Re: Obama XIV: President VISTA with SP2
I've already said that there's nothing wrong some good old fashioned civil disobedience.
Regarding the "allowed" now you're just arguing semantics.
No, I'm not. It's a fundamental point that has seemingly done a fly-by right past many of the mosque opponents.
There's a big difference between arguing that "I don't like what they're doing, but they have a right to do it" and saying "they shouldn't be allowed to build a mosque there."
This raises two fundamental questions about the role of our government - one being the protection of the right to free exercise of religion, and the other being the government's role in regulating property rights. Even raising the question of whether this should be allowed or not misses the point - the land use laws either allow for religious uses there or they do not. There is no distinction based on the kind of religion, nor should there be.
What strikes me in hearing these comments is that there's a serious misrepresentation of how these laws (more like basic principles, really) apply to our society. Charles Krauthammer does exactly this
today in his column:
America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.
These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero.
I'd ask him the same hypothetical I asked in an earlier post. If you won't allow a mosque, would you allow a Catholic church? If the answer is yes, then you've failed the First Amendment. If the answer is no, then it's not about religion at all - and that 'no' restriction would have to be subject to RLUIPA.
At the same time, the New York Times
has a profile of Bloomberg's support of the mosque, which explains the Mayor's logically coherent stance:
Michael R. Bloomberg is a former Wall Street mogul with a passion for the rights of a private property owner. He is a Jew whose parents asked their Christian lawyer to buy a house and then sell it back to them to hide their identity in an unwelcoming Massachusetts suburb.
...
On the community center, Mr. Bloomberg’s thinking from the start was informed by what he describes as the basic rights of the people behind it.
“If somebody wants to build a mosque in a place where it’s zoned for it and they can raise the money, then they can do that,” he said. “And it’s not the government’s business.”
The misunderstanding of what the government can and cannot do, what they can and cannot regulate, and the freedoms that they must protect is troubling to me.
Maybe I'd feel different if I heard more people saying "man, I don't like it, but that's their right." But I don't hear that. Even if that's what they're thinking, but they articulate it as what should and shouldn't be allowed, that's a troublesome misunderstanding.
