Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker today penned a column about the right to build the mosque in lower Manhattan, which touched on the legal rights involved more than emotional views.

Parker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and among the most respected conservatives in the industry, syndicates through The Washington Post Writers Group.

In her piece today, Parker states:

The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much. We don't need constitutional protections to be agreeable, after all.

This point surpasses even all the obvious reasons for allowing the mosque, principally that there's no law against it. Precluding any such law, we let people worship when and where they please. That it hurts some people's feelings is, well, irrelevant in a nation of laws. And, really, don't we want to keep it that way?

She later adds:

Reason tells us something else: The Muslims who want to build this mosque didn't fly airplanes into skyscrapers. They don't support terrorism. By what understanding do we assign guilt to all for the actions of a relative few?

The piece concludes by saying:

Nobody ever said freedom would be easy. We are challenged every day to reconcile what is allowable and what is acceptable. Compromise, though sometimes maddening, is part of the bargain. We let the Ku Klux Klan march, not because we agree with them but because they have a right to display their hideous ignorance.

Ultimately, when sensitivity becomes a cudgel against lawful expressions of speech or religious belief -- or disbelief -- we all lose.