There are no Christian churches in Saudi Arabia. If you didn't know this until recently, it's been hard to avoid that bit of knowledge over the last couple of weeks. Whether used as justification for opposing a mosque anywhere in the United States, or as an license for burning copies of the Qur'an, "there are no churches in Saudi Arabia" has been trotted out by both snarling voices in "on the street" interviews and supposedly sober-minded pundits.
You know what? There are no Christian churches in Saudi Arabia. Which is a real problem for the 800,000 Christians that live and work there. There are some serious restraints on religion in other countries, too. And while we're at it, we might notice that there are hundreds of Tibetans held as political prisoners in Chinese jails, government forces killing civilians in Kyrgyzstan, and human rights workers being murdered in the Congo. All of that is true. All of it reprehensible. All of it worth opposing.
None of these things should be read, as conservatives now seem prone to do, as a signal that we are too weak, too tolerant, too clingy when it comes to those old fashioned ideas of rights. "They do it too" has never been, and should not be, the standard for our behavior as individuals or as a nation. It's not just a little thing called laws. It's something simpler. We're supposed to be better than that.
This nation wasn't founded by people who conducted an international search for the least common denominator in morality. It wasn't modeled after the ugliest, most restrictive, most brutal regime they could locate. Long before Reagan could appropriate the term, those who came to America (especially those who fled from some country where they didn't have the freedom to build their own place of worship) looked to these shores as a site for that "city on a hill."
All people are created equal. All laws are not. Our Constitution, with its guarantees of liberty enshrined as right, not privilege, is a proclamation of noble intent. It's both inspirational and aspirational -- something we should struggle to live up to every day, and a banner we should be proud to wave before the world. These are the rights we should want for everyone, not just ourselves. Only the same people who are the first to champion the cause of American exceptionalism, are crowding to the front of the line to attack the very things that make America exceptional.
How did it come to be that, rather than wishing to spread the best of our nation, we find the American right so ready to absorb the worst from elsewhere? We say that we hold these truths to be "self evident." So why then do we look to people who cross our borders without permission, or even those we capture in battle, with an eye toward stripping these rights away? We proclaim freedom of religion, but those now shaking fists and shaking signs now want to read that as "freedom for those who are strong enough, rich enough, and popular enough to claim it."
The hard truth is that you can not simultaneously believe that these rights are the inalienable gift of a creator, and also that they must be earned by having the right skin color, belonging to the right party or attending the right church. You can not even believe that these rights are the exclusive property of American citizens. Otherwise, they aren't rights at all. They're something you have until shouted down by the crowd.
So how did the conservative fringe of America come to accept the idea that rights were something that could be bartered? I think the answer to the ease with which some would surrender our ideals can be found by looking at other statements concerning US policy vs. that of other nations. Especially economic policy.
Conservative statements like those that praise the tax structure of China, weak environmental laws across Asia, and union busting activities everywhere thugs can be hired are cut from the very same cloth as those demands that we live down to the worst in our nature. In embracing the idea of a "free market," conservatives have come to read this as a market completely unrestrained by government intervention at any level. They've forgotten that the very purpose of government is to uphold the best in us, and to constrain harmful behavior. It's no coincidence that the primary lever given to the federal government under the Constitution is the ability to regulate the market. Because "freedom" in the market does not come from a lack of government intervention. In an unrestrained market -- a market driven by only the numbers -- safety regulations are an impediment, choking clouds of pollution are the cost of progress, human beings are a fungible commodity. That kind of market may generate profit for a few, but it should be no one's idea of freedom.
How much distance is there between believing that it's fine -- admirable, even -- to take someone's job and ship it to the place where working conditions are worst, and the idea the laws and ideals that ensure good working conditions are themselves an impediment to growth? A genuinely unregulated market isn't just the enemy of middle class jobs, it's the enemy of everything America's founders sought when they hammered out the Constitution.
The difference between justifying restraints on freedom of religion because someone somewhere would do the same, and abandoning workers in search of places where pesky rights don't get in the way is... well, no difference at all, really. So it's no surprise that both views have come to rest among those who will continue to proclaim themselves "patriots" while whittling away everything that makes America worth saving.