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| Once a Natural Ally |
Via First Things -- Princeton's super-prominent professor, Robert George, speaking as a Roman Catholic rather than as a proponent of pure public reason, offers this interesting essay, Muslims, Our Natural Allies.
George's idea is that American Muslims and Christians in the U.S. have a common political interest in promoting social conservatism. Is there any practical evidence of a tendency to cooperate? He notes: "A majority of American Muslims voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election." On the other hand, Roman Catholics gave Bush a minority of their votes in the same election. By George's test, maybe we should be asking whether Roman Catholics are our natural allies? Just to make the picture murkier, American Roman Catholics and American Muslims both gave Barack Obama a majority of their respective votes in 2008 and 2012. Perhaps there is a natural alliance between them, but it is not for social conservatism.
