...the key passage — it’s a pretty short statement — is this one:Not even worth addressing what the usual crackpot demagogues have to say on this.Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.
Translation: some people will feel bad if this thing is built, and we need to take these feelings into account, even though proponents “have every right to build at this site.”
So let’s try some comparable cases, OK? It causes some people pain to see Jews operating small businesses in non-Jewish neighborhoods; it causes some people pain to see Jews writing for national publications (as I learn from my mailbox most weeks); it causes some people pain to see Jews on the Supreme Court. So would ADL agree that we should ban Jews from these activities, so as to spare these people pain? No? What’s the difference?
One thing I thought Jews were supposed to understand is that they need to be advocates of universal rights, not just rights for their particular group....
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Ground Zero Mosque Bozo-ery
Krugman has this right in his critique of the clowns at the ADL who wrote the statement on the Ground Zero mosque.
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Beyond the subtle racism inherent in the protestations over the planned mosque is the fact that there is already an islamic center nearby. Granted, it's not as high profile, but it's there nonetheless.
The proposal passed the New York City's Community Board 1 almost unanimously. Hate-baiters from more provincial parts of the country should really keep their noses out of zoning issues in other people's neighborhoods.
This is a no-brainer, so I guess it's not surprising if it thwarts analysis. The ADL argument doesn't persuade me either, but I don't think it's invalid, which seems to be your implication. Yes, we privilege and protect some kinds or flavors of discomfort more than others, and so as the prospect of discomfort per se can not decide what we ought to do. But we also privilege and protect the intensely earnest emotions of others we care about--otherwise we are guilty of not caring and even of inhumanity. We feel obliged sometimes to defer what we ostensibly ought for an interim actual ought during which we strive to "raise the consciousness" of our friends and adversaries. Consciousness raising being like the Spanish Inquisition, maybe in the guise of analysis that's really what's going on here. I know I hardly ever reason any more myself.
When you live in an ostensibly pluralistic and democratic country founded on liberal principles, the default position is that the same rights hold for everyone. That's pretty much it. If someone is offended because they're ignorant about the nature of their political system and the philosophy upon which the founders built it or simply because their offense is designed to pull in racial sympathies, they're still within the bounds of a liberal-democratic society. Hell, you can even be a goddamned bigot who makes wild generalizations about a race, religion, ethnicity, etc. I detest these people, but they're within their rights as long as they do not harm.
But you don't make policy based on what some people find offensive... unless you want to be some other kind of country than a liberal democratic one.
I thought you could be liberal and still believe in zoning, whereasonly a libertarian is a fundamentalist about rights.
I guess we're talking here about one of those rights that we have to thank Larry Flint and the Illinois Nazis for enforcing--or a civil liberty really, which even ordinary liberals have a fundamentalist or religious regard for. Also I guess I take your point and that we become fundamentalist to the extent we see a question as touching on a policy. Where a policy applies we need no brain. Except for stuff like signaling or speeding, which are personal by convention. And then there's abortion....
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