The vote on whether to build a community center/mosque near ground zero happens today.

I want everyone to understand what this means. This is our opportunity as Americans to tell the world what America is all about.

Some people want America to be about the Almighty Dollar.

Some want America to be a world Superpower.

Some want America to to recognize their Judeo-Christian heritage.

But these things are not what makes America admired around the world. It isn’t any of these things, and it certainly isn’t the fact that we are the world’s best customer.

What makes America shine in most people’s eyes is that we understand that we have unalienable rights that we were born with, that everyone on this planet has. It doesn’t matter whether your Chinese, German or Iranian. You have rights, and Americans will defend them.

So, unless it says somewhere in our hearts and our constitution that your rights are terminated if you belong to a religion that some members of attacked America, then this is really a no brainer.

The war isn’t between us and muslims. Osama wants it to be, but it is not.

The war is really between people who can respect another’s rights, and people who can’t.

It is American’s JOB to be inclusive. We are not a nation of emigrants, but a nations of refugees. The world’s wretched, thrown out of every decent country or brought over in slave ships.

And we prosper and we look out after each other. That is our job. Some people want us to live in fear, and to hate the ‘other’.

But that is not what we are about.

Fuck anybody who tries to turn us into something we are not.