Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
Can’t we all just get along?
Twenty years ago today:
To answer Rodney King’s impassioned plea during the subsequent L.A. Riots, apparently not:
Last month, the local chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) held a fundraiser in Orange County, CA to raise money for a womens’ shelter and for services for the homeless in Southern California.
While this isn’t a cause that most Americans would find objectionable, hundreds of far-right protesters descended on the event and jeered at and maligned the events’ attendees, who were mostly Muslim families who lived in the area. The local chapter of the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations videotaped many of these demonstrators harassing the families as they entered the building, screaming, “Go back home!” and “You beat up your wife too? Are you a molester?” [Hmm… that sounds familiar… — Ed.]
[…]
Perhaps even more disturbingly, a number of GOP elected officials spoke at the rally. Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) said to the raucous and hateful crowd, “I’m proud of you, I’m proud of what you’re doing.” Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) said that the multiculturalism “has paralyzed too many of our citizens to make the critical judgement we need to make to prosper as a society.” Most horrifying of all, Republican Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly, who spoke alongside the congressmen, said that the fundraiser represented “pure, unadulterated evil.” She continued, “I don’t even care if you think I’m crazy anymore. I have a beautiful daughter, I have a beautiful 19 year old son who is a United States marines. As a matter of fact, I know quite a few marines who will be willing to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise,” referring to the attendees of the fundraiser[.]
This is the kind of rhetoric that can only end with Muslims shoved into industrial microwave ovens.
