Excellent Article on the Ground Zero Mosque

After reading assorted liberal nonsense on the issue, I was thinking of writing a post about the proposed Islamic center. But Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing in the Wall Street Journal, did it for me.

The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacred principles of our democracy.

The left is outraged on the rare occasion that one of their own, such as Shirley Sherrod, is the victim of a smear. But smear tactics are standard procedure when political opponents dare disagree with politically correct wisdom.

without the civilizing dictates of their superiors in government, ordinary Americans are lost to reason and decency. They are the kind of people who—as a recent presidential candidate put it—cling to their guns and their religion.

That pretty much sums up the typical attitude of many on the left.

In the plan for an Islamic center and mosque some 15 stories high to be built near Ground Zero, the coercive power of politically correct pieties and the unyielding political assault on all dissenters is on full display.

Yes it is, even though the reason for most opposition is obvious -- and it isn't bigotry. Large numbers of Americans think that putting an Islamic center so close to Ground Zero, where the U.S. was attacked by Islamic extremists, is at best in poor taste, and a worst, an outright offensive attempt to establish an Islamic presence close to what they see as a sacred site. Most also don't like the fact that the developers won't reveal their funding sources, and therefore there is suspicion that some of the same types of individuals or nations that fund Islamic extremism might be involved in this project, regardless of its seemingly benign purpose.

Here was an idea we have been hearing more and more of lately—the need to show the world America's devotion to democracy and justice, also cited by the administration as a reason to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City. Who is it, we can only wonder, that requires these proofs? What occasions these regular brayings on the need to show the world the United States is a free nation?

Who indeed? Who is it that feels the need to constantly apologize for the U.S., and to genuflect before Islamic sensibilities? I'll give you a hint, it isn't the right.

how is it that the planners, who have presented this effort as a grand design for the advancement of healing and interfaith understanding, have refused all consideration of the impact such a center will have near Ground Zero? Why have they insisted, despite intense resistance, on making the center an assertive presence in this place of haunted memory?

Yeah, interfaith healing & understanding is always facilitated by aggressive insertion of religious centers into areas where there is guaranteed to be massive opposition -- for obvious reasons.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser—devout Muslim, physician, former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy—says there is every reason to investigate the center's funding under the circumstances. Of the mosque so near the site of the 9/11 attacks, he notes "It will certainly be seen as a victory for political Islam."

But I guess he must just be an Islamic Islamophobe.

The center may be built where planned. But it will not go easy or without consequence to the politicians intent on jamming the project down the public throat, in the name of principle. Liberal piety may have met its match in the raw memory of 9/11, and in citizens who have come to know pure demagoguery when they hear it. They have had, of late, plenty of practice.

They've had more than enough practice witnessing left-wing smears and hypocrisy. I wonder what would happen if some Christian group wanted to build a mega-church Christian center a couple blocks away from 9/11. What are the odds that the same liberals who are just so concerned about supporting this Islamic center would have a similar position? No doubt the Bloomberg administration, the governor of New York, and the New York City council would be bending over backward to expedite its construction, and avoid putting any red tape obstacles in its path -- right after an entire herd of pigs took flight.