What About Our Sensibilities?

With the situation in France with un-assimilated Muslim immigrants getting perilous, it has made me ponder possible future situations that might occur here in the US. We've already seen examples of like problems, where a local government or quasi-governmental agency seems likely to bend the laws of the land in order to appease the religious demands of intolerant Muslims trying to impose their beliefs upon the rest of us.

One of the most egregious examples of this is the case of Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis refusing to drive passengers that “offended their Muslim sensibilities.”

Well what about our sensibilities?

How is it that the Metropolitan Airport Commission in Minneapolis-St. Paul even considered violating state laws and the US Constitution in order to appease Muslim cab drivers trying to impose their beliefs upon the public? If it had been a Jewish or Christian cab driver refusing to drive someone who offended their sensibilities you know there would have been such a new and cry by all the so-called “right-thinking people” and the ACLU that it would have deafened everyone within a hundred mile radius. The MSM would be all over the story about how a hate-mongering, politically incorrect Judeo-Christian Fascist-Nazi cab driver discriminated against someone the driver found offensive to their beliefs.

Never mind that our laws and our constitution applies to everyone living here. Nobody gets a pass because of their religious or cultural beliefs. Their beliefs end where my nose begins. If they are supplying a public service licensed by a municipality or state, they have no right to discriminate against the public they serve. In the case of those cab drivers, the appropriate agency should have sanctioned them according to the laws. In most states, that means suspending or revoking their hack licenses. Let them earn a living doing something else.

Giving way on this one issue would be just the start. What will it be next, women being forced to wear head scarves or veils just so they don't offend these same Muslims? Will they demand a separate justice system outside our constitution in an effort to promote sharia? If they do not want to live by our laws then perhaps they should consider relocating someplace where they only have to worry about other Muslims wanting to kill them because they offend their sensibilities.

They want freedom. That's fine. But they have no right to demand that we give up our freedoms in order to assuage them.

This is a trend that must be stopped now. Despite what the multiculturalists are always bleating, multiculturalism of this sort is destructive to our society and our way of life. And despite what many of these same multiculturalists believe, it is our society that is far and away better than almost all of the others because our society has striven to incorporate the best of all of the immigrant cultures over the generations. We are already a multicultural society and have always been one. But it seems the multiculturalists want to make sure that we allow immigrants to bring the worst of their cultures with them, too, and want us to be tolerant of them. How is it we must be tolerant of an intolerant culture/ideology/belief system?

It makes no sense.

UPDATE 10/28/06: Glenn Reynolds linked to a TCS report which covers a few recent incidents in the UK that show that the people there realize that multiculturalism has gone too far.