Well, why doesn't the government pay for it?

In the long ago and far away, it was considered very amusing when a child said of a project whose finances were uncertain: "Well, why doesn't the government pay for it?" That stopped being funny in the Johnson administration, if not before. But there are still a few who haven't gotten the word, including Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. The last is the gent to wants to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center next door to Ground Zero. He thinks it would be a dandy idea if we (that is, the American taxpayer) not only agreed that it's a dandy idea, but helped pay for it as well. Toward that end, he has applied for $5 million from a U.S. government fund established for the purpose of--are you ready?--rebuilding lower Manhattan after the 9/11 terrorist strike. Yes. In the immortal words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Thank God for the First Amendment

The nutters at the Westboro Baptist Church have an odd (I almost said "queer") notion that God is punishing the United States for its toleration of homosexuals in the armed forces. That punishment takes the form of striking down American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Do they have a right to picket at funerals of dead Americans? Absolutely! It's protected speech under the First Amendment.

Should they picket at funerals of dead Americans? Absolutely not! What they're doing is offensive, ugly, hurtful, and unnecessarily provocative, and it shames them much more than the victims of their shabby harassment.

And of course the same is true of the offensive, ugly, hurtful, and unnecessarily provocative drive to build an Islamic mosque and cultural central next door to Ground Zero.  Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

latest from the new york times

What you see here are a christian, a muslim, and a hindu (not a jew, I wouldn't think!) strolling happily through the proposed islamic cultural center next door to Ground Zero, as reported in the new york times today.

The nyt, which insists on calling the project "park51," is fast becoming a parody of the America-hating left, even to the point of devaluing the language we used to have in common. Thus Ground Zero has become "ground zero." It's much more difficult to become attached to an icon when it's expressed in lower case letters, isn't it?

For the editors at the new york times, there in times square on manhattan island, here's a quick guide to usage:

ground zero: the point on the earth's surface directly above or below an exploding nuclear bomb

Ground Zero: the point on Manhattan Island where the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Here's an idea: a mosque to memorialize 9/11!

Bill Clinton, who when he was in a pinch much like Mr. Obama's today proved himself a genius at winning over the public, has an idea to salvage the mosque next door to Ground Zero. (Or "ground zero," as the New York Times prefers to call it, just as it prefers to refer to the mosque, formerly known as Cordoba House, as "Park51.") As Mr. Clinton points out:

Much or even most of the controversy…could have been avoided, and perhaps still can be, if the people who want to build the center were to simply say, 'We are dedicating this center to all the Muslims who were killed on 9/11.'

Is that a great idea, or what? Let's see: Park51 is decided to the memory of Mohammed Atta,  Waleed al-Shehri, Wail al-Shehri, Abdulaziz al-Omari, Satam al-Suqami....

Oh, wait! Mr. Clinton actually wants to memorialize only the Muslims who were killed because they were visiting or working in the Twin Towers on the day! Yes, that does sound better. It's also true of course that a whole bunch of German citizens died at Auschwitz. So here's an idea: why don't Mr. Clinton, Mayor Bloomberg, the New York Times, and all the Good People turn their attention to building a Lutheran church and German cultural center next door to Auschwitz, dedicated to the memory of the Germans who died in the Holocaust? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Would you buy a used mosque from this man?

According to the Newark Star-Ledger, there's a bit more to the Imam with a Plan who wants to build a 31-story mosque and Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero. It seems that he's a slumlord well known to the building inspector of Union City: 

"He’s a terrible landlord who’s unresponsive to the residents who live in his building," said [a spokesman for the mayor]. "City officials and inspectors have reached out to him to express the urgency in correcting problems in his buildings, and it’s unfortunate that it’s gotten to this point, but it’s our responsibility to insure that residents receive the care that is needed." 

After being cited repeatedly for fire hazards, and after a fire did break out in one of his buildings, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf did what any good slumlord would do: instead of fixing the mess, he boarded up the building and wouldn't let the tenants back in.

The city is trying to put that building and a neighboring one into receivership, so it can collect rent from the tenants and make needed repairs. I eagerly await the assurances from President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, and the New York Times that Imam Rauf is just the sort of neighbor that the Freedom Tower should have. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The mosque is needed for our own safety!

The kooky pastor behind Burn A Koran For Jesus has given up his plan. He has conceded that his constitutional right should not be exercised, because what he proposed is offensive, gratuitous, and injurious to America's image of itself.

Not so the kooky imam behind the Ground Zero mosque.("Kooky" is the kindest word I can think of in his connection. "Smarmy" is another.) If he had it to do over again, he assured the media in a full-press public relations offensive the other day, he would certainly choose another site. Alas, it's too late! For our own good, he must press ahead! As ABC News reports:

A Muslim imam behind a proposed cultural center two blocks from New York's Ground Zero said he must build there despite angry protests in order to defend America and its citizens against a "danger from the radicals in the Muslim world to our national security."

When the Mafia does this, it's called the Protection racket: if you don't contribute to our pension fund, who knows what terrible things might happen to your restaurant?

Imam Abdul also had the gall to call upon Pastor Jones to cancel his Koran-burning exercise--again, for the sake of America's national security, and indeed to show the true Christian spirit! As he explained:

"We have freedom of speech, but with freedom comes responsibility. ... This is dangerous for our national security, but also it is the un-Christian thing to do."

The imam evidently feels no such obligation. He'll take the freedom, plus public financing if he can get it, but responsibility? That's for Pastor Jones to display. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Mayor Bloomberg, meet Pastor Jones

The wonderfully named Dove World Outreach Center plans to burn one or more Korans on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities at Ground Zero and the Pentagon (and an aborted one over Pennsylvania). The man behind this scheme is a certain Pastor Terry Jones, who also wouldn't mind selling you a book entitled (or a coffee mug inscribed) Islam Is of the Devil.

I think we owe Pastor Jones a great debt for clarifying the matter of the Ground Zero mosque. Let's run through it briefly: does he have a right to burn the Koran? Absolutely! It's in the First Amendment, as understood by the U.S. Supreme Court. Burning stuff is protected speech.

So where are Mayor Bloomberg and the New York Times on this matter?  Are they supporting Pastor Jones's First Amendment rights? Hell, no. They find his proposal offensive and injurious to American interests--which of course it is.

And the same of course is true of the Ground Zero mosque. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Let's remember pearl harbor!

I see that the New York Times now regards "ground zero" as a generic phrase, akin to band-aid, so there's no need to capitalize the initial letters. What's next, the holocaust? The u.s. army? Not al-qaeda, I shouldn't think--that would be disrespectful to muslims, wouldn't it? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On the matter of the mosque

Mark Helprin writes:

The plan to erect a mosque of major proportions in what would have been the shadow of the World Trade Center involves not just the indisputable constitutional rights that sanction it, but, providentially, others that may frustrate it. 

Mosques have commemoratively been established upon the ruins or in the shells of the sacred buildings of other religions—most notably but not exclusively in Cordoba, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and India. When sited in this fashion they are monuments to victory, and the chief objection to this one is not to its existence but that it would be near the site of atrocities—not just one—closely associated with mosques because they were planned and at times celebrated in them.

Read it here. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Good grief

Says Reuters this morning:

(Reuters) - The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.

If this seems reasonable to you, try this thought experiment: It is December 1950, and a city official in Honolulu suggests that the taxpayers subsidize a Shinto shrine overlooking Pearl Harbor. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Shut up! he explained

Stephen Walt, whose name is best known as half of the Walt-Mearshimer duo that has done so much to bring respectability to American anti-Semitism, has weighed in on the issue of the mosque near Ground Zero:

Apart from a brief post praising New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's forthright stance on the Muslim community center controversy, I haven't said much about this issue. I had naively assumed that Bloomberg's eloquent remarks defending the project -- and reaffirming the indispensable principle of religious freedom -- would pretty much end the controversy, but I underestimated willingness of various right-wing politicians to exploit our worst xenophobic instincts, and some key Democrats' congenital inability to fight for the principles in which they claim to believe. Silly me. 

This man is  the (are you ready?) Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International relations at Harvard University. Yet his argument can best be summarized as "'Shut up!' he explained." Mayor Bloomberg has spoken! How can you various right-wing politicians exploit our worst xenophobic instincts?

To be sure, there's a bit more to his blog than that. It's not really a mosque, he argues. It's not really at Ground Zero. Etc. But that "silly me" really says it all. It's a display of intellectual arrogance on a level with--well, with Mr. Bloomberg's. We command and you obey, over the hills and far away. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On the clash of civilizations

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is my favorite former member of the Dutch parliament, had a splendid op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. She writes in part:

What do the controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban in France have in common? All four are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the "Clash of Civilizations," particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

(And Sam Huntington is my favorite late Harvard professor, not only for The Clash of Civilizations but even more for his magnificent analysis of the American experiment, Who Are We?)

Ms. Ali concludes with this bit of advice:

We need to recognize the extent to which the advance of radical Islam is the result of an active propaganda campaign. According to a CIA report written in 2003, the Saudis invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period to spread their brand of fundamentalist Islam. The Western response in promoting our own civilization was negligible.

Our civilization is not indestructible: It needs to be actively defended. This was perhaps Huntington's most important insight. The first step towards winning this clash of civilizations is to understand how the other side is waging it—and to rid ourselves of the One World illusion.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Harry Reid's mind clears

"Depend upon it, sir," as Samuel Johnson said, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid faces the election of his life in November, and it has concentrated his mind wonderfully, as CNN reports:

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is breaking ranks with President Obama over the issue of the proposed construction of a controversial Islamic center and mosque just blocks away from Ground Zero.

"The First Amendment protects freedom of religion," spokesman Jim Manley said in a statement. "Sen. Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else."

I agree with the Senator: the mosque should be built somewhere else. That's not a matter of the First Amendment; it's a matter of common sense, and of respect for the feelings of the country. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Posted without comment

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Mosque at Ground Zero

Dorothy Rabinowitz, who ostensibly is a TV reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, is also one of the most brilliant writers on the follies of contemporary life. Yesterday she weighed in on The Mosque at Ground Zero.

Nine years after the Twin Towers fell into the street, and took three thousand people with them, we still don't have a replacement to fill that great hole in the ground. The political-legal process just can't handle it. (During the Great Depression, the Empire State Building went from ground breaking to first visitor in eleven months.) So it looks like the first new building to rise in the area, and to look down into that hole, will be--a thirteen-story mosque!

Read Ms. Rabinowitz's take on this. No summary of mine can do it justice. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The mega-mosque at Ground Zero

If anyone doubted Americans' capacity for self-flagellation, the Good People of Tribeca wonderfully expanded the limits last night, when a community board voted to allow planning to proceed for a 15-story Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero. “What better place to teach tolerance," urged one of the residents, "than at the very area where hate tried to kill tolerance?” This seems to have things backwards: it is not lower Manhattan that needs to show tolerance, but the Islamists who did their best to destroy it. What next--a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor? A German cultural center at Auschwitz? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford