Mosque Debate is a Study in Bigotry

So, just what is the acceptable distance from a mosque to Ground Zero? Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan thinks it's "several blocks." For Fox's Bill O'Reilly it's "five or ten blocks." National Review's Rich Lowery wants "15 blocks" and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich insists on "20 blocks." Then there are those calling on municipal zoning boards across the country to reject construction of any mosque anywhere for whom the answer is 6000 miles or the distance from New York City to Mecca.

Says Gingrich: "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia." Okay, now we're going to determine Americans' constitutional prerogatives by the standards of a medieval, repressive, totalitarian regime that lashes women for adultery. You go Newt!

Gingrich insists that prohibiting an Islamic cultural center and mosque in lower Manhattan is equivalent to "Nazis not being allowed to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington."

First off, it's not at all certain that Nazis might not have such a right under the First Amendment. But that's not the point. Let's be very clear on this. In evoking this analogy, Gingrich, and others like Sarah Palin who wants supporters to "refudiate" the mosque, is accusing hundreds of thousands of Muslims in New York City of being as responsible for the deaths and carnage on 9/11 as the Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust. Do we really want to go there as a nation?

I understand that for some of the victims' families the idea of building a mosque near Ground Zero has opened raw nerves, but there are simply no logical grounds on which to object to building an Islamic center within some magical number of blocks from Ground Zero unless you also maintain that all Muslims are evil. And that, my friends, is the very essence of bigotry -- projecting onto a group the actions of a few of its members.

Since there's already a mosque four blocks from Ground Zero, this whole ruckus reeks of lather-up-the-mob hype like so much of right-wing invective we've witnessed over the years.

As John Adams insisted this is "a government of laws and not of men." There is no mathematical equation that tempers all that freedom of religion-due process-innocent until proven guilty claptrap with good ol' fashioned intolerance, ignorance and mindless sloganeering. Something like CR = CN ~ (B + ER) x PP2 ; or Conflict Resolution equals Constitutional Niceties divided by Bigotry plus Emotional Rage times Political Pandering squared.

But then that's the difference between living in a Saudi Arabia and living in America. Someone ought to clue in Gingrich.