace at home.  This is the “modest proposal” (in the sense of Jonathan Swift in my opinion) of Governor David Paterson. (link)

But as an American, as a New Yorker, as someone who works in lower Manhattan and lost a dear friend in the World Trade Center, I think this is exactly wrong and not moderate at all.  We will not only be less safe as a result, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s major concern, we will also be diminished as a country dedicated to fundamental civil and democratic ideals.

In his remarks at the Iftar Dinner at the State Dining Room of the White House, President Obama continued to discharge his responsibilities as Storyteller-in-Chief with distinction.

He clearly illuminated fundamental principles of the American polity. He highlighted their long history, and he applied the principles with their historical resonance to a pressing problem of the day.
Yet, the politics of the day, concerning the so called “Ground Zero Mosque,” confused matters, and his attempt to respond to the politics has added to the confusion.  I hope in the coming days and months he addresses the confusion.   But, in the meanwhile, we need to remember what the issues are apart from the silly interpretations of the 24/7 news machine.  His remarks should be deliberately considered.

Today, remembering the significance of the speech.  Tomorrow, a consideration of the confusion which followed. Obama welcomed his guests, including members of the diplomatic corps, his administration and Congress, and offered his best wishes to Muslims from around the world for the holy month of Ramadan.  He recalled the several years that the Iftar dinner has been held at the White House, as similar events have been hosted to celebrate Christmas, Passover and Diwali.  He observed how these events mark the role of faith in the lives of the American people and affirm “the basic truth that we are all children of God, and we all draw strength and a sense of purpose from our beliefs.”  The events are “an affirmation of who we are as Americans,” with a long history, illuminated by Obama by citing the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Virginia Act of Establishing Religious Freedom and remembering the First Amendment of the Constitution.

This tradition of religious diversity and respect has made the United States politically strong and open to vibrant and multiple religious traditions, the President noted, making us “a nation where the ability of peoples of different faiths to coexist peacefully and with mutual respect for one another stands in stark contrast to the religious conflict that persists elsewhere around the globe.”

Yet, he recalled, there have been controversies, most recently concerning “the construction of mosques in certain communities -– particularly New York.”

And then he pronounced his strong commitment.  “As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. (Applause.)  And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.  This is America.  And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.  The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.  The writ of the Founders must endure.”

He continued to explain the implications of his commitment.  We must remember the tragedy of 9/11 and honor those who risked their lives in response to the attacks.  We must remember that our enemies do not respect the rights that are fundamental to our country.  “In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion – and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims killed on 9/11.”  And recalling his Inaugural Address, he emphasized that “our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus —- and non-believers.”
Did the President then endorse the Park51 community center?  Actually if one reads carefully, he did not. But he did, more importantly, declare that he viewed the building of such a center as not only an American right, but also as an affirmation of American political identity –  this without endorsing the specific details of the construction of such a building in such a place.