Leftist Americans would get pretty upset if they saw our government spending money to repair churches and temples here at home.
Yet for the past decade we’ve been funding building repairs for mosques, churches and temples in other countries.
You can read a list of the 2010 foreign grant recipients here. As you can see there are places of worship on the list, as well as a bunch of other things none of us wish to repair with our money.
Constitutionally I don’t know how the federal government gets away with funding mosques. Perhaps John Yoo can tell us if there is some exemption the federal government has in giving money to a religion so long as the building is called “cultural” or “historic.”
Legal or not, it’s still financially repugnant. America has an unemployment rate over 9%. What does a head of household in that statistic care if the Golden Mosque in Pakistan or the Public Baths of Lebanon need paint jobs?
I’m raising money for youth football in my hometown here in America and I wouldn’t want one dime of tax dollars to pay for it, even though it would actually be a help to some of the unemployed parents who have children who want to play. There's no help to any American when we spend $47,000 preserving Khazakstan's carpet weaving traditions.
Some may argue this spending is an arm of diplomacy. I say cut that arm off. If I have to pay for your stuff to be your friend, we aren’t friends anyway.
If Obama and Boehner are looking to make cuts – cut this.
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Comments:
Jul '11
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
If only we had painted more in Norway.....
Oct '10
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
How is U.S 'foreign aid' different from a welfare payment?
I've always though that long term welfare recipients exhibit reduced motivation, increased dependence, loss of self esteem, a failure to understand the relationship between actions and consequences. and a sense entitlement that inevitably morphs into contempt for their benefactors for turning them into parasites.
Sep '10
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
If it's going to <expletive> Christians off and help Muslims in any way whatever, Obama will lead the charge.
May '10
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
Tommy, while we go at it hammer and tongs elsewhere on Ricochet, you may be happy to know that here we are in complete agreement.
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
Tommy raises an excellent question, with two difficult problems within (I'm with him on the policy, by the way -- why the U.S. is funding any of this is beyond me). The first is whether the government can provide any money to religious groups, whether for historical restoration or not, without violating the Constitution's Establishment Clause. Without getting to deeply into legalese, the Supreme Court used to follow something called the appropriately-named Lemon test, which boiled down into whether government financial support of a religious group excessively entangled government in religion -- with excessive entanglement being in the eyes of the beholder. More recently, a wavering majority on the Court has used something called the endorsement test: would a reasonable observer think that the government was endorsing the religion. I think these tests are both silly. What we should be asking is whether the government aims to support a specific religion because it is a religion, or is the religious group partaking of generally available programs simply as a group with a specific ideology or belief among many others. (continuing below)
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
That is essentially the approach that explains why school vouchers used at Catholic schools have survived judicial scrutiny. Under this test, it seems to me that a diplomatic spending initiative where some of the money found its way into the hands of religious groups would be OK under the Establishment Clause.
A second hard question is whether the Establishment Clause should even apply to the U.S. government's actions abroad. As far as I know, the Supreme Court has never really decided this question. To me, it would seem that it should not. Suppose the U.S. were to wage a war against a country that was dominated by a religious group and acted solely according to that religion's dictates (anyone have any suggestions of real world applications?). Would the war violate the Establishment Clause? Or suppose the U.S. in its foreign policy supported attacks on the messages of religions that are harmful to US interests? I cannot imagine that would violate the original understanding of the Establishment Clause either. The point, in my view, was the stop the government from setting up state churches at home, not attacking them abroad.
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
Tommy, not a lot of mosques on that list--and most of the world's most priceless artistic and architectural heritage is in some way connected to religion. Railing against expenses like this has something of the feel of attacking "corporate jets." We both know sums like this are trivial in the large budgetary scheme. Put aside the question of mosques, which is obviously politically charged: Surely you don't have a problem, in principle, with funding the preservation of any cultural heritage connected to religion? Because there's not much art or architecture out there worth saving that isn't in some way connected to religion, frankly.
If the argument is "We have no money for anything at this point," that's one thing (and I basically agree), but if it's "We have the money, but we'll only protect art or monuments unconnected to religion," I'd have to say that sounds like Bolshevik nonsense to me.
Would you support de-funding archeology and art history departments in public universities where scholars work to preserve, say, priceless paintings with religious themes?
Can you explain exactly why you feel there's a difference?
Oct '10
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
repairing mosques outside the US was a policy of the Bush Admin after 9/11 as a friendly gesture to Muslims where american troops are stationed.
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
Yes! My arguments bare the scars of your excellent arguments on one or two issues. On everything else, I'd vote for you! On matters of religion I defer to you often.
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
John Yoo -
Thank you so much for responding. I had never considered whether the establishment clause applied to US foreign diplomacy. I suppose there has never been a challenge. I guess one of the issues would be on the goal of the spending - secular or religious.
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
Claire -
I was more asking questions than making assertions on the constitutional law issues, which is why I solicieted Prof. Yoo's help.
I understand religion has contributed greatly to art (The Pieta, Sistine Chapel) as it has to science (heliocentricity, big bang theory).
So I don't have a problem with funding secular purposes of relgious institutions.
But art is in the eye of the beholder. The chance for fraud here is great. Not every door and window of a church is art - I don't care how old the building happens to be.
I'm not ready to concede these amounts are of the drop in the bucket variety, because they are part of a bigger picture.
USAID's budget to develop foreign countries is about $18 Billion yearly. Anytime you are dealing with the B-word, you are taking about real money (unless they keep raising the debt ceiling and ignoring price inflation, in which case someday your home will cost a $billion),
Re: How’s This For A Spending Cut: Let’s Stop Refurbishing Foreign Mosques (and I need John Yoo’s help here)
Tommy De Seno: Claire -
I was more asking questions than making assertions on the constitutional law issues, which is why I solicieted Prof. Yoo's help.
I think we're largely in agreement (which isn't much fun for debate), but I wanted to make sure we we're making this argument for good reasons, not bad ones. "Religion has nothing to do with cultural heritage" would be, I think we both agree, a bad one. "An immense amount of foreign aid gets sucked down corruption ratholes and does not go where we intend it or serve the end it is intended to serve" is a good one. "We don't have the money, end of story" is also a good one. "Cultural heritage isn't important" is a very bad one. "The US government probably wouldn't be good at deciding what art is'"--a good one.