It’s an election season, and we can’t seem to decide on which culture war to fight.
We had gay marriage and the California court ruling — which, in past years, would have been a sure thing — but for some reason, it just didn’t seem to take.
The talk-show boys had better luck, for a while, with the anchor- baby issue, which I thought had legs, if, you know, anchors could have legs.
But there were problems. To begin with, it’s hard to demonize babies, even those of the anchor variety. And then there’s this: To de-anchor the babies, you’d have to actually amend the 14th Amendment. And the 14th Amendment, it turns out, is not only about defining citizenship but also about due process and equal protection and other stuff you might prefer to keep in the Constitution.
Fortunately for the cable-TV news producers, the ground zero mosque came into play. And it seems like they’ve got a winner.
The proposed mosque site is not real ly at ground zero. It’s two blocks away. And it’s not really a mosque mosque. If it’s built, it would be a community center, with a gym and a swimming pool and an auditorium.
And if you walk a few blocks from ground zero, you realize that these are New York City blocks, meaning they’re crammed with every manner of commerce, up to and including the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club. You find many houses of worship in the area — churches and synagogues. There’s also a mosque a few more blocks away.
What makes the ground zero mosque such a sensitive issue is America’s unsettled view of Islam and how radical Islamic terrorists fit into that view in a post- 9/11 world.
That’s where it begins, anyway. It’s a hard issue, which requires sensitivity, which is, of course, the last thing you’d expect from cable-TV news or our political class.
It should provide a ready lesson in religious tolerance and how that lesson often comes hard, how it goes back to the founders, to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The reason they added the Bill of Rights is to protect unpopular ideas. You could include the building of unpopular mosques.
Instead, we have Newt Gingrich, a would-be 2012 Republican presidential nominee, leading the charging, comparing the building of the mosque/community center/swimming pool two blocks from ground zero to Nazis putting up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum.
It was bad enough that Barack Obama had to weigh in. You know he didn’t want to. It’s a lose-lose situation politically.
But he did the right thing at a White House Ramadan dinner, saying Muslims had the right to build that mosque. “This is America,” he said, “and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.”
He did the right thing — until he noticed it had also been the brave thing. And the last thing he wanted to do, apparently, was to be brave.
And so the next day, Obama was backing away, saying he wasn’t commenting on the “wisdom” of building this particular mosque. What he didn’t say was that defending religious freedom for Muslims is tough with midterm elections upcoming.
Harry Reid, who’s in a tough re-election battle, didn’t even make a bid for bravery. He said through a spokesman that though he was, of course, a big believer in the First Amendment (and, I’m sure, also the 14th) that “the mosque should be built someplace else.”
It wasn’t long before a few New York House Democrats in swing districts were weighing in against the mosque. And so it goes. By Tuesday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee was asking where Mi chael Bennet stood on this issue — as if a New York City zoning debate should be at the center of the Bennet-Ken Buck contest.
This will end only when those who want to build the mosque back off — which I’m guessing they will — or if a better story hits.
It’s not a story that holds up if you look too closely. We’re fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — at great human and financial cost — in order, we were told, so people there can live free. Unless, of course, they want to move here and build a mosque in Lower Manhattan.
George W. Bush made the consistent case that we were fighting a war not against Islam but rather against terrorists who misuse the religion. A big part of the war effort is, as they say, to win hearts and minds of the people there. How many do you think have been lost as they listen to our debate about how many blocks away from ground zero is the right number for a mosque to be built?
We have big problems in this country. We have an election upcoming in which you’d hope the big problems would be discussed seriously.
And the only lesson to take from the ground zero mosque debate is that a serious debate on the issues is the last thing you should expect.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
