Tolerance for Me but Not for Thee

Over at Patterico's Pontifications, a cop who writes under the nom de plume of Jack Dunphy responds to a story in the L.A. Times:

“New York mosque controversy worries Muslims overseas.”

So reads the headline to a story running in Monday’s Los Angeles Times. And the story that accompanies it is, as one would expect, every bit as fatuous as the headline. It is yet another in a long series of attempts by our sophisticated betters in the national media to shame those of us who would prefer not to see a mosque rise in what would have been the shadow of the World Trade Center towers. That those towers were reduced to rubble nine years ago, and that nearly 3,000 Americans met unspeakably cruel deaths that day at the hands of terrorists who committed their barbarism in the name of Islam, well, these are unpleasant memories that live on only in the minds of people so backward and unenlightened that they refuse to allow any figurative thumbs to be jammed into their eyes.

It’s growing ever more tiresome to hear defenders of the Ground Zero Mosque lecture us on blessings of the First Amendment. Yes, they have the right to build it there, and few would argue otherwise. But just as a man has the right to tell his wife that her new hairstyle makes her look like a Pekingese, that her cooking is unfit for man or beast, and that, yes, those pants do indeed make her look fat, the prudent husband keeps such opinions to himself in the interest of harmonious domestic relations. One might also have the right to burn an American flag outside the local VFW post, but one must accept the risk of being labeled a boor for doing so. (And being labeled a boor is probably the best thing that would happen to anyone so unwise as to exercise his rights in such a fashion.)

Americans are the last people on earth who need to demonstrate their tolerance for diversity of religious thought. It’s a shame that the Ground Zero Mosque controversy is causing such worry among Muslims overseas, but until there’s a synagogue in Mecca, I’m not going to lose any sleep about it.