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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Why Pamela Geller's Paranoid Rhetoric Fails to Keep Americans Safe and Contradicts U.S. Foreign Policy Why Pamela Geller's Paranoid Rhetoric Fails to Keep Americans Safe and Contradicts U.S. Foreign Policy Posted: 06/12/2015 3:10 pm EDT Updated: 06/12/2015 3:59 pm EDT 2015-06-12-1434093978-2381607-PG.jpg First and foremost, nobody deserves to die or experience harm for drawing a cartoon or espousing beliefs viewed as hateful and intolerant. As I wrote after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, offensive speech never warrants violence, regardless of its inflammatory nature. Any plot to hurt anyone, including Pamela Geller, must always be condemned. Basic logic, however, dictates that the average Muslim citizen has absolutely nothing to do with ISIS. When George W. Bush stated in 2002, "Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith," he was speaking directly to people like Pamela Geller. The man you meet tomorrow driving a taxi in New York or at the hospital performing a surgery might be Muslim, but chances are he certainly won't be the venomous caricature propagated by Geller's website. Dissent and free speech aren't "crushed" by debate, nor is provoking fanatics the best way to promote public safety. The Mayor of Garland, Texas didn't show "intolerance" for Geller's cartoon contest by stating in The Dallas Morning News that her event made citizens less safe: "Garland Mayor Douglas Athas, like many in his city, said he wished AFDI president Pamela Geller hadn't picked Garland as the site for Sunday's event. "Certainly in hindsight, we as a community would be better off if she hadn't," Athas said Tuesday. "Her actions put my police officers, my citizens and others at risk. Her program invited an incendiary reaction. She picked my community, which does not support in any shape, passion or form, her ideology." Pretending that Geller's words keep anyone safe from terrorism, as if offending "savages" prevents terrorist attacks, ignores how Americans have decided to protect themselves from these threats. The Department of Homeland Security's budget for 2015 is $38.2 billion, the FBI's budget is $8.3 billion, the NSA's budget is said to be around $10 billion, and Americans spend about $75 billion on various other military intelligence services. To date, neither Congress nor any of our intelligence services have asked Geller, a pastor in Florida, or Fox News to "publicize" the scourge of radical Islam (or set up cartoon contests), in an attempt at bolstering domestic security. In reality, Americans don't need Fox, Sean Hannity, Geller, or anyone else to "expose" the scourge of radical Islam, most people already find ISIS beheading videos to be atrocious. Perhaps one reason that the Southern Poverty Law Center lists Geller's organization as a hate group (or that Paypyal once cut off Atlas Shrugs) is the following commentary from Geller's website in 2008: "It defies logic that the leading Democrat candidate for President could possibly be part Muslim at a time when Islam vows to destroy the West. No matter what your party affiliation, the implications are staggering. He studied the Koran, he knows what's in the book..." If such views are based on logic rather than prejudice, then why would the notion of a Muslim president lead to "staggering implications"? Conversely, pundits like Geller never reference the time Bush danced with the Saudi King, the Taliban visited Texas, or when Reagan told Congress, "We support the Mujahidin." Poster Comment: Suck it up, Pam. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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