Courtesy of Mother Jones

Hypothetical. You just stepped on a landmine and the explosion blew off your leg.  As you lay in a hospital bed, you struggle to grasp the long-term impact that this trauma will have on the rest of your life.  Physically, you’re ailing.  You can’t imagine what it will be like without the leg that you’d never anticipated living without.  Emotionally, you’re distressed.  How will the world judge you?  Will your condition elicit stares of revulsion from strangers?  Are you psychologically prepared to tackle the challenges you now face as a one-legged person?

As you’re processing all of these questions, a person knocks on the door to your hospital room and introduces himself as an agent of the government tasked with investigating your case.  You ask him the purpose of his visit.  He says that the law requires that within 72 hours of your injury, he must be dispatched to determine whether or not you planted the landmine that blew up your leg, and if he concludes that you knowingly played role in your injury, you could be subject to life in prison or execution.  Tell me, are you pissed off right now?

Courtesy of Huffington Post

A similar scenario, with much higher stakes and ramifications, could actually play out thousands of times every year in Georgia if House Bill 1 is passed.  Introduced by Rep. Bobby Franklin, the bill would require that any woman who has had a miscarriage report the incident to authorities within 72 hours of its occurrence.  At that point, an investigator will be dispatched to determine the cause of death, and if the mother cannot prove that there was no “human involvement,” then she can be charged with “prenatal murder,” which carries the penalty of death or life behind bars.

As a man, I will never have to experience the gut wrenching emotional toll that a miscarriage takes on a woman.  I will never know what it’s like to have to grasp the reality that a life I was creating has been lost due to chance or trauma. Despite never being able to fully understand the pain of this moment, I can sure as hell tell you that the last thing I’d want in that situation is someone forcing me to prove my innocence within three days of losing my child.

Rep. Franklin’s proposed legislation, which thankfully, will likely be rejected, is one of the more detestable examples of a growing anti-abortion movement that’s picked up steam since the midterm elections.  Representatives sent to Washington with the explicit directive of overseeing fiscal reform are taking advantage of their newfound majority by implementing radical, socially conservative initiatives into the national and state agendas.

Bills were proposed in Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa that would make killing someone doing harm to a fetus a “justifiable homicide.”  In layman’s terms, this would mean that someone would be protected by law if they murdered a doctor to prevent him from performing an abortion.  The bill in South Dakota, introduced by Rep. Phil Jensen, was shelved last week after Jensen said it needed revisions and was being taken out of context.  He contended that the bill was purposed to protect pregnant women against third party threats, allowing only the pregnant women, their husbands, their parents and their children to commit “justifiable homicide” in their defense.

Courtesy of LifeNews.com

The Nebraska bill, however, which has not been tabled, goes much farther, allowing third parties to commit “justifiable homicide” to protect unborn fetuses.  All of these legislators were approached by Americans United for Life (AUL), which has delivered its version of the “justified homicide” legislation to each of them as part of its anti-abortion campaign. Experts warn that this type of legislation carries a very real potential to incite violence.

“‘In short, this bill authorizes and protects vigilantes, and that’s something that’s unprecedented in our society,’ Melissa Grant of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland told the Nebraska legislature’s judiciary committee on Wednesday. Specifically, she warned, it could be used to target Planned Parenthood’s patients and personnel. Also testifying in opposition to the bill was David Baker, the deputy chief executive officer of the Omaha police department, who said, ‘We share the same fears…that this could be used to incite violence against abortion providers.’” – Mother Jones, February 24, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood.  My home state of Virginia passed legislation that requires all offices, clinics and centers that perform first-trimester abortions to be regulated as hospitals.  Experts argue that this is the strictest abortion regulation in the country, and it could lead to the shutdown of 17 of Virginia’s 21 abortion clinics.  Proponents of the legislation said that abortion clinics should be held to hospital standards to ensure safety standards.  This argument falls flat, however, when you consider the fact that plastic surgery centers are not required to meet these criteria.

Courtesy of BV Black Spin

Legislation isn’t the only war front on the anti-abortion battlefield.  Last week, a Texas-based anti-abortion group sponsored a billboard ad in New York City that read “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”  Aside from relying on some very debatable statistics and making overreaching assumptions, the billboard – erected during Black History Month – was distasteful and designed to be painful to black women who have had abortions.

These deplorable tactics being used by the conservative right to try to revive the abortion debate are at best extreme, and at worse, dangerous.  Considering the legalization of “justifiable homicide” as a way to deter women from exercising their rights to abortions constitutionally guaranteed to them by Roe v. Wade is unethical, reprehensible and un-American.

Is there anything quite as fickle as public opinion?  It’s an unwieldy monster that ebbs and flows with tenacity at the slightest provocation, dangerous not for its volatility, but rather for its ability to substantively change our national agenda. The founders knew this.  It’s why they purposefully designed our three branches of government to be almost intolerably deliberative, requiring that everything one branch produces be able to pass litmus tests conducted (very slowly) by the other two branches.

Courtesy of Politico

This designed institutional inconvenience was one of the wiser concepts implemented by our Founding Fathers.  They knew the potential dangers in getting carried away by our collective emotions.  I’m in the business of public relations.  No one knows better than I how powerful a motivator public opinion can be.

You often hear people criticize President Obama for his mild manner.  Detractors either wish he’d be more assertive and confrontational or believe that his coolness is really just a manifestation of incompetence or indecisiveness.  I’m in neither of those camps.  On the contrary, I believe that Obama’s propensity to be contemplative and even keeled is actually a shrewd political tactic.  It’s a tactic designed to allow him to outlast a political movement that many predicted would see to his political demise.  Instead, it was the inability of this movement to remain composed and contemplative that will soon lead to its eventual death; the death of the Tea Party.

Tea was so last year. Time to start a coffee party

The TEA Party, which stands for the Taxed Enough Already Party, is the manifestation of people’s shared anger, confusion and the want for resolve.  It was a group founded in response to a single issue: The Great Recession.  It has since evolved into another entity entirely that no one can seem to define, including the group itself.  Quarrelsome factions exist within its upper ranks because the party was conceived in a rush to judgment, with all of its members wanting a solution to their shared problem,  but with nobody knowing exactly how to solve it.

Under the moniker of “Taxed Enough Already,” some within the group have attempted to incorporate divisive social agendas into the party’s platform.  This has alienated the previously Independent members by forcing them to align with issues that kept them out of the Republican Party in the first place.  There is still a strong contingent of people within the party who only care about reforming our national fiscal policies and balancing the budget.  The idea of championing sweeping social reforms that are premised on significant religious undertones does not resonate with these people.  As a result, this faction has gradually shied away from the Tea Party label, wishing they’d never renounced their independence from organized political parties.

Courtesy of "Brian Dennert here"

Roughly one year ago, when things looked bleakest for the Democrats, I remember standing in the kitchen with my father discussing the impact this new Tea Party would have on our politics.  Its rise to prominence had turned our conventional understanding of the political spectrum completely on its axis, and no one knew what the end result would be.  One thing was for sure: Democrats were scared.

The times, they are a changin

Tea Partiers were calling for a political genocide, which admittedly, they accomplished by effectively voting out some of Washington’s most tenured congressmen.  They took the position that the institution of government had been perverted over time, leading a grassroots initiative that resolved to restore integrity to the system.

The differences in how we view the role of government aside, this was a noble, honest endeavor.  However, the Tea Party of a year ago is not the same Tea Party that we see today. It hit the same roadblock that every third party inevitably runs into in a system that can only support two legitimate parties, that roadblock being staying power.

The Tea Party gobbled up everyone who was willing to defect from their political loyalties early in its grass roots campaign.  The unfortunate thing about a grassroots movement is that it starts out as a movement, an interesting and exciting thing to join, but as time goes on, it becomes an institution.  Institutions are much less appealing.  So unappealing, in fact, that we’ve limited ourselves to only two of them: the Democratic institution and the Republican institution.

The Tea Party will soon realize that in order to have a lasting impact, it’s going to have to succumb to the same fate as every third party before it.  It will have to allow itself to be absorbed into the GOP, hoping that in the best of scenarios, it can move the needle that dictates the Republican Party’s agenda slightly towards the position it aligned itself with on the political spectrum.

Courtesy of The Washington Independent

Hint: The answer to the poll question is no

Third parties cannot succeed if they target our two biggest parties by contending that they should be considered of equal status. It’s like having a six year old who made his first bologna sandwich last week say to a world class chef  “your cooking ain’t so great. You could learn a thing or two from me.”

What role will the Tea Party play in our national history?  Honestly, not much of one.  It will move the GOP base further to the right once it’s been completely absorbed, the same way the Green Party moved the needle slightly left when it was consumed by the Democratic Party.  Sure, it’ll survive– in name, mostly.  But it will never again be a real player.  Three years from now, no one will be talking about the Tea Party.

C'mon, you can't stay mad at me for long. I even whipped out the puppy dog eyes to get you to forgive me.

I always feel guilty when I neglect The Beltway Perspective, but I’ve never felt worse than now.  Prior to this latest lapse, I had never let a month go by without posting something.  Often, even that schedule proved too infrequent for my liking, but failing to publish anything for the better part of five months is inexcusable.

I neglected a loyal contingent of fans and friends who enjoyed The Beltway Perspective for its value as a forum that allowed people across the entire political spectrum to have civil, intellectual debates about our country’s most pressing issues.

If my puppy dog eyes weren't good enough... I'd like to say that this is a picture of my dog bored because The Beltway Perspective was on hiatus, but in reality, he was just tired.

Mea culpa.  Lets move past this bump in the road in our shared history together.  It’s time to rekindle those old feelings that brought us together in the first place.

Courtesy of CBS News

One of my initial goals for “Holding Glenn Beck Accountable Week” was to take the first quote that Beck displayed at the beginning of one of his programs and determine whether or not it was presented in an honest context.  I had my suspicions that Beck distorts the context of most of the quotes that he throws up on his nifty video screen, but I wanted to test my theory.  I decided to use the first quote he displayed on his show Tuesday and report on it no matter the outcome.  Yes, that means that if it was an honest description of whatever the person being quoted had said, I would have been forced to acknowledge that Beck was right.  However, that scenario was not to unfold.

Beck started Tuesday’s show by proclaiming that he wanted to have “a reasoned conversation” with America about the 10.2.10 One Nation Working Together rally in D.C.  He concluded this “reasoned conversation” by exclaiming that Obama is in fact a Marxist communist dictator who plans to, someday soon, overthrow our Republic’s form of democracy and replace it with a tyrannical form of socialism.  I’d love to get into why that statement is ludicrous, but I need to stick with my stated agenda.

“Quite honestly, I feel stupid when I say communist.  Two years ago, I didn’t even think… I mean, I wouldn’t have believed half of this stuff.  I don’t want to believe it now,” Beck began.  He continued, “During the election, 2008, some people were questioning whether or not Barack Obama were a socialist.  There was some strong evidence.  His past associations and his own words.”

Beck then displayed the following quote from President Obama:

“I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Sounds pretty damning, right?  I’ll be completely honest with you – I was shocked when I saw that statement.  I thought to myself “maybe Beck is onto something here that I’m not seeing.”  Then I stopped drinking the Kool-Aid and started doing my homework, as Beck encourages his audience to do.

Perhaps we should give Obama’s statement a little bit of context.  The quote is taken from a comment that Obama made while on a Chicago Public Radio broadcast in 2001 during a discussion about the civil rights movement.  The first video contains Obama’s original, unedited quote.  The second video, which contains a statement from Obama that came less than three minutes after the first quote, shows that Obama does not believe the courts should be in the business of mandating redistributive change.  I’ve provided a link to the entire broadcast here (click on the audio link next to January 18, 2001), but the audio clips below occurred between minutes 42 and 47 of the broadcast.

After the Drudge Report, Fox News and magazine columnists misrepresented the quote back in 2008 (while Obama was running for president), Chicago Public Radio’s Ben Calhoun posted the audio along with a statement intended to set the record straight.

“The twist here is that, when heard in the context of the whole show, Obama’s position is distinctly misrepresented by the You Tube posting. Taken in context, Obama is evaluating the historical successes and failures of the Civil Rights movement—and, ironically, he says the Supreme Court was a failure in cases that it took on a role of redistributing resources.”

Here’s the YouTube video that sparked the controversy.

The corrective statement disseminated by Chicago Public Radio to set the record straight was targeted at Beck’s own news organization two years before Tuesday’s broadcast.  Do you mean to tell me that there wasn’t a single producer or research assistant that remembered Calhoun excoriating them the first time they got it wrong?

Beck concluded yesterday’s show by criticizing Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) for misrepresenting a statement Republican challenger Daniel Webster made in a campaign ad.  Those in glass houses…well, you know the rest.  That said, Grayson’s ad was despicable, misleading and slanderous.  Referring to your opponent as “Taliban Dan” is disgraceful.

Scroll to the end of the video for Beck’s statement regarding Grayson.

Beck’s audacity is shocking.  To criticize Grayson for slandering his opponent’s character in ads that ran in a district of 639,000 people when he did the same thing to Obama in front of his 1.7 million viewers is disgracefully hypocritical.  Sorry to micro-focus today, but this really needed to be reported.

Courtesy of therightperspective.org

Beck Calls Cass Sustein the Most Dangerous Man in America

Here’s the second part of yesterday’s post covering Monday’s episode.  I’ve decided to go a bit unconventional today, so I’ve posted a video blog in place of my normal written post.  Let me know if you like this format and whether or not you’d like me to publish more vlogs in the future.

Please don’t forget to comment below, and use the has tag #WOB (Week of Beck) to discuss Holding Glenn Beck Accountable Week on Twitter.

Courtesy of earthfirst.com

If you read my blog post last Thursday, then you know that I’ve decided to dedicate an entire week to analyzing and fact-checking Glenn Beck as a way to celebrate the first anniversary of The Beltway Perspective.  Every day, I’ll be watching Glenn Beck’s program, summarizing what Beck discussed on the show, and offering my own analysis on whatever the predominant topic or theme was.  In addition, I’ll keep a tally of the number of times that Beck mentions progressivism, socialism, communism, Marxism and fascism, just for fun.

Because of the nature of my self-imposed assignment, I will not be able to go into as much depth in countering Beck’s arguments as I would like to.  I’ll bullet most of the topics that Beck discusses, but I’ll identify one subject per episode to cover more extensively.

Tonight’s episode was a bit tame by Beck’s standard.  He limited himself to only 13 mentions of progressives (in a derogatory context), three mentions of communism, one mention of socialism and one mention of Fascism. Below is a list of a few issues discussed on tonight’s show:

Show Recap: Monday

• Beck started the evening by linking President Obama with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  He reports that Ahmadinejad met with Louis Farrakhan of the New Black Panthers, and then implies that Obama is Farrakhan’s ally. He suggests that Obama had the lawsuit addressing voter intimidation at the polls against Farrakhan’s Black Panthers dropped, and insinuates that because Obama is a “Farrakhan advocate,” he must also support Ahmadinejad’s tyrannical government.  Beck started down the schizophrenic rabbit hole right from the start with this little monologue.
• In the vein of an Oprah style book club guide, Beck started rambling off a selection of books that every American should read.  Among them was Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” which links the welfare state to totalitarian rule of government and “New Deal Raw Deal” by Burton Folsom Jr., which suggests that FDR’s economic legacy damaged America.  Biased, but I’ll give Beck some credit here.  At least he is encouraging people to read.
• I believe the following will be the focal point of tomorrow’s show, so I will not cover it in-depth now, but Beck suggested that Obama is responsible for the Feds pushing for warrantless GPS tracking, cyber surveillance and x-ray vans that spy on you in your homes.  To quote Beck on the subject of the x-ray vans, “They’re using them now in your neighborhoods and the Obama administration won’t say exactly why we’re buying their vans and driving them down our streets.” I need to dig a bit on this one, but I have a feeling a Glenn’s leaving a few pieces of the story out of his report.
• Apparently the Department of Education is indoctrinating our children with environmental policies that are meant to turn them against their parents and into zombies for the government.  This is part of the broader, in-depth story that I will publish tomorrow morning.

I wanted to provide you with a bit of content today, but because Beck does not air until 5:00 p.m., I need a bit more time to really break down the content of the show.  Please check back tomorrow afternoon for a deeper look into Beck’s allegations that Cass Sustein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the “most dangerous man in America” because he wants to “manipulate the American people,” whom he supposedly believes are too stupid to realize that they are being manipulated.

Please let me know if there is anything that you’d like me to add to the Beck reports, and if you have any specific concerns that you would like me to address.  If you want to watch with me and discuss the show on Twitter, use the hashtag #WOB (Week of Beck).  See you then.

Courtesy of Rob J. Brooks

Ready your confetti and streamers.  We’re going to do this birthday right.

For the past few weeks, I’ve pondered ways to celebrate my 365^th day as a blogger.  I wanted a fresh idea; a way to really give back to the readers who’ve stuck with me for a year now.  Then it hit me; the best gift I can give is content – lots and lots of content.  That’s when I decided that I would post every day between September 27 and October 1.

But what to post about?  Let’s be honest, I rarely come up with original content.  I play the role of political analyst, weighing in on news that everyone else is already covering.  This special week of non-stop posts calls for something more.

Why Just Cover the News?  Let’s Help Make It!

Last week, I was inspired by Jon Stewart’s announcement that he plans to hold the “Rally to Restore Sanity” here in the District of Columbia on October 30.  Stewart made the announcement just weeks after the decidedly insane Glenn Beck held his “Restoring Honor” rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  Was Beck’s rally insane?  No.  But he is.

There could be no better way to respond to Stewart’s plea for sensibility than to help him pave the way for sanity here in the nation’s capital.  That’s why, starting Monday, I will watch Glenn Beck so that you don’t have to.  I will analyze every word of every show, fact checking and poking fun along the way.  Oh, we’ll have some laughs, we’ll have some cries (knowing Beck, there might be a lot of crying), and we’ll even have a daily scorecard tracking the total number of times Beck mentions socialism, communism, progressivism and Marxism.

(**Please note: If you plan on playing the Glenn Beck drinking game using the terms listed above, only drink when Beck uses one of the keywords within two words of President Obama’s name; i.e. “Obama’s socialist agenda” or “Obama’s Marxist cabinet.”  Otherwise, you risk alcohol poisoning)

Since Tea Party Movement is already taken, we’ll call it the Birthday Party Movement

Let’s make this celebration worthwhile.  Tell your friends, family, former teachers, religious leaders, and the man standing next to you in line at Burger King that it’s time to restore sanity and in order to do that, we need to make sure everyone knows that Glenn Beck is insane.

Let’s become the news story.

***Message to Steven Colbert: It was only after thoughtful consideration that I opted to join Jon Stewart’s campaign to restore sanity.  While I respect your patriotism and service to this country, Stewart’s vision for America better resonates with my own.  I’m sorry that I will be working counter to your effort to keep fear alive.

Courtesy of mommylife.net

It is hard to believe that nine years have elapsed since terrorists devastated our collective national psyche.  The attacks left us feeling vulnerable and confused, compelling us to seek swift vengeance against an enemy we couldn’t fully understand.  Despite the fact that I never supported the war in Iraq, I understand why initially, the nation overwhelmingly supported the campaign.  We did not have the luxury of time to be contemplative or deliberative.  We also had little experience dealing with the Arab world.  Prior to 9/11, our primary dealings with the Middle East consisted of mediating the peace process between Palestine and Israel.  We had an oversimplified understanding of the Muslim world, so it not surprising that we failed to realize that our aggressors were not somehow connected to Saddam Hussein.

Now we have no excuse

You would think that after nearly a decade, we would better know our enemy. Sadly, this is not the case.  The ideological battle line that we drew against Islam remains intact, and it fails to account for the difference between Muslim extremists and pacifists.  This is painfully obvious if you’ve turned on the news anytime within the past month and seen the reports covering the national uproar concerning the proposed site of an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.com

Where to begin

I couldn’t figure out where all the controversy surrounding this project began, so I took to the internet.  I came across a Washington Post article that credits conservative blogger “Pam Geller, a former New York Observer publisher” with leading the charge against the mosque.

“Through her blog, Atlas Shrugs, television interviews and appearances at political rallies, Geller has become one of the chief organizers of opposition to the so-called Ground Zero mosque as well as efforts to build other Muslim prayer centers across the country.”

“Geller has become a prominent voice in the debate despite the fact that she once promoted the view that Obama is Malcolm X’s love child. She frequently warns that Muslims are trying to impose repressive sharia law on the United States, refers to the president’s holiday message to Muslims as “Obama Ramadamadingdong” and promotes a Web site, Religion of Peace,that claims to tally the number of people killed around the world by Muslim extremists.” – WP

OK, OK.  She’s a nutbag, but maybe she has a point.  Perhaps it is a bit insensitive to build a Muslim center within a stone’s throw (if you’re Roberto Clemente) from the World Trade Center site.  But that doesn’t explain the protests at mosques proposed in Tennessee and California.

OK… Now things are starting to sound a bit Reichy

Courtesy of AOL News

A few weeks ago, construction vehicles parked at the site of the future Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, a Nashville suburb, were set ablaze in an arson incident.  As with the people of New York, Tennesseans in Murfreesboro don’t want to see a mosque built in their town.  Unfortunately, they don’t have the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to fall back on as justification for this sentiment.  Instead, they’ll settle for blatant racism.

According to the Associated Press, opponents of the Islamic center fear that the mosque will be used as a “terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.”

“They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group,” said Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old area retiree quoted in the AP article.

Courtesy of mediamatters.org

According to CBS News, “Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators who recently wore ‘Vote for Jesus’ T-shirts and carried signs that said ‘No Sharia law for USA!’ Others took their opposition further, spray painting a sign announcing the ‘Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’ and tearing it up.”

Other protesters expressed strong opinions opposing the mosque.

“No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don’t want it. I don’t want them here,” Evy Summers said. “Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity.”

This country was founded on freedom of religion… so long as it’s my religion

Courtesy of mediamatters.org

Here’s where I take issue.  I can understand how the mosque near Ground Zero could be upsetting to people.  Moving it out of Manhattan altogether?  Probably a bit much, but OK.  But what’s the excuse in Tennessee?  Or at the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley, where conservative protesters, angry about another proposed mosque, stood outside prayer services “shouting slogans of hate through a bullhorn, carried signs with messages like ‘No More Mosques in America’ and brought along several dogs, hoping to offend Muslim sensibilities.”

Pastor Terry Jones backed his way out of the national spotlight when he decided not to demonstrate against Islam and the New York City mosque by burning a pile of Qurans.  He ultimately pulled the plug after Gen. David Petraeus said “the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.”

Jones did, however, justify the “Burn a Quran Day” event by saying he’s hurt “when people burn the flag when they burn the Bible [and] when they burn down churches.”  Here’s a question for Mr. Jones: When was the last time Muslims in the United States demonstrated against Christianity by burning Bibles and churches?  The Hill’s Armstrong Williams put it best:

“God-inspired or not, what Terry Jones was promising to do is simply un-American. We don’t burn our own flags. We don’t like it when others do. And we sure don’t burn the symbols of other cultures and religions simply because we have that right. I respect the constitutional rights of any American — every American, for that matter. But there’s something inherently wrong with what Pastor Jones threatened to do before coming to his senses.”

Time Magazine posed a great question in the title of an August article: “Islamophobia: Does America Have a Muslim Problem?”  Can anyone really argue that we don’t?  In a Washington Post poll, “49 percent of all Americans say they have generally unfavorable opinions of Islam, compared with 37 percent who say they have favorable ones.”  Those numbers don’t really weigh in favor of tolerance.

Ask any Catholic if his religion is practiced the same way a Methodist practices his.  Ask a Reform Jew if he practices the same way as a Hasidic Jew.  As any Ijtihad (moderate) Muslim if he practices Islam the same way as a Jihadist.  All will vehemently defend their faiths as distinct from the other.  So before we allow ourselves to label the entire Muslim world as a conglomerate of militant extremists, consider the fact that “’only 15 percent of the fatalities resulting from al Qaeda attacks between 2004 and 2008 were Westerners,” according to a report in  the Washington Times.  Let us also consider the fact that 94 percent of the terrorist attacks perpetrated in the United States between 1980 and 2005 were perpetrated by non-Muslims.

I had a deeply profound, introspective moment last week, and it occurred in the most unlikely place: Panera Bread.  There I was, picking apart the last little bit of my sourdough bread

Courtesy of Stephen Trendy's Fashion Diary

bowl, when an elderly man wearing suspenders asked me a single, simple question that sparked a torrent of thoughts that tortured my psyche for the better part of a week.

“Are you going to see Sarah Palin speak tomorrow?”

Anticlimactic, right? Well, not really.  Immediately, I became enraged that this man could confuse me with someone who’d actually join the droves of people flooding D.C. for Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally.  Though fuming on the inside, I remained calm and unfettered on the surface as I responded “no, not this time.”

The man seemed disappointed, likely realizing that my family had no intention of joining him at his table to discuss the moral decay of America.

Courtesy of CBS News

“Oh, I saw her Alaska shirt (the man said, referring to a shirt that my mother bought while on a cruise to Alaska), and thought you folks might have come down to see her speak.”

Unbelievable! This man actually thinks we’d travel more than 4000 miles to see that imbecile complain about more things that she has no idea how to fix?

“No, no, we’re from around here,” my mom said, in a cordial, albeit awkward tone.

As we left the restaurant, my mind was still racing.  “Who does that?” I thought to myself, still unable to get a handle of my emotions.  Then it hit me.  I embodied the quality that I hate most about Tea Partiers.

It was one of those self-realization, venture down the rabbit hole moments that was probably a long time coming.  I have grown to so stigmatize the extreme right, that the mere suggestion that I might be associated with them enraged me.  To be honest, I’m embarrassed and ashamed.

How can I sit here, advocating that our country strive for better cohesion and temperament in our national dialogue, when I can’t even embrace that notion over a cup of soup with an old man?  I had become just as polarized as the extremists I denounce.

Courtesy of Ten Minutes a Week

When was humanity lost in political discourse?  For too long, we’ve forgotten that our political enemies are still people.  They have families.  They own dogs.  I’ll even go out on a limb and suggest that they root for the same sports teams we do.  But the second that someone brings up the national debt or the immigration issue, we forget that we’re dealing with people.  People who deserve the right to have an opinion.

Please know that this does not mean that I will not comment critically on extremism in the conservative movement in future posts.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love a fervent, heated debate, but only as long as it ends with the victor buying the less-apt debater a beer after all is said and done.

**Note to my readers:  I know that the blog has been on a bit of a hiatus for about three months now, but I intend to start writing weekly from this point on.  I appreciate the patience you’ve exhibited, and look forward to restarting our dialogue.