The plan to erect a mosque of major proportions in what would have been the shadow of the World Trade Center involves not just the indisputable constitutional rights that sanction it, but, providentially, others that may frustrate it.

Mosques have commemoratively been established upon the ruins or in the shells of the sacred buildings of other religions—most notably but not exclusively in Cordoba, Jerusalem, Istanbul, and India. When sited in this fashion they are monuments to victory, and the chief objection to this one is not to its existence but that it would be near the site of atrocities—not just one—closely associated with mosques because they were planned and at times celebrated in them.

Building close to Ground Zero disregards the passions, grief and preferences not only of most of the families of September 11th but, because we are all the families of September 11th, those of the American people as well, even if not the whole of the American people.

If the project is to promote moderate Islam, why have its sponsors so relentlessly, without the slightest compromise, insisted upon such a sensitive and inflammatory setting? That is not moderate. It is aggressively militant. Disregarding pleas to build it at a sufficient remove so as not to be linked to an abomination committed, widely praised, and throughout the world seldom condemned in the name of Islam, the militant proponents of the World Trade Center mosque are guilty of a poorly concealed provocation.

They dare Americans to appear anti-Islamic and intolerant or just to roll over.But the opposition to what they propose is no more anti-Islamic or intolerant than to protest a Shinto shrine at Pearl Harbor or Nanjing would be anti-Shinto or even anti-Japanese. How about a statue of Wagner at Auschwitz, a Russian war memorial in the Katyn Forest, or a monument to British and American air power at Dresden? The indecency of such things would be neither camouflaged nor burned away by the freedoms of expression and religion.

And that is what the controversy is about, decency and indecency, not the freedom to worship, which no one denies. Although there is of course no question of reciprocity—no question whatever of a church in Mecca or anything even vaguely like it—constitutionally and if local codes applied without bias allow, there is unquestionably a right to build. Reciprocity or not, we have principles that we value highly and will not abandon.

The difficulty is that the principles of equal treatment and freedom of religion have, so to speak, been taken hostage by the provocation. As in many hostage situations, the choice seems to be between injuring what we hold dear or accepting defeat. This, anyway, is how it has played out so far.

The proponents of the mosque know that Americans will not and cannot betray our constitutional liberties. Knowing that we would not rip the foundation from the more than 200 years of our history that it underpins, they may imagine that they have achieved a kind of checkmate. Their knowledge of the Constitution, however, does not penetrate very far, and perhaps they are not as clever as they think.

The Constitution is a marvelous document, and a reasonable interpretation of it means as well that no American can be forced to pour concrete. No American can be forced to deliver materials. No American can be forced to bid on a contract, to run conduit, dig a foundation, or join steel. And a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution means that the firemen’s, police, and restaurant workers’ unions, among others, and the families of the September 11th dead, and anyone who would protect, sympathize with and honor them, are free to assemble, protest and picket at the site of the mosque that under the Constitution is free to be built.

A reasonable interpretation of the Constitution means that no American can be forced to cross a picket line in violation of conscience or even of mere preference. Who, in all decency, would cross a picket line manned by those whose kin were slaughtered—by the thousands—so terribly nearby? And who in all decency would cross such a line manned by the firemen, police and other emergency personnel who know every day that they may be called upon to give their lives in a second act?

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, says of those who with heartbreaking bravery went into the towers: “We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting.” Mr. Mayor, the firemen, the police, the EMTs and the paramedics who rushed into those buildings, many of them knowing that they would die there, did not do so to protect constitutional rights. They went often knowingly to their deaths to protect what the Constitution itself protects: people, flesh and blood, men and women, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. Although you yourself may not know this, they did.

The choice is not between abandoning them or abandoning the Constitution, for although the liberties the Constitution guarantees sometimes put us at a disadvantage even of self-preservation, they also make it possible for 300 million Americans to prevail—reasonably, peacefully, and within the limits of the law—against provocations such as this. They make it possible to prevent the construction of the mosque at this general location—with no objection whatsoever to, but rather warm encouragement of, its construction elsewhere—not by force or decree but by argument, persuasion, and peaceable assembly.

These are rights that the Constitution guarantees as well, and clearly it is one’s constitutional right to oppose the mosque, not to participate in the building of it, and to convince others of the same. This small and symbolic crisis is not a test of constitutional liberties, for in regard to the question at hand the Constitution allows discretion. It is rather a test of how far America can be pushed, and America is not at all as powerless as it has been portrayed.

That is because the street in front of the mosque that the Constitution says can be built can be filled with people who can effectively protest it because the Constitution says that they are free.Those who do not fear to do so need only go there and stand upon their convictions, their beliefs, their reason, their laws, their history, and what is in their hearts.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is the author of, among other works, “Winter’s Tale” (Harcourt), “A Soldier of the Great War” (Harcourt) and, most recently, “Digital Barbarism” (HarperCollins).

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It’s a bit too early for House Republican leader John Boehner to measure the drapes and pick out new wallpaper. But the Intrade pay-to-play prediction markets are now showing a 76 percent chance of a GOP House takeover in November, along with a 60 percent probability that Republicans will capture at least seven new Senate seats.

So Boehner’s lengthy broadside attack on Obamanomics at the City Club of Cleveland this week takes on special meaning. Headlines following the speech were all about Boehner’s call for the resignation of Obama policy generals Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner. But the more substantive question is this: What might a newly ascendant congressional Republican majority actually stand for?

Republican leaders are expected to publish a governing agenda next month, probably an updated version of the bold and successful Newt Gingrich/Dick Armey “Contract With America” of 1994. Boehner is a key alumnus of that effort. But folks around the country are waiting to see if congressional Republicans will make a strong and aggressive case for a true economic-growth and jobs agenda now, in 2010.

The stock market, for example, has known for months that the GOP will capture the House. But investors are not yet confident that the GOP will focus on gross domestic product, instead of mere ambiguous generalities, trying to be all things to all people. Indeed, if the Republicans borrow heavily from the tea party “Contract From America” — and its call for constitutional limits to government, tough spending restraint, free-market reforms and supply-side tax policies — stocks could mount a mighty rally in the weeks ahead.

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Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

– Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

– Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

– Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

– Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats’ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

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The federal budget is in worse shape than Roger Clemens’s reputation.

It ran a deficit of $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009 and is on track to nearly match this red ink in 2010. Going forward, there is no relief in sight.

This stark reality has fueled calls for a federal value-added tax.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has asserted that a VAT is “on the table.” The debt commission Co-chairman Erskine Bowles said, “There are many good arguments that you can make for a value-added tax.” Even conservative wunderkind Rep. Paul Ryan’s comprehensive fiscal reform “road map” contains a VAT.

Not so fast. If Congress continually resorts to tax increases, the result will be a growth-killing cycle of spend and tax. Congress should forget the VAT, control spending and get on with the task of pro-growth tax reform.

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AFF Launches TV Ad Blasting Bruce Braley’s Endorsement of Mosque Near Ground Zero

DCCC Vice Chair and Iowa Congressman insensitive and out-of-touch with Americans

Des Moines, IA – Today, American Future Fund (AFF) launched a TV ad entitled “Mosque” in Iowa. The 30-second ad highlights Congressman Bruce Braley’s support for a proposed Islamic mosque to be built two blocks from Ground Zero.

Imam Faisal Rauf, the Muslim cleric building the mosque, has implied that the US shares more responsibility over the 9/11 attacks than Al-Qaeda. In a July 2005 speech at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center in Adelaide, Australia, Rauf said, “We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”

In the Islamic culture, mosques are built on grounds that the Muslim people have conquered. (Washington Times, 6/29/10; Reuters 8/2/08) Rauf is currently raising millions of dollars from secret donors overseas for the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. (AP, 8/17/10; New York Post 5/25/10)

When asked for his opinion about the proposed mosque that is to be built on sacred ground where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists on 9/11, Braley said as long as it is zoned correctly, the mosque should be built. (The Iowa Republican, 8/23/10)

Even Washington liberals can see why the building of a mosque near Ground Zero is incredibly insensitive. New York Governor David Patterson and Nevada Senator Harry Reid, both Democrats, oppose its construction. Liberal Nancy Pelosi stands with Braley as being supportive of the mosque.

AFF spokesperson Nick Ryan stated, “This insensitive and crass opinion by an Iowan Congressman does not reflect the views of hardworking people of Eastern Iowa. Not only is the suggested mosque tactless, it is offensive to those families whose loved ones died in those horrible terrorist attacks.”

Ryan continued, “Braley’s extreme views clearly are not in-line with Iowa values, and he is out-of-touch with the American People. It is obvious that as DCCC Vice Chair, Braley is too wrapped up in siding with Pelosi than doing what is right.”

The ad urges viewers to contact Braley and let him know how they feel about the proposed mosque.

AFF TV SCRIPT: “Mosque”

ANNCR:

For centuries, Muslims built mosques where they won military victories.

Now they want to build a mosque at ground zero.

Where Islamic terrorists killed 3,000 Americans.

It’s like the Japanese building at Pearl Harbor.

The Muslim cleric building the mosque believes America was partly responsible for 9/11.

And is raising millions overseas from secret donors.

But incredibly, Bruce Braley supports building a mosque at Ground Zero.

Tell Braley what you think.