In the name of bridging great divides and of fostering peace and harmony, a proposal has been made to open a gay bar in the commercial space next to Cordoba House.
The grand mosque of Cordoba was built as a monument to the conquest of Spain. By naming this as Project Cordoba are we being told that this mosque is to be the monument to the impending conquest of America? In the name of building bridges and tolerance, should a Knights Templar monastery be built across the street from this mosque?
As one of the "sensible" conservatives on The New York Times' editorial page, Ross Douthat has a habit of using his column to provide a thin veneer of respectability to otherwise ugly ideas. Riffing off of the Cordoba House controversy, Douthat relies on the country's past experiences with unfamiliar immigrants to endorse nativism and xenophobia as a way of pushing immigrants toward greater assimilation.
But this is bad history; the nativists of 19th-century America weren't much interested in having "new arrivals adapt to Anglo-Saxon culture," rather, the nativists of mid-19th-century America wanted to keep immigrants off of American shores. [Just like now]