Tolerance
by digby
It's not even noon yet and my brain is already fried trying to untwist GOP logic.
Here's the orange House minority leader this morning:
"To Pastor Jones and those who want to build the [so-called Ground Zero] Mosque," Boehner said (drawing an equivalence between Koran burning and the Cordoba House Project in lower Manhattan) "Just because you have a right to do something in America, does not mean it's the right thing to do. We're a nation of religious freedom -- we're also a nation of tolerance. I think in the name of tolerance, people ought to really think about the kind of actions they're taking."
Needless to say, I would never be so unforgivably hyperbolic as to draw such comparisons, but if one were to do it one could only logically draw it between the Muslims who are inflamed by an American Christian preacher defiling the Koran and the American Christians and Jews who are inflamed by Muslims defiling the "hallowed ground" of 9/11 by building a religious center in the vicinity. Indeed, their arguments are the same.
Boehner basically defines religious tolerance as not inflaming passions on both sides. What that means in practice is that Christians shouldn't burn Korans and Muslims shouldn't build mosques. Can we see what's wrong with that picture?
As I wrote earlier, I'm not big on the loose lips sink ship concept when it comes to domestic political issues. Once you go down that road, there's no end to it. They can always find a way to justify suppressing free speech in the name of "keeping people safe." I'm obviously horrified by the idea that American soldiers are in danger from this kind of demonstration, but one of the values they are allegedly fighting for is the American value of free speech, which means that idiots have a right to burn Korans. Obviously, that also means that we have an equal right to condemn it, which I do.
But then I also condemn the Islamophobic freakout over the Cordoba House and the mosque protests around the country. John Boehner is having a little trouble with that sort of consistency because he knows that many of his followers are bigots and he doesn't want to offend them. That's the kind of tolerance we don't need.
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