LA Times editorial. Great. Where is the voice of populist progressivism elsewhere in our press?
Across the country, xenophobia is enjoying a heyday. Oklahomans, of all people, recently approved a ballot measure to ban the use of international law and, specifically, Sharia law, in their courts. As has been widely noted, that manages the rare feat of being both unnecessary and unconstitutional. More troubling, it suggests the degree to which voters have become motivated by fear and the extent to which they are willing to retreat into insularity.
Politicians feel it and exploit it. Elected officials who know better prey upon the public’s anxiety by suggesting that immigrants, especially those in the country illegally, are to blame for the economic collapse of the George W. Bush years or the long, hard climb out of it.
American Muslims, who enjoy every right of every American, also suffer from this inward-looking narrowness. When a popular commentator confesses that he is unnerved to sit next to a Muslim on an airplane, too many Americans reflexively sympathize. When another commentator questions whether Jews have a right to consider themselves an oppressed minority, those same Americans should feel the recoil of their bigotry. Many do not. The freedom to practice one’s religion is celebrated this week, but of late, it is denigrated too often, as if this were a Christian country or a Judeo-Christian country rather than one of magnificent, intentional diversity.
Yes I disgree with the Jewish bit. I don’t think we’re an oppressed minority, and considering ourselves that is a form of self-deception.
