Justin Raimondo: Haters Go After the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’

Haters Go After the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’
Leonard Peikoff: even crazier after all these years
by Justin Raimondo

Nothing illustrates the utter craziness of our society in the post-9/11 era than the controversy over the "Ground Zero mosque." To begin with, the proposed Islamic center – not a mosque, but the Muslim equivalent of the YMCA – a nonprofit foundation wants to build in New York City isn’t at "ground zero," it is four blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. But that doesn’t deter demagogues like Newt Gingrich and various other unsavory opportunists from making it into a political issue.

Never mind the fact that there is already a mosque four blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center, which has been there for many years. If we follow the "logic" of Newt and his fellow crusaders, then this should be torn down – along with all the other hundreds of mosques in New York City. And don’t forget Washington, D.C., the site of the attack on the Pentagon: surely symbols of the "enemy" religion must be banned there, too.

Of course, that would suit the haters, like Pamela "Shrieking Harpy" Geller, fuehrer of the "Stop the Islamization of America" movement, just fine. Geller is a self-proclaimed "Objectivist," a follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, whose blog – "Atlas Shrugs" – is named after Rand’s famous novel. It’s a case of intellectual expropriation both obscene and absurd, since Geller’s style of "argumentation" is as emotion-laden and out of control as Rand’s was cool, objective, and rational. Geller’s "argument" is that all Muslims are inherently and irredeemably evil, and out to destroy America: there are no "moderates," and those who pretend to be so are merely biding their time until the day they can reveal their true colors and impose Sharia law on the rest of us. Reading her tracts is kind of like perusing the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, only with Muslims taking the place of Jews as the sinister, all-powerful Forces of Darkness. Geller herself is a nobody, a publicity-seeker with no real arguments to make, so I won’t burden my readers with too much of her incoherent shrieking, but here’s a sample:

"Another stab in the eye of America……….’Muslim Family Day’ on September 12th. Vile. Six Flags hosts the annual Muslim Brotherhood front, I.C.N.A., for Muslim Family Day on September 12. ‘This event offers fun for the entire family and will also offer halal food stalls.’"

Had enough? I thought so.

Geller’s "intellectual" mentor, Leonard Peikoff, the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Rand’s "intellectual heir," however, is a different story. He does make arguments, if you want to call them that.

Asked if he supported the right of the builders of the mosque to their own private property, this alleged advocate of reason and property rights answers with an emphatic no:

"Let’s start with property rights. Property rights are limited and they are contextual. You cannot do anything you want with property even though it is yours, not if its ramifications objectively entail a threat to the rights of others. You can’t build a bomb in your home. You can’t even build a big bonfire in your backyard legitimately because the principle of rights is that property rights are a derivative of life as the standard and there can be no right to threaten anyone’s life nor indeed to threaten anyone’s property."

How does a mosque, or, more accurately, a Muslim community center, "objectively entail a threat to the rights of others"? According to Peikoff, all manifestations of Islam – the very idea of Islam – is "objectively" a threat to the United States. Therefore, by his "logic," it’s okay to violate the property rights of Muslims – any and all Muslims. Indeed, killing them all would be a good thing, according to his sick perversion of Objectivism. Not that he has the intellectual honesty to follow his own murderous "logic" to its "rational" conclusion….

Continue reading: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/07/22/haters-go-afte...