<\/p>\n
The <\/span>“Ground Zero” mosque debate in the US The modern West What all these “I am because <\/p>\n Our Common Let’s start with A community that This brings me Nixon dropped Rigid A community is The “Ground Now let’s apply this reasoning to the As a free This is why In addition, as Muslim communities exist within a diverse This is one side The Burqa<\/b><\/p>\n The burqa gives When a very But – and this I recently And yet the burqa must be banned. All<\/i><\/span> forms of veiling must be, if not Women who do not Like the Gay Marriage<\/b><\/p>\n This perspective Nor does gay
\nand the burqa debate in Europe both highlight a tension embedded in the middle
\nof modern democratic thinking, one that I have been grappling with for years: How does the well-being of society relate to the freedom of citizens? This issue emerged again yesterday and today in two additional forms. John Boehner, Republican Minority Leader in the House of Representatives
\nhas identified
\nthe police, firefighters, and teachers as “special interests<\/a>.” In his logic they serve no common good, they are just individuals seeking their own advantage. Yesterday the same issue arose when a court overturned<\/span> Proposition 8 that had outlawed gay marriage in California. This is the question that will not go away.<\/p>\n
\nis essentially individualistic.
\n<\/span>For liberals, individuals have rights that cannot be justly overridden . <\/span>Most<\/i> prominent c<\/span>onservatives today are either Hobbesian – the powerful do what they
\ncan, the weak suffer what they must – or utilitarian – the majority (when it is
\nconservative) can do whatever it wants.
\n<\/span>When it is not conservative it can do nothing at all. <\/span>Which ultimately translates into Hobbes
\nagain. <\/span><\/p>\n
\ndifferent views share in common is no strong appreciation of communities. The view I have come to take is
\ncaptured in one of my favorite proverbs, one from Africa:<\/p>\n
\nwe are.”<\/b><\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nGood<\/b><\/p>\n
\nBoehner and those for whom he speaks.
\n<\/span>Teachers, firefighters, and police (at their best) all serve the
\npublic. Many are devoted to this task. <\/span>Their job is not to make
\ntheir employer money but to protect and serve their community as a whole. <\/span>When they seek to maximize money for
\nthemselves or their employer that is rightly regarded as corruption. <\/span>They should be respected and honored
\nfor their service, and compensated well for it, and decent<\/i> Americans are in favor of doing so. <\/span>But this also means there is a community interest that
\nsomehow transcends individual self-interest. <\/span>We seek our self-interest<\/span> within<\/i> a community that makes it
\nmore possible for all to do so than if we lived in no community at all.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nserves all its members is one where none have special privileges as
\nindividuals. <\/span>It has equal rights
\nfor all. <\/span>Obviously just what those
\nrights are is a matter of debate, but at a minimum it seems to me a community
\nof free people decides these issues such that at some point everyone’s choice
\ncounts equally (democracy) and no arbitrary penalizing of anyone is done by
\nanyone else simply because they can (rights). <\/span>If penalizing others is to take place, it must be to
\npreserve the community where all are enabled to seek their values so long as
\nthey do so peaceably.<\/p>\n
\nto a story I understand to be true.
\n<\/span>When Richard Nixon traveled to China, and met with Chinese leaders, he
\ntold one about the injustice of their forbidding Chinese to emigrate to other
\ncountries. <\/span>The leader to whom he
\nwas speaking – I believe it was Chou En-Lai – asked him “How many million do you
\nwant?”<\/p>\n
\nthe subject.<\/p>\n
\nlibertarians, who like modern conservatives have little to no sense of a common
\ngood, would say “Bring ’em on.”
\n<\/span>The rest of us would say here is a dilemma intrinsic to human beings. We are both individuals and members of societies that shape us and our attitudes. Most humans will only act
\nfor the common good for concrete communities (families, neighborhoods, sometimes
\ncountries) and not for humanity.
\n<\/span>In addition, the less concrete the situation the less likely we are to
\nknow what the common good really is. So we are biased towards acting for the good of the group we most identify with at the expense of humanity as a whole. (Spirituality enlarges our context to humanity or the world as a whole, but for most people that is still weak when it requires not pushing the interests of a concrete group.) <\/p>\n
\nmore than a collection of individuals.
\n<\/span>It is a collection of individuals united by common customs, histories, attitudes,
\nand beliefs. <\/span>The bigger and more
\ncomplex the community the more abstract these common traits will be, but they
\nare there nonetheless. <\/span>What we see
\nin fact is a network of interlocking communities in free societies: families, friends,
\nreligious communities, neighborhoods, cities, all the way to the nation. For a free society to last our more concrete loyalties should not conflict with the broader principles the more abstract free society reflects.<\/span> <\/p>\n
\nZero” Mosque<\/b><\/p>\n
\nproposed Islamic center in New York. Muslims are and have been a part of the
\nAmerican community. <\/span>Many died in
\nthe World Trade Center, and their families felt as much grief as any
\nothers. <\/span>Muslims are no more to be
\nequated with burqa wearing religious bigots than Christians are with
\n‘christian’ dominionists<\/a>. <\/p>\n
\nsociety, our entire history has been predicated on religious freedom inspired
\nby earlier examples of how societies with many religions flourished better than
\nsocieties where there was only one officially approved form. <\/span>John Locke’s experience with toleration
\nin the Netherlands <\/a> laid the groundwork not just for America’s religious freedom, it laid the
\ngroundwork for the basic thinking behind our constitution: that a variety of
\ndifferent groups is a better defense of liberty than homogeneity. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nenemies of liberty, like the religious right, oppose diversity in all its
\nforms. They dislike racial diversity, religious diversity, cultural diversity,
\nand political diversity. With diversity many minorities can oppose any attempt to impose a single way of life or belief on everyone. For Pagans, Muslim freedom in New York is linked to our own, if for no other reason than that we have common enemies, enemies who will be emboldened if they succeed in New York.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsociety their most tolerant elements are encouraged, their least tolerant
\nelements are discouraged. <\/span>This is
\ngood for everyone. <\/span>Bigotry thrives
\nwhen it can isolate itself, whether it be Saudi Arabia or in parts of the American
\nSouth. <\/span>When exclusive religions
\nare given toleration and simultaneously kept from walling themselves off<\/i> into
\nregions where their leaders can enforce orthodoxy, rigid boundaries erode. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nof the equation of balancing free men and women with the free societies that
\nmake their freedom possible.<\/p>\n
\nus the other side of the equation.
\n<\/span>(I am avoiding the crime issue here: that people, even men, can disguise
\nthemselves, commit a crime, and then throw away the burqa. <\/span>That issue strengthens my argument, but
\nfor different reasons, and I want to focus on the reasons.) <\/span><\/p>\n
\nsmall number of people are practitioners of an intolerant religion their impact
\non the majority of men and women who do not participate in such a culture is
\nslight. Women who do not wear burqas are not penalized. <\/span>It is simply a matter of choice. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nis an important but – the burqa is a symbol and an element of societies that
\nreject every unique value a free society depends on for its existence. <\/span>No equality, no freedom of thought, and
\nno freedom of religion. <\/span>None at
\nall. <\/span>Its practitioners are not bad
\npeople, but past a certain number they are destructive of free societies that
\nmake people like ourselves possible. No society where the burqa i common respects women as equals. No society.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nlearned from Jim (who sometimes posts comments here) that this issue has already
\nbecome a problem in Europe. <\/span>He
\npassed on a link to Christian and Beliefnet blogger Rod Dreher’s column<\/a> on this issue. Dreher quotes Claire Berlinski, an American who lives in Turkey, long opposed
\noutlawing the burqa. <\/span>Berlinski has
\nchanged her mind<\/a>, based on what has happened to women in Muslim neighborhoods
\nin Europe. <\/span>Hers is a careful, very compassionate, and
\nin my opinion very wise discussion of the moral complexities of this issue. <\/span>The money quote is here:<\/p>\n
\nbanned, strongly discouraged and stigmatized. The arguments against a ban are
\ncoherent and principled. They are also shallow and insufficient. They fail to
\ntake something crucial into account, and that thing is this: If Europe does not
\nstand up now against veiling — and the conception of women and their place in
\nsociety that it represents — within a generation there will be many cities in
\nEurope where no unveiled woman will walk comfortably or safely.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nwear burqas in certain neighborhoods are already denounced as whores, men living there
\nare afraid to have unveiled women friends over to visit for fear of being denounced as seeing
\nwhores, and in time if these noxious and disgusting attitudes continue,
\nviolence will be perpetrated against women, as already is so often the case in
\nthe benighted cultures from which they immigrated. <\/span>These immigrants are not acting like new citizens seeking to harmonize (not necessarily dissolve) with their new homes, they are
\nacting like invaders.<\/p>\n
\nmillions of Chinese Nixon was offered, there is a point where immigrants
\noverwhelm a society’s ability to assimilate them without losing the qualities
\nthat make it a free society. The issue is customs that later translate into politics, and long before that into oppressive social pressure. <\/span>Europe, given what has already happened in conservative Muslim
\nneighborhoods, is completely justified in banning burqas in public. <\/span>My initial thoughts<\/a> on the matter –
\nthat it makes it harder for women to shift out of their culture – have been
\nproven correct although my original example was flawed.<\/p>\n
\npoints to the justness of the court decision overturning Proposition 8. <\/span>Yes, a (bare) majority passed it, but
\ndemocracy exists with rights, and sometimes one should trump the other,
\nsometimes it should be the other way around. <\/span>Despite the lies of the anti-Gay marriage contingent, there
\nis no evidence gay marriage hurts society. <\/span>Divorce rates<\/a> are lowest nationally where gay marriage is
\nleast handicapped, and highest where it is most handicapped. <\/p>\n
\nmarriage violate the dominant current reason people get married<\/a> today: love. <\/p>\n