Here's a sample:
Nearly everyone in America seems to have opined on this situation already. Cheering it, fearing it, sneering at those who object, mocking those who favor the building of the mosque. President Obama was for it, before he was against it: first giving a speech about religion and our constitutional system so high-minded that it was audible only to bats — and then, as criticism mounted, hurriedly explaining that he wasn’t actually lending his support to the project. That is not what he meant at all. That is not it, at all. The man is turning into J. Alfred Prufrock, here before our eyes.
Perhaps New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg deserves credit, then, for saying straight out, and sticking to his position, that the mosque “is as important a test” of “the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime.” Indeed, he added, “We would be untrue to the best part of ourselves — and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans — if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.”
And yet, there’s something in that Bloombergian line that puts one’s back up. Something condescending, superior, and hectoring. Something of the school marm and, more to the point, something of the 1950s high-liberal technocrat who just doesn’t like the messiness of human interaction. And if we could reach down to the root of the mayor’s error, we would have some understanding of how religion actually works in a constitutional democracy.Obama as Prufrock. Pretty funny. Anyway, read the whole thing, it's not long, and it's very good.
