Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Catalan on Progressives

Jonathan Catalan wrote a great post clearing up a bizarre assessment of libertarians on the "Ground Zero Mosque". Great until this line at least:

"Is the libertarian position regarding Islam and the United States “leftist”? If that means that the progressive-left position is similar to ours: yes and no. I think that the progressive-left offers Muslim-Americans prioritization over other Americans, for the sake of political correctness (when talking about Muslim rights in the United States). This is not the libertarian position. The libertarians hold Muslims equal to others, and this includes rights to property."
I'm going to refrain from the recent fad of whining that "Jonathan doesn't understand progressives", and simply say that "Jonathan is wrong". This is something I'd expect out of Arnold Kling, not Jonathan Catalan.

To borrow and paraphrase from Mayor Bloomberg, there isn't a single inch of the United States of America that is off-limits to Muslims or any other faith. If you don't like that, tough. If you repudiate that to win an election in Nevada, you're an asshole. If you think your small ideological cadre is the only group of people that thinks this, you're wrong and you need to get better acquainted with people who don't agree with you.

4 comments:

  1. It isn't really bizarre ... progressives and conservatives each have their most favored groups they like to support after all (it is not hard to imagine a bunch of progressives protesting the building a Dominionist church - if there are such things - in NYC). I assume that is what Catalan is getting at.

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