Another Good VDH Column

On what is behind the mosque.

How the left sees it: 1) Rauf is a sincere ecumenicalist, who simply wants to turn the “tragedy” of 9/11 into a teachable moment of interfaith bridge-building: the mosque, in other words, will be a beacon of America’s tolerance;

How most of America sees it: 4) Rauf is a wily, cynical divisive figure who knows darn well that, on his Islamic flank, radical Islamists will use his mosque for triumphalist propaganda value, while, on his liberal flank, the clueless multicultural left will see it as a way of contextualizing America’s role in the world — as all the while he emphasizes a supposed litany of America’s overseas transgressions; if the mosque is built, it surely by intent will be a much discussed, perennially controversial center aimed at offering context to often polarizing Islamic ideas about everything from Iran, Hamas, and bin Laden, to Sharia and the role of religion and state — a project as praised by the left in the U.S. as it is employed as a banner logo on radical Islamist Internet sites in the Middle East.

What a lot of this boils down to - many on the left seem to think America needs to grapple and be "taught" about racism, islamophobia, etc. You see the same attitude in the immigration debate. I disagree. I don't think America has a fundamental problem with race or xenophobia anymore. I simply don't see it. For the left, this is the issue that can never be resolved - no amount of affirmative action, no amount of free borders, no amount of mosques built on ground zero, no amount of anything that can be expressed as "tolerance" will ever be enough or ever be asked to be measure up against other values. Take illegal immigration, for example. The left basically takes the position that an act that is by-definition ILLEGAL is preferable to enforcement that may-be-construed as somehow racial.