Herman Cain says it's okay to ban mosques

Wow! No way am I going to read the (currently) >1300 messages. Here's my belated 2¢ worth after reading just the first 100.

Cain is out, period, anyway, for many reasons. I was interested in him for about a minute. Then he lost me. Never mind Cain. I want to address the bigger issue.

The real problem is, does a tax-exempt have open books? IIRC, "religious" groups do not. Let's see the full financial disclosure. Can we see clearly what they're doing? Too often, "religions" of all kinds are just cover for something else. Is a mosque a front for Islamonazi subversion of Constitutional America? Does some Christian Fundamentalist group secretly or semi-openly promote political agendas or candidates? Does a Pastafarian promote mayhem and violence? Then, they're not engaged in tax-exempt qualifying activities, and should be re-categorized, or arrested, whatever is called for by just standards.

Just as America determined, the hard way between the 18th & 21st Amendments, that we ought not criminalize all who bend the elbow just because Carrie Nation's husband was a drunk, so we dare not ban all who claim to be Muslim, Fundamentalist, or even Nazi, individually or collectively. There are Biblical Christians who freely suffer "witches" to live despite Exodus. I presume there are Muslims who liberally ignore the Koranic exhortation to kill all non-believers. We cannot prejudicially declare of others, "they believe this way, so ban them" — that would, in fact, be violating the 1st Amendment. We can rightly say, "if they do this, they are criminal."

If an individual or organization is guilty of transgressing the rights of others, and that includes (just in my 2¢ opinion) by throwing up your booze on my shoes, blowing your smoke where my children play, your ringing loud churchbells or braying bullhorn prayers where I live and sleep, and your putting up those dam' streetlights that now shine across my property when we used to be a nice dark rural area, and lots of other violations implicitly protected by the Constitution. All of these with case-by-case possible exceptions and pro and con arguments, I know, but you get the idea.

A mosque is a mosque. Terrorists are terrorists. If there are terrorists in the mosque, take it out, by whatever means the People must. If they are all sweetness and silliness like Little Mosque on the Prairie, despite what their scriptures say, then we must live and let live.

We don't need to get jumpy and impose rules which twist the law to ban what we dislike today but which will be used to ban what we like tomorrow when the Other Party is in power — we see that often enough, right? The law of the land is the Golden Rule. It is not add ban cell phone driving, and then ban drinking a soda or eating a burrito while driving, and then ban wearing the wrong shade of sunglasses while driving, and so on to every niggling detailed regulation, but enforce the prohibition of reckless endangerment when it's apparent.

(Fine points exist. That woman we saw on the highway the other day, with a cellphone to one ear and her hand over the other so she could hear; her speed varied oddly, but she was staying in one lane. Should she get a warning or be jailed? I leave that to our trained law enforcement officers and courts, imperfect though they may be.)

The balance of law and liberty may require careful scrutiny in individual cases, but the principle is still simple: your right to swing your fist ends when it threatens my nose. Want to build something called a mosque? Fine. Want to have an exception so you can practice the evil aspects of Sharia law? Go away. Go far, far away. And never come back.

You know, like that.

The problem with commenting is, post in haste, repent at leisure. I reserve the right to reconsider anything I wrote here. tl;dr? meh. Who reads this far down a thread, anyway? Carry on, good people!