More on the "ground zero" "mosque"

Pieces from Christopher Hitchens and from the Economist.

Hitchens raises an important issue, which is at what point one stops tolerating intolerance. When I was in graduate school at Chicago, the philosopher John Rawls came and gave a big lecture on more or less that topic that attracted hundreds. He is not the most dynamic of speakers but the substance was on target, which is to say that he went into great detail making the point that this is a very hard question indeed. At some point, one can no longer tolerate the intolerant. I think that points comes when they present a serious threat to the persistence of a tolerant, liberal regime. In my view, we are nowhere near that point in the US.

The Economist rightly mocks the illiberal and un-American opposition to the "mosque".