Diane Rehm this morning devoted the first hour of her radio show to debate about the planned mosque/Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero: viz., whether said mosque/Islamic cultural center should be built at the proposed location. The seminal word is should. Which is to say there is little argument about whether the building can be erected (it can) but whether it should be erected. To listen to the radio chit-chat this morning was to hear that important distinction missed.
One assumes that this topic is currently being drained for all it's worth (and of all its worth) on the cable-news and talk-radio shoutfests. It seems that teachers could?battle this bloviation and do their students a favor by, in class, discussing the issue but focusing not on politics but on logic?e.g., by thinking about the difference between can and should and thinking about how so many who are so vociferously publicly arguing the issue seem unaware of what they're actually arguing.
?Liam Julian