Here’s Andrew McCarthy discussing the building of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero:

There are 2300 mosques at least in the United States, by contrast, in mecca and medina, there are not only no Christian churches, no synagogues, there are no non-Muslims, they’re closed cities. It would be a monument to intolerance on sacred ground.

Two things: First, the conservative version of “tolerance” is arguing that a group of Americans should be prohibited from building a place of worship on a particular piece of land because they happen to be Muslim.

Second, tentatively accepting McCarthy’s odious premise that all Muslims can be associated with terrorism, I can’t think of a more perfect mission statement for the torture wing of the GOP: Islamic extremists are monsters. We should be more like them.

— A. Serwer

Adam Serwer is a writing fellow at The American Prospect and a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He also blogs at Jack and Jill Politics and has written for The Village Voice, The Washington Post, The Root, and the Daily News. Follow @adamserwer