Just Call 'em Bigots

Charles Krauthammer skewers the intellectual sloth of those who criticize the opponents of what has come to be known as the GZ Mosque (Ground Zero Mosque) in an essay for the Washington Post. The critics are quick to impute the worst motives to the mosque's opponents - bigotry, political opportunism - but, as Krauthammer writes, they rarely come to grips with the opponents' arguments. Perhaps that's because they have no actual argument of their own.

Anyway, here's his intro:

It's hard to be an Obama sycophant these days. Your hero delivers a Ramadan speech roundly supporting the building of a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York. Your heart swells and you're moved to declare this President Obama's finest hour, his act of greatest courage. Alas, the next day, at a remove of 800 miles, Obama explains that he was only talking about the legality of the thing and not the wisdom -- upon which he does not make, and will not make, any judgment.

You're left looking like a fool because now Obama has said exactly nothing: No one disputes the right to build; the whole debate is about the propriety, the decency of doing so.

It takes no courage whatsoever to bask in the applause of a Muslim audience as you promise to stand stoutly for their right to build a mosque, giving the unmistakable impression that you endorse the idea. What takes courage is to then respectfully ask that audience to reflect upon the wisdom of the project and to consider whether the imam's alleged goal of interfaith understanding might not be better achieved by accepting the New York governor's offer to help find another site.

Where the president flagged, however, the liberal intelligentsia stepped in with gusto, penning dozens of pro-mosque articles characterized by a frenzied unanimity, little resort to argument and a singular difficulty dealing with analogies.

In the balance of the piece Krauthammer does a fine job of exposing the superficiality of efforts such as those by Richard Cohen and Michael Kinsley to demean and discredit those who prefer that the mosque be built elsewhere than at the site of perhaps the greatest crime in U.S. history, a crime perpetrated in the name of Allah and Islam. Give it a read.