How to eliminate religious intolerance
An alert letter writer today made an astute observation: Why is a cross made of pipe, stuck on top of a rock in the Mojave Desert, offensive, but a mosque near Ground Zero is not?
Offense is in the eye of the beholder and can survive only so long as there is profit in it.
Reminds one of Voltaire’s "Letters on England." While visiting London in 1726, the Frenchman observed religious tolerance and the root cause of that tolerance:
“Though the Episcopal and Presbyterian sects are the two prevailing ones in Great Britain, yet all others are very welcome to come and settle in it, and live very sociably together, though most of their preachers hate one another almost as cordially as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit.
“Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word.
“If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.”
That’s the antidote for intolerance: Capitalism.
