President Obama has given a speech defending the planned building of an Islamic community center near the area where the World Trade Center once stood. And he gave this speech despite overwhelming criticism of the idea.
It is a move that will make him more unpopular. And it is a wagonload of fresh meat thrown to the conservative blowhards that have been screaming about him from the day he took the oath of office.
It is also a move that gives me a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, this President might finally be willing, in some small way, to start sticking to his principles.
This country was founded on the principle of religious freedom. It is the first right enumerated in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights (Look it up). And like it or not, there are over a billion Muslims in this world. And the vast majority of them are good, decent people who were appalled by the attacks of September 11th. Millions of Muslims live and work in this country. They defend it every day in the armed forces, the police, and the fire departments of our country. And they know that while the monsters who flew those planes into the WTC, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania may have claimed to be Muslims, they were about as far removed from the true Muslim faith as an anthill is from Mount Everest.
Look, the group that proposes the building of this mosque is dedicated to improving relations between Islamic countries and the west. And I can't think of any better way to do that than to ensure that there is a place where people can learn the true meaning of the Muslim faith mere blocks away from where people who were an abomination of that faith committed a horrific act against our country.
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