ABOUT THAT GROUND ZERO MOSQUE – AT 7:48 P.M. ET:  My Argentinian friend, and courageous blogger, Susanna Kohan, alerts us to a superb piece by Mark Helprin in The Wall Street Journal, about the World Trade Center mosque.  There are some real gems here:

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, says of those who with heartbreaking bravery went into the towers: "We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting."

Mr. Mayor, the firemen, the police, the EMTs and the paramedics who rushed into those buildings, many of them knowing that they would die there, did not do so to protect constitutional rights. They went often knowingly to their deaths to protect what the Constitution itself protects: people, flesh and blood, men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. Although you yourself may not know this, they did.

Hear, hear.  Have you noticed how often the left, which disparages displays of patriotism routinely, whips out the flag whenever it gets into trouble?  They're worse than the so-called "superpatriots." 

The left is trying to make the mosque at Ground Zero a Constitutional issue.  It clearly isn't.  It's an issue of taste and sensitivity.  No one is denying anyone's Constititonal rights.

This small and symbolic crisis is not a test of constitutional liberties, for in regard to the question at hand the Constitution allows discretion. It is rather a test of how far America can be pushed, and America is not at all as powerless as it has been portrayed.

That is because the street in front of the mosque that the Constitution says can be built can be filled with people who can effectively protest it because the Constitution says that they are free. Those who do not fear to do so need only go there and stand upon their convictions, their beliefs, their reason, their laws, their history, and what is in their hearts.

COMMENT:  Wonderfully stated.  Please read the whole article.  It will be one of the best things you've read on the subject.

Oh, by the way, the imam in charge of the proposed mosque said today that the teachings of Islam prevent him from moving it.  That is an utterly chilling thought.  I wasn't aware that Islam dealt with real estate issues, but apparently it does.  But I'd like to know a bit more about that teaching, and why we, as a nation, must bow down before it.

August 30, 2010