If you build it....

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.."

Yeah well that's Congress. But the people of these divided states of A-merry-ca don't necessarily agree with that portion of the First Amendment of our Constitution which speaks to religious freedoms.

I know folks like William Kristol don't necessarily agree with that troublesome little amendment. Mr. Kristol and others are not too pleased that some folks in New York want to build a mosque within a stones throw of Ground Zero. (I say within a stones throw, because contrary to what some wingnuts would have you believe, the mosque is not actually going to be built at Ground Zero) They consider it an affront to our sensibilities since it was just about nine years ago that a bunch of men who claim to worship this very same religion flew planes into buildings and killed over three thousand people.

"Planting a mosque just two blocks from where Muslims murdered Americans on 9/11 in the name of Islam is a huge slap in the face. Why shouldn't Muslims be sensitive enough to realize that a huge mosque planted right near the horrific wound to the U.S. created at Ground Zero by Muslims is outrageous to us? They claim a right to be insulted by cartoons mocking their prophet, even to the point of beheading people.

The Imam of the Ground Zero Insult, Faisal Abdul Rauf, is not the nice guy he likes to hold himself out to be. At his Friday afternoon khutbah services and in his book What's Right With Islam Rauf states that he wants the mosque to be a place where inter-faith understanding is fostered."

I wonder if there were Muslims murdered on 911 by those religious fanatics? I am sure there was. And aren't Muslims A-merry-cans, too? And who is this "us" that Madeline Brooks is referring to. Oh lord I don't want to be in that number, not with these Saints.

Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, gets it. He understands the Constitution and what true religious freedom means in this country. It's why a lot of folks came here in the first place; to escape religious persecution. But try telling that to the wingnuts.

"Last Tuesday, standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke on the subject of the proposed mosque at Ground Zero. His remarks will be read with curiosity by future generations of Americans, who will look back in astonishment at the self-deluding pieties and self-destructive dogmas that are held onto, at once smugly and desperately, by today’s liberal elites. Our liberation from those dogmas, and from those elites, is underway across the nation. But it’s worth taking a look at Bloomberg’s speech, if only to remind us of what we need to ascend from so our descendants can look back with curiosity at the ethos to which we did not succumb.

As is the way of contemporary liberals, Bloomberg spoke at a very high level of abstraction. He appealed to the principle of religious toleration, while never mentioning the actual imam who is responsible for and would control the planned Ground Zero mosque. To name Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf might invite a consideration of his background, funding, and intentions. Do Rauf and his backers believe in the principles underlying the “inspiring symbol of liberty” that greets immigrants to the United States and before which Bloomberg stood? Bloomberg didn’t say. It apparently doesn’t matter. Toleration means asking nothing, criticizing nothing, saying nothing, about whom or what one is tolerating. This is the Sergeant Schultz standard of toleration: I know nothing."

This is the obvious question, but I will ask it again: If the Catholic church (Or any Christian religion for that matter) wanted to build a cathedral just a few blocks from where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building stood in Oklahoma City, would we care? Of course we wouldn't. And, yet, Timothy McVeigh was a Christian.

How Ironic that Mr. Kristol would use a quote from Sergeant Schultz-the fictional Sergeant in a German prison camp during World War II- to make his point. Because quite honestly, if we continue down this road, World War II Germany will start to look very familiar.