The Tower of Babel

To be honest, I don’t quite share the hysteria over the Ground Zero Mosque. Unless something criminal is uncovered, the project is absolutely consistent with private property rights and why should anyone nose around someone else’s property? It’s none of their business. It is a ban on the project that would be a violation of rights.

To paraphrase Voltaire, I disapprove of Islam and believe it’s a violent religion but I will defend to the death every (non-criminal) Muslim’s right to build a mosque on his property. The fact that Muslims can build a mosque near Ground Zero, while non-Muslims can’t build much in Islamic countries, is exactly why America is America and Jihadland is Jihadland.

Freedom is first of all the freedom to offend other people’s feelings. 9/11 victims should not oppose the project. They should rejoice that, (at least to some extent) in America, no one - even a majority of the country - can violate your rights, including your right to build whatever you want on your property. Even if the majority doesn’t want you to build what you want. In America, the individual, not the majority, rules.

It is that freedom that made the World Trade Center possible. It is that freedom that the 9/11 hijackers attempted to destroy. It is that freedom that gave rise to the global capital of capitalism - the city where the human spirit, clad in concrete and steel, scrapes the sky, like the Tower of Babel - the city where anyone should be allowed to do anything, except harming others.