Freedom Line Blog

So how do liberals pick and choose which French ideals they wish to impose on America, anyway?  Redistributionist economics?  Oui!  Reliance on nuclear power?  Heavens, no!

Now, America’s Sanctifier in Chief Barack Obama has another dilemma on his hands.  Mere days ago, Obama lectured Americans to accept on First Amendment grounds a mosque on real estate literally impacted by the 9/11 attacks.  Soon thereafter, Obama disregarded those supposed First Amendment non-negotiables in admonishing some rogue pastor against what he labeled the “stunt” of burning a Quran.  So what will this “citizen of the world” do now that the French Senate has voted 246-1 to outlaw Islamic veils in public?  Will his teleprompter side with the effete Europeans, or the always-combustible Islamic agitants he constantly seeks to placate?

Over at the Investigate Project on Terrorism, an extensive investigative study has revealed that a close associate of Imam Faizal Abdul Rauf (the Muslim leader spearheading the Ground Zero Mosque project) has openly and aggressively claimed that the United States secretly perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on its own people.

Faiz Kahn, who helped found the American Society for Muslim Advancement (one of the groups pushing the mosque), and lead prayers at Imam Rauf’s mosque at least as recently as December, is a radical even by the exalted standards of the 9/11 truthers:

On June 3, 2006, Khan spoke at a 9/11 truth summit called “Revealing the Truth/Reclaiming our Future” in Chicago. In his remarks, he acknowledged that there is a militant Islamist movement, but “the most logical explanation” for 9/11 is that the hijackers were “working for us” in furtherance of a corporate-controlled schemes involving gigantic stock trades, billions of dollars in heroin sales and interest in Caspian Sea resources.

See the website for video that includes some of the most despicable lies you’ve yet heard about what really happened nine years ago.

In a Wednesday night interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf engaged in the following exchange:

Asked if it’s really a good idea to go ahead with his plans to build a mosque and Islamic center at an address so close to Ground Zero that it has become a flash point, Rauf gave a reply that boils down to a threat. Rauf said that if his Cordoba House does not get built on his chosen site near Ground Zero, “The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack.”

Citing Muslim attacks on Danish embassies during the riots in 2006 over Mohamed cartoons Rauf went on to say that the result of this current “crisis” could be that “anger will explode in the Muslim world.” That, he said, could lead to “something which could really become very, very, very dangerous indeed.”

Forbes columnist Claudia Rosett rightfully argues that Rauf’s position amounts to blackmail: either let me build my $100 million mosque at Ground Zero or risk other attacks.

A lot of hand wringing has been indulged making this decision primarily one about prudence instead of law.  That’s silly.  The Ground Zero mosque isn’t about the First Amendment; it’s about national security.  Rauf just admitted as much with his threat of violence.

The U.S. Constitution requires the U.S. government to protect citizens from enemies; both foreign and domestic.  It’s time to stop acting like the Constitution handcuffs America into ceding our land to a man fronting a group – Cordoba House – whose name recalls the farthest Islamic expansion in European territory.

We’re better than that.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Regardless of one’s opinions toward the Ground Zero mosque or the Florida pastor’s on-again/off-again Quran roast, one must be impressed by the speed at which President Obama and mosque supporters suddenly discovered the value of propriety, discretion and accommodating others’ sensibilities.

As we’ve said here all along, having the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do.  Obama, however, could hardly contain himself from endorsing the Ground Zero mosque simply because people have a First Amendment right to build it.  Now, however, Obama flip-flops and emphasizes in an ABC interview that the Florida pastor should stifle his First Amendment right to burn Qurans in the name of respect for others.  You certainly possess a wonderful sense of consistency, Mr. President.

So General David Petraeus has come out against the proposed burning of Qurans by a Florida church to commemorate the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, opining that it will motivate Islamic militants.  Fair enough – Petraeus is entitled to his opinion and our respect.

But imagine instead if Petraeus came out in opposition against the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York City, and the liberal commentariat’s hysteria that would ensue.  After all, many argue that Islamic militants abroad will be encouraged and motivated in their fight by a mosque on the very American soil where their compatriots slaughtered almost 3,000 people.  In fact, they’ve already sounded that trumpet.  So one can imagine a general expressing reservations toward the mosque on those grounds.

For his part, President Obama notoriously inserted his foot into his mouth by defending the Ground Zero mosque, citing express First Amendment freedoms.  Well, the Florida church possesses not only that same First Amendment religious latitude, but also the First Amendment freedom of expression to burn the Quran.  Any bets on whether Obama will take this opportunity to support these Constitutional freedoms that he claims to hold so sacred?

In a recent interview with with CFIF, Atlas Shruggs Blogger Pamela Geller discusses the ongoing controversy over the planned Islamic Mosque and Community Center near Ground Zero. 

Listen to the interview here.

Are liberals becoming so desperate and deranged that they’re no longer intellectually capable of recognizing their comic hypocrisy?  Exhibit A:  The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson.

Opponents of the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York accept proponents’ right to build there, but correctly point out that having a right to do something doesn’t make it the right thing to do.  According to Robinson, however, opponents are guilty of “lies, distortions, jingoism, xenophobia.”  Robinson also claims that “opportunistic” mosque opponents “obviously do not” understand that “we have a Bill of Rights that protects our freedoms against the whims of public opinion.”

That was Robinson on Tuesday, August 17 – just last week.

Fast forward one week, and Robinson is singing a different tune.  Perhaps what remained of his intellectual hard drive was wiped clean.  In his commentary today, Robinson labels Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally this weekend on the national mall in Washington, D.C. an “in-your-face” event, and says it “is obviously intended to be a provocation.”   And just like the mosque opponents he demonizes, he suddenly emphasizes the difference between having a right and doing what’s right:

Let me state clearly that Glenn Beck has every right to hold his absurdly titled ‘Restoring Honor’ rally on Saturday.  But the rest of us have every right to call the event what it is:  an exercise in self-aggrandizement on a Napoleonic scale.”

Obviously, Robinson’s substantive critique of the Restoring Honor rally is no more rational than his attacks on Ground Zero mosque opponents.  It’s remarkable, however, how quickly Robinson began to distinguish a right to do something versus doing what he considers to be the right thing.  It’s possible, of course, that Robinson suddenly saw the light and understood the folly of his attacks against Ground Zero mosque opponents.  Unfortunately, it’s more likely that he merely suffers from hypocrisy and severe intellectual vertigo.

With the Ground Zero Mosque raising the hackles of some of the loudest and most cloying voices on both sides of the political aisle, it’s becoming increasingly rare to find a pundit of any ideological persuasion who can put together a reasoned position on the proposed house of worship.

A glaring exception comes courtesy of Christoper Hitchens’ piece on Slate today, where he highlights some of the darker views of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, the head of the group looking to build the mosque. Foremost among them is Rauf’s unapologetic embrace of the radical regime in Iran — a position that Hitchens rightly notes can’t be squared with any authentic belief in democracy or liberalism.

That’s particularly ironic when you consider how much Rauf and company have wrapped themselves in the flag of tolerance as they push forward on the mosque project, a tactic brilliantly dissected by Hitchens:

Emboldened by the crass nature of the opposition to the center, its defenders have started to talk as if it represented no problem at all and as if the question were solely one of religious tolerance. It would be nice if this were true. But tolerance is one of the first and most awkward questions raised by any examination of Islamism. We are wrong to talk as if the only subject was that of terrorism. As Western Europe has already found to its cost, local Muslim leaders have a habit, once they feel strong enough, of making demands of the most intolerant kind. Sometimes it will be calls for censorship of anything “offensive” to Islam. Sometimes it will be demands for sexual segregation in schools and swimming pools. The script is becoming a very familiar one. And those who make such demands are of course usually quite careful to avoid any association with violence. They merely hint that, if their demands are not taken seriously, there just might be a teeny smidgeon of violence from some other unnamed quarter …

In recent days, many critics of the mosque have been tarred by liberals who use the most extreme examples of opposition to Rauf’s plans to indict the nearly2/3 of the public who are opposed to it (see Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times this weekend for an example). With spokespeople as eloquent as Hitchens, however, that line of attack will ultimately prove fruitless.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.