Reply #21: No, it's not un-American. It's treating Muslims like real Americans -- (let me explain) --

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When Jewish folks started noticing and expressing regret over the Carmelite nunnery at Auschwitz, eventually, John Paul II withdrew it. I remember that issue. The right over here in this country wanted JP II to stand fast. But people of good faith expressed their concerns, and JP II - hardly a CINO (Catholic In Name Only) to say the least -- in good faith, acceded to their concerns.

Imagine if the Mormons today began to plan to build a temple at Mountain Meadows, Utah? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre

If it became a big issue, any competent President would do the obvious: defend the Mormons' right to build a temple there -- and THEN start talking to Mormons one-to-one -- dialogue with them, as it were -- to get them to back down and respect the sensitivities of non-Mormons who remember the massacre. (Like the the decendants of the victims' families, who happened to show up to the 150th anniversary of that tragedy, just three short years ago - in 2007.)

That's what Dean is asking for too -- he supports the Mosque-builders' First Amendment rights, but also is not afraid to try to explain to them why it would be best for them as well as non-Muslims if they withdrew the Ground Zero plans.

How many of us here would want our public leaders to ask Catholics or Mormons to back down if they step on a nation's sensitivities by highlighting - even inadvertently - one of their religion's black marks of history? Most of us would want that. But Muslims -- somehow, perhaps it is the pro-Mosque ABSOLUTISTS here at DU who don't really see them as Americans: the absolutists assume we can't talk to them, citizen to citizen, neighbor to neighbor, to ask them to compromise (to use Dean's word.) Why not?

What are the absolutists afraid of? Perhaps they are the ones with the active "Islamophobia" -- they are too afraid to be honest and open to Muslim-Americans.