X. Benedict

I've been to the Pantheon, but one could say all domes are somewhat derivative. ....but the floating dome on Hagia Sophia probably would get the trump card. It was probably the coolest constructed thing in the world until the Ming dynasty some 8-9 centuries later.

either way....you should consider that Cordoba was a model of progressive Islam, regional self-rule, and more a territorial conquest than a religious one. (the Visigoths were known as smelly, and mostly Arian Christians, but closer doctrinally perhaps to Muslims than any modern Protestant. ) Anyway.....Cordoba was a place that famously snubbed its nose at the Caliphate in the Middle East and created a economic and intellectual Golden Age where Christians and Jews had great autonomy.

That's "Fine...Cooooorintheeean Leather" - Imam Montalban

Apart from Chrysler not making very good cars in the 70's. What is wrong with "Cordoba Center" as a name?

"Cordoba" is a word that bothers you? Probably one of the most intellectually and religiously diverse regions of the world in the middle ages where most of Western philosophy and science came from? Search Avicenna, Averroes. Moses Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas. Although I think most of us get the sensitivities, these aren't the minarets around Hagia Sophia.

Hold on. Is there Sacred Dust in Shanksville? I'm worried about Halal Grocers moving in.

I give prizes.

Cool. Your John Cena Never Give Up Tank Top is in the mail.

And I think they made fun of Jewish Sports Legends. Sounds like an anti-Zionist plot. I will reconsider.

Actually Europe is battling the divide I was talking about, I was thinking more of my general practitioner, dentist, mailman, financial analyst, and neighbor who happens to be a military recruiter.

I suppose many people have suspicions that encased in this mosque plan is the wink, secret handshake and nod of some kind of Islamic triumphalism - some radicalizing force that secretly seeks to make martyrs out of radicals and criminals. However, I urge them to consider that the more radicalizing force is a community that feels it has no stake in THIS society, and nowhere to go, that even though they are fully American, their stake in THIS society is not welcome or in someways will never be seen as through any prism but that of East/West culture war, where one must win and the other be absorbed. I think in some respects allowing this does more to honor American virtues, and thereby the dead, than creating some kind of Holy Perimeter or circumference of respect. I also would like to remind you that there are crescents among the crosses and stars at Arlington, a mosque in the Pentagon, and Kareem Abdul Jabar in the movie Airplane.

Crazy, I know. It's carcinogenic.

How exactly will you be inconvenienced by this center? What symbolism is so threatening? More dangerous would be stepping around people praying 5 times a day on the sidewalks.

I agree.

Don't want a mosque on the land there? Offer to buy it.

Thanks!

X. Benedictionary: American Exceptionalism = Pandering to constituents that need to believe the United States is #1 in everything therefore loved by God because God hates backing losers.

This month it isn't...................... I think.

Heritage Foundation. http://www.heritage.org/About/Staff/G/Nile-Gardiner

I have been thinking about responding to this, but I decided not to.

My short time working in a kitchen, that was the one thing I learned.

Did it have Lincoln on it?

What's wrong with a little tip of the hat to the American voter?

Nah....the OT is much more...."my God's real, your God's false....even if I tempted by all those temple harlots and ritual sex your god has when I visit the city...."

A moral realist, eh? Doesn't that require verification of the truth of at least one moral claim as a premise. What precisely are the moral claims you hold as real?