Recently, my lifelong political party, the GOP, and my recently adopted state, Arkansas, dodged a political bullet. Actually, we had no need to dodge — it missed us by a mile.
The bullet came in the gubernatorial campaign of “gun goddess” Jan Morgan, a reporter and businessperson best known for her “Muslim-free” gun range. Luckily, Republican common sense prevailed, and incumbent Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson won 70 percent of the GOP primary vote, guaranteeing re-election in solidly red Arkansas.
To be clear, if Morgan doesn’t want Muslim customers at her business (as if she could spot one on sight), that’s her right. But just because something is a right doesn’t make it right.
Banning a group based on religion is fundamentally different from serving a group. If Morgan opened a Christian gun range, then probably most supporters of the Second Amendment wouldn’t even think twice in wishing her well. In contrast, reasonable people would be appalled if Morgan banned Christians, and they are appalled that she banned Muslims. It’s the same as a difference between a Jewish fraternity and a fraternity that excludes Jews.
The fact that we can’t talk sensibly about such things without condemnations from the Right and farcical calls for trigger warnings from the Left shows just how far we have fallen as a nation. If we fall any farther, we will become French.
Back in 1952, in “the Two Democratic Traditions,” political philosopher George Sabine argued that Anglo-American democracies prize liberty, while continental Europeans like the French emphasize equality and conformity. In practice, this means that liberty-loving Americans celebrate our rich diversity of religious and other voluntary associations, the small communities nurturing individuals and society.
In contrast, the French see private organizations generally and religions in particular as divisive, privileged clubs undermining equality. As French academic Olivier Roy writes, his compatriots often view open adherence to religious faith as insular, unpatriotic, and even fanatical.
That basic philosophical difference helps explain why, as the New York Times reported in 2015, in America it is illegal for a major store to refuse to hire a Muslim woman for wearing a head scarf, while in France it is illegal for a Muslim woman to wear a head scarf in a public school. Aside from those on the far Left, we Americans respect freedom of religion and fear government coercion. The French respect a powerful government, and fear religious coercion.
So why do many of my religious, liberty-loving Republican brethren attack Muslims in an almost French fashion?
In part, intolerance of Muslims reflects a populist backlash against elite political correctness. Much of American media and academia fail to acknowledge that we are at war with those segments of Islam which reject modernity, from Iranian leaders denying the Holocaust to the Islamic State’s retro slave markets. Saying this is no more Islamophobic than supporting Islamic groups like the pro-democracy Gulen movement is Islamophilic.
Relatedly, when American intellectuals celebrate the sexual traditionalism of most Muslims while denouncing it among certain Christians, elite support for inclusion seems highly selective, even hypocritical. A range of quantitative studies by respected social scientists like George Yancey and the late Stanley Rothman indicate that just as Jan Morgan keeps Muslims off her gun range, elite academic institutions exclude traditional Christians. Similarly, our elite universities seem more supportive of Palestinian patriotism than American patriotism.
Sensible Republicans know that the vast majority of American Muslims pose no more threat to liberty than their Baptist or Methodist neighbors. American Muslims are not against us. They are us, which is more than I can say for our intellectual elites.
Robert Maranto ([email protected]) is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
