Mosque

Since everyone else has an opinion on a planning issue in lower Manhattan, I'll offer mine too.

Scattered among the chorus of virulent bigotry, I hear a smattering of presumably well-meaning people saying that, while they acknowledge without exception the right of this group to build their mosque in the planned location, maybe these muslims should be a bit more sensitive and consider moving a few blocks over. It wouldn't really hurt them to do that, would it?

The answer is yes, it would hurt them to move, and not just financially (which it surely would), but also on a much deeper level.

Religious freedom is about more than simply the right to BE christian or buddhist or muslim. It's a recognition that all religious beliefs are on an equal footing, that all people of faith (or those with no faith) will have their beliefs respected, and that intolerance from the community is just as bad as official constraints, and just as unwelcome.

Asking this mosque to move, whether from sensitivity or any other reason, necessarily puts Islam on a lower level than Christianity. It's asking them to hang their heads in shame, and acknowledge that their right to free religious expression is conditioned upon the terms set by a Christian majority and what that majority chooses to allow. This is not religious freedom.

As for sensitivity, how about not blithly and ignorantly grouping all muslims together as though they constituted one, homogeneous bloc. If we're doing that, then all christians must answer for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan and can be judged along with them.

Control of Congress

Conservatives frequently blame the poor state of the economy on the Democrats. In particular, they will say that the Dems have control of both houses of Congress and the White House and that therefore "the buck stops there".

The problem with this statement (notwithstanding the fact that Obama inherited a huge deficit and high unemployment) is that it is not true. Control suggests the ability to take action, to do something. It's true that the Democratic party has control of the House and the White House, but it does not have control of the Senate. Since the GOP has decided that it's best policy is an obstructionist one, and since the Democrats do not have a super-majority in the Senate, no-one has control of that body. It is similar to what is known as a hung-parliament in the UK; one party may have more seats than another, but without enough to pass legislation that majority is meaningless.

It may seem weak blaming the GOP while the Democrats are in power, but when it was because of the Republicans that health-care reform took an entire year and eclipsed almost everything else; when it was because of the Republicans that the last jobs bill was $15bn instead of the $80bn it should have been; when it was because of the Republicans that unemployment insurance lapsed for millions recently; it's hard to see why they are not largely to blame.