Follow up to the last post on Andy McCarthy’s “thought experiment,” from Thers:

But I think we could go a bit further along McCarthy’s lines. Suppose Saudi Arabia decided that the sensible way to respond to the attack on Mecca launched by maniacal American religious terrorists was to invade, say, Ecuador, trumping up a bunch of bullshit about vague terroristical connections and claiming that when their troops marched into Guayaquil, they’d be greeted with flowers and chocolate?

Because, like, if the Saudis did that, that would make them as astoundingly nutty as, say, Andy McCarthy.

Heh.

At Outside the Beltway, Steven Taylor (the world’s only sane conservative) makes essentially the same argument I did about McCarthy’s “thought experiment.” But it’s the comment thread that fascinates me, in a dead-road-kill kind of way. The “mosque” opposers cannot honestly address what Taylor wrote, so they throw one red herring after another to turn the conversation into something that fits their predetermined talking points and allows them to cling to a victimized status. And permeating the discussion is the rightie belief that the First Amendment grants a right to not be disagreed with.

I think Frank Rich’s column today is pretty much spot on.

So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan “surge” would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the “ground zero mosque” was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad — a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated — but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.

Steve M. has a quibble:

But, see, the cheerleaders for war on the right don’t really care about winning. They just care about fighting. They derive more benefit from having a permanent swarthy enemy than from defeating one.

They know that they never want to be rid of exotic-seeming enemies: they can blame the continued survival of these enemies on Democrats and liberals when the latter are in power, then, when they themselves wrest power from Democrats, they can use the exotic enemies to distract the public from their own failures of governance and transfers of ordinary citizens’ wealth to the rich. They sure as hell don’t want to be George H.W. Bush, declaring victory, going home, and then having no war to divert citizens’ attention from their own financial woes.

While I think those at the top of (and financially supporting) the rightie power pyramid probably are making exactly that calculation, once you go down a level or two it’s not so clear. I think that for people like Palin, Gingrich, Beck etc., it’s all about the next headline, the next rally, the next book contract, the next television appearance. It’s all about finding a fresh supply of red meat to throw at the followers, so they’ll keep following. But I don’t think they’ve thought out where any of this is going, beyond maybe a presidential nomination in 2012.

Dumbest argument against the “mosque” yet:

Of course Muslims died in the horror of 9/11 (but don’t forget that some of those Muslims were the ones who perpetrated the fiery mass murders), and they have the right to memorialize their loss.

But, many wonder, why two blocks away from Ground Zero? Why two blocks away from the nation’s greatest tragedy? Why $100 million? And from where is that huge sum of money coming?

AFTER ALL, representation of every ethnic, racial and religious group was lost in 9/11. Are they trying to build a huge Buddhist temple next to Ground Zero? Are Jews planning a huge synagogue two blocks away? Maybe we haven’t heard about Native American plans to build something near the site, or are unaware of nefarious plans by Sikhs and Hindus to erect a religious site nearby.

First, of course, Park 51 is not primarily being planned just to memorialize the Muslims who were killed on 9/11, but to help people get over blaming all Muslims for what happened on 9/11. And as we can see from the hysterical reaction, such a gesture is sorely needed. It would also be giving something nice to the neighborhood.

But as far as other religions go, there are already at least a couple of big synagogues within two blocks of “ground zero.” The Museum of the American Indian (nice place to visit if you’re ever in lower Manhattan) is at 1 Bowling Green, less than a ten-minute walk from “ground zero”, I would guess. The closest Buddhist temples are in Chinatown, although one of the local Pure Land congregations holds a lovely Obon floating candle ceremony on a pier near Ground Zero every September 11. I believe the closest Sikh temple is in Queens, so the Sikhs need to step it up. But why this is relevant to anything I do not know.

Why $100,000,000? Please. It’s Manhattan.

At National Review, Andrew McCarthy proposes a “thought experiment.”

A friend poses the following: Imagine that there really were these fundamentalist Christian terror cells all over the United States, as the Department of Homeland Security imagines. Let’s say a group of five of these terrorists hijacked a plane, flew it to Mecca, and plowed it into the Kaaba.

Now let’s say a group of well-meaning, well-funded Christians — Christians whose full-time job was missionary work — decided that the best way to promote healing would be to pressure the Saudi government to drop its prohibition against permitting non-Muslims into Mecca so that these well-meaning, well-funded Christian missionaries could build a $100 million dollar church and community center a stone’s throw from where the Kaaba used to be — you know, as a bridge-building gesture of interfaith understanding.

What do you suppose President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, the New York Times, and other Ground Zero mosque proponents would say about the insensitive, provocative nature of the proposal?

I can’t speak for anybody but me, but I’d say this is a matter between the Christian missionaries and the Saudis. And it wouldn’t surprise me a whole lot of President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg said the same thing. The State Department might tell the Christian missionaries to not expect to be rescued if they’re taken hostage by jihadists, but that’s about it.

What disturbs me about this analogy, however, is the unspoken assumption that Americans shouldn’t be expected to value religious liberty and tolerance toward Muslims if Saudis don’t value religious liberty and tolerance toward Christians (the Western default religion). Since when do we look to Saudi Arabia as the arbiter of what is virtuous?

What the righties don’t get is that the Cordoba House/Park 51 controversy is not about Islam, but about America. What are our values? What are our principles? What does America stand for? And do we maintain those values and principles through thick and thin, or do we chuck them under the bus whenever something frightens us?

I realize there is much less religious tolerance in most Middle Eastern countries than there is supposed to be in the United States, which is one of the many reasons I’m glad I was born in the United States and not the Middle East. But either we value religious liberty and tolerance, or we don’t. And lately the Right has been saying, we don’t. What we value is paranoia and vindictiveness. If Muslims in the Middle East don’t tolerate us, then we won’t tolerate them. Nyah nyah nyah.

I have this crazy idea that our first responsibility, as citizens, is to respect and maintain the principles outlined in the Constitution and other founding documents, like the Declaration of Independence. We should do this so that our descendants can enjoy the liberties and privileges that our ancestors fought to provide us. And sometimes that might take some courage, keeping one’s head, steering a steady course through the storm, etc.

But today’s conservatives don’t see it that way. For them, “liberty” is just a word they put on their T-shirts. It has no applicable meaning. As soon as the ship of state hits some rough waters, they panic and toss the Bill of Rights overboard.

And all the while babbling about how they hate us for our freedoms. Talk about oblivious.

Going back to the “thought experiment,” in that scenario I doubt that the Christian church/community center could be built in Mecca, because I don’t think the Saudi government would allow it. But New York is not in Saudi Arabia. It’s in the United States. And we’re supposed to be better than that. But I guess Andy McCarthy doesn’t think so.

I have an idea for a thought experiment: let’s try to imagine Andy McCarthy thinking. Or is that more like a science fiction plot?

Be sure to read “Balancing Act for Imam in Muslim Center Furor.” The more I read about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the more sorry I am about the hate campaign being waged against him by the rightie hyenas.

Some guy named Steven Emerson, who appears to be some kind of freelance antiterrorism expert who makes a living hyping the threat of scary Muslim people, claims to have audio tapes of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf spouting pro-jihadist opinions. No one has heard these tapes but Emerson, but of course a big chunk of the Right Blogosphere is now uncritically repeating Emerson’s claims as facts. The only blogger I’ve found so far who even suspects the claims about what the Imam actually said might be bogus is James Joyner.

My concern is that mainstream news media also will uncritically repeat these claims before anyone has had a chance to fact check. And given the mob mentality gripping most of the nation on the Islamic Center issue, I hope the Imam has a bodyguard, and the NYPD is keeping an eye on the Park Place property before somebody blows it up in the name of fighting terrorism.

On the other hand, there is some indication that some politicians who originally sided with the mob are backing off a bit, possibly sensing the mob is becoming uncontrollable. Even Newt Gingrich and Peter King seem to want to dissociate themselves with organized protests of the Islamic center.

In the case of Gingrich, some of his rhetoric was so over-the-top that Pat Buchanan said he had gone too far. This is a bit like being judged sick and depraved by Charles Manson.

Last summer it was mobs breaking up town hall meetings; this summer it’s mob hysteria over Muslims. Maybe we should just cancel August.

And we knew this would happen:

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda’s claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

“I know people in this debate don’t intend it, but there are consequences for these kinds of remarks,” said Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism for the New America Foundation here.

Ah, but they do intend those consequences. Maybe not consciously, but what the mob wants more than anything else is another big strike on American soil by Islamic terrorists. That would give them license to do what they really want to do, which is to unleash murderous violence against Muslims.

And, of course, that’s what al Qaeda really wants them to do, too.

Yesterday I learned that the U.S. Senate race in Missouri between Republican Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan is now being waged over — wait for it — the so-called “ground zero mosque.”

Missouri’s candidates for U.S. Senate clashed Thursday over a proposed Islamic community center near ground zero in New York City, an issue that has dominated the national political debate in recent days.

Republican Roy Blunt said the center — which includes a mosque — should be nowhere near the “battleground” where Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Democrat Robin Carnahan countered that New Yorkers should decide among themselves on what is essentially a local zoning matter.

Those of you moved to make a donation to the Carnahan campaign may do so through her website.

Meanwhile, I’m reading that construction workers and suppliers from all over the country are vowing not to build the Islamic Center.

The grass-roots movement is gaining momentum on the Internet. One construction worker created the “Hard Hat Pledge” on his blog and asked others to vow not to work on the project if it stays on Park Place.

“Thousands of people are signing up from all over the country,” said creator Andy Sullivan, a construction worker from Brooklyn. “People who sell glass, steel, lumber, insurance. They are all refusing to do work if they build there.”

“Hopefully, this will be a tool to get them to move it,” he said. “I got a problem with this ostentatious building looming over Ground Zero.”

If Mr. Sullivan lives in Brooklyn, I assume he’s been to lower Manhattan once or twice in his life, meaning he should know the Islamic Center will not be “looming over Ground Zero.” For all the visual impact it’s going to have on Ground Zero it might as well be built in Missouri.

And let me also point out that since there are no architectural drawings yet, we have no way to know how “ostentatious” the center will be. All we know is that the building will be modeled conceptually on the 92nd Street Y, a familiar New York institution that began as a YMHA — Young Men’s Hebrew Association. And I wouldn’t call the 92nd Street Y building “ostentatious.” One suspects Mr. Sullivan believes the “ground zero mosque” will be not only be built at “ground zero,” but will literally be a mosque.

Truly, Ignorance got up early and tar-papered the whole neighborhood while Truth was still asleep.

The article quotes one construction worker saying he’s on the fence on the issue, but it’s not hard to imagine that construction workers who really don’t mind the Islamic Center would have to be very courageous to say so, and possibly would have to find a new career.

Meanwhile meanwhile — Charles Krauthammer sinks further and further into duplicitous arguments about rights. But first, let’s review what CK said in his previous column:

America is a free country where you can build whatever you want — but not anywhere. That’s why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn’t meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

He’s arguing that government should stop the building of the center, is he not? But today he says, ‘No one disputes the right to build; the whole debate is about the propriety, the decency of doing so.”

“Rights” are not symbolic abstractions. A right that cannot be exercised is not a right. Krauthammer and others on the Right keep saying they don’t dispute the right to build the Islamic Center on private property, but are saying the Center shouldn’t be built. And, the conservatives say, we have a right to express our opinion. Yes, they do, just as I have a right to call them bigots and ignoramuses.

But if the Right somehow stops the Islamic Center from being built, whether by government, or by a privately organized campaign to deny the builders the ability to build, or by any other means, then they’re saying Rauf et al. don’t have a right to build an Islamic Center on private property. A right that cannot be exercised is not a right.

An analogy — this is like saying yes, you have a right to express your opinion, and we have a right to stick a gag in your mouth to shut you up if we disagree.

Now, on to the claim just because we think all Muslims are the same doesn’t make us bigots. You either understand that Muslims are not all associated with jihadists, or you don’t. Krauthammer writes,

Radical Islam is not, by any means, a majority of Islam. But with its financiers, clerics, propagandists, trainers, leaders, operatives and sympathizers — according to a conservative estimate, it commands the allegiance of 7 percent of Muslims, i.e., more than 80 million souls — it is a very powerful strain within Islam. It has changed the course of nations and affected the lives of millions. It is the reason every airport in the West is an armed camp and every land is on constant alert.

Ground Zero is the site of the most lethal attack of that worldwide movement, which consists entirely of Muslims, acts in the name of Islam and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world. These are regrettable facts, but facts they are. And that is why putting up a monument to Islam in this place is not just insensitive but provocative.

So, because a whole bleeping 7 percent of Muslims are jihadists, the other 93 percent of Muslims are guilty, too?

Greg Sargent:

Here’s the thing: If you believe that it is “provocative” to put a center devoted to the study of all of Islam near the site of the attacks, then you are inescapably legitimizing the idea that all of Islam is somehow responsible for, or should be vaguely associated with, those attacks. If you don’t believe that — if you believe that the attacks were carried out by a group that perverted Islam and wasn’t genuinely acting on its behalf — then you wouldn’t have any reason to see the building of a project nearby devoted to studying Islam as “provocative.”

Claiming that the attacks were carried out “in the name” of Islam is a transparent way to dodge that simple truth. It’s a way for Krauthammer to make an argument premised inescapably on the idea that all of Islam should be somehow conflated with the attacks while claiming he isn’t doing that at all.

It’s generally the case that bigots can’t see their own bigotry. The minute you recognize your bigotry as bigotry, you begin the process of letting go of bigotry. Die-hard bigots, on the other hand, believe their opinions are simple facts and think people who disagree with them are nuts or naive. So the bigots will continue to deny they are bigots and take offense at being called bigots — but they’re still bigots.

See also: Mosque debate: New Yorkers take dim view of rabble-rousing outsiders

Someone asked Oz Sultan, spokesperson for the Cordoba House project, whether his group would accept funds from overseas, in particular the Middle East. Sultan said, in effect that the group was still working out its fundraising strategies, and no decisions had been made. This led to ABC news issuing a report that ties hypothetical Saudi donations to the September 11 attack. The report’s strong implication is that most of the 9/11 perps were Saudis; therefore, all money from Saudi Arabia is connected to 9/11.

This was not the New York Post, mind you, but ABC News. Although I believe the New York Post reported the story the same way.

Of course, the evil Iran also is in the Middle East. I saw a news story this morning — it seems to have been taken down already — that ran a photo of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf next to one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad under a headline saying that money from Iran could be used to build the Islamic center. If you didn’t read the story itself very, very carefully, you’d believe it said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was funding the “ground zero mosque.” But what Sultan said was that although the group would prefer to raise the money from domestic donations, they hadn’t yet ruled out accepting donations from people in the Middle East. Not everyone in the Middle East is a terrorist or a dictator, you know.

As Politico points out, so far all the planners have are intentions. They haven’t raised the money for the project yet. They haven’t acquired all the property they plan to use, just some of it. They haven’t even hired an architect. In fact, the Politico article says, they haven’t even hired a lobbyist. How can you possibly get anything done without a lobbyist?

Meanwhile, the percentage of the American public who thinks the president is a Muslim is growing. See also “In Defining Obama, Misperceptions Stick.”

Also meanwhile, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Americans don’t understand the concept of “rights.” That’s rather sad, considering that our nation allegedly was founded on the principle of human rights, or the Rights of Man, as Thomas Paine called them. It appears, however, that large numbers of Americans think of “rights” as somewhat abstract privileges granted by the consent of society.

Thus, some Americans seem to think that while some Muslims in Manhattan may have a right to build an Islamic Center near Ground Zero, somehow preventing the center from being built is not an abridgment of that right. Muslims still have the right to build whatever they want on private property in principle; they just can’t be allowed to actually do it.

I’ve said before that conservatives seem to interpret freedom of speech as a right to not be disagreed with. At The American Prospect, Adam Serwer has a couple of posts up on “Tribalism And Constitutional Rights” that go into this.

It’s not surprising that Sarah Palin would come out in support of Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s interpretation of the First Amendment as not guaranteeing freedom of speech, but rather freedom from criticism. Palin’s expressed similar beliefs before, basically that the First Amendment only guarantees her and her political allies freedom of speech, while any criticism of her statements is an unconstitutional infringement on her right to say whatever she wants.

Of course, if Palin really does have a right not to be disagreed with, that means other people do not have the right to express opinions about Palin’s opinions. Serwer then calls out the implied rightie understanding of “rights” as privileges that belong only to right-thinking Americans, e.g., people who think the way they do.

The other assumption we’ve seen on the Right lately is the idea that a view held by a majority of Americans cannot be bigotry. This assumes that empirical reality is subject to majority rule, which I suppose is a natural extension of the idea that “we create our own reality.”

But, as I keep saying, there have been plenty of times in American history when a majority opinion reeked of bigotry. Before the Civil War, only a minority of Americans, including northerners, favored a complete abolition of slavery, for example. Until relatively recent times, most whites genuinely believed whiteness conferred some inherent superiority over other races. A 19th century white person who was not a white supremacist by today’s standards was extremely rare. Abraham Lincoln himself was a white supremacist by today’s standards.

And you don’t have to go back to the 19th century. If you are old enough to remember the “school busing” controversy, when courts after Brown v. Board of Ed were ordering schools to be desegregated, you remember another time America lost its mind. In some places whites literally rioted in the streets, and not just in the South. I remember white mobs attacking buses carrying black children. Although I don’t know numbers, I believe a majority of white Americans wanted to keep segregation in effect. So, yes, majority opinion can be bigoted.

Serwer says in the second of his posts, “prejudice does not cease being prejudice because it is widely held.” It’s obvious a large number of Americans, I assume a majority, harbor some prejudices against Muslims. People can complain about being bigots all they like; lumping all Muslims together with the September 11 perpetrators is bigotry, by definition. Just because everyone else they know thinks the same way doesn’t make prejudice not prejudice.

Living in a nation where people enjoy certain inalienable rights means that lots of times other people are going to do things you don’t like. It also means people will express disagreement with your opinion. If we have a rule of law and not a rule of mob, that’s how it is. A free society depends on most people understanding that.

[Update: The local NBC affiliate is reporting that the developers of the Islamic Center have told Gov. Paterson they don't intend to change the location. Good for them.]

Eric Kleefeld documents that opposition to the so-called “ground zero mosque” intensifies the further away one goes from “ground zero.” But we knew that. See also Nate Silver.

I had a let’s-bang-heads-against-the-wall moment this morning when I found an editorial in the Joplin (Missouri) Globe written by some guy who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He wrote of the builders of the Islamic Center: “These folks should not expect a neighborhood welcoming party.”

Excuse me? Where the bleep does somebody who lives in Tulsa Bleeping Oklahoma get off talking about the “neighbohood welcoming party”? Clue, dude: Manhattan ain’t your neighborhood.

I keep waiting for another shoe to drop in the “ground zero mosque” flap. The word is that Gov. Paterson will meet with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and other Cordoba House backers to find another spot for the proposed Islamic Center. And as much as I don’t want the bullies to get their way, apparently other Muslims in the U.S. want the issue to go away asap before the mob gets even nastier.

There’s an old joke that America is the land of the brave because you’ve got to be brave to live here. I’m not seeing much bravery anywhere these days, though.

The Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite writes,

The true of test of whether this country is really the “land of the free” is when we do or do not act like we are the “home of the brave.” It is not enough to carry copies of the Constitution and wave them at rallies. The U.S. Constitution lives or dies in the practice of its freedoms for all Americans. That means, all Americans, not just the ones with whom you agree, or with whom you may share a religious belief. We must protect these fundamental liberties especially when it is challenging to do so, or even appears threatening to some.

The Right is twisting itself into pretzels claiming that they support freedom but want to stop the building of the Islamic Center. In other words, now we’re only as free as an unhinged, frightened, bigoted mob allows us to be.

Sam Stein has a profile of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf that discusses the imam’s work with the FBI to counter terrorism and also some of his work, with Jews and Christians, to promote religious tolerance. If Americans can be persuaded that this man is a jihadist, then the right-wing noise machine could demonize anybody.

Update: Something I hadn’t thought of, but it could be a concern — Mosque Furor Endangers U.S. Troops

[UPDATE: There is a report from Haaretz that "Sources in New York said on Monday that Muslim religious and business leaders will announce plans to abandon the project in the next few days." Why Haaretz would have inside information on this matter I do not know, and I hope it isn't true. I hate it when the bullies and thugs win.]

Josh Marshall, yesterday (emphasis added):

Also very worth noting is that none of the 9/11 Families groups who actually seem to be membership organizations made up of families of the victims seem to have taken positions on the mosque issue at all. I looked at the websites of several such organizations. And they each contain ‘about’ pages with some information about the organization, its membership and in most cases boards of directors. The website of Burlingame’s group, 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America, contains no such information. But it’s statement of purpose does give some sense of viewpoint: “The war against sharia is a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”

Since almost three thousand people died as a result of the attacks, many thousands count as family members of the dead. And given that the public at large is at best divided over mosque question and likely on balance against it, it stands to figure that there’s a similar spectrum of opinion among these families. Yet I have not seen any clear evidence that as a group these people are against the Cordoba House project.

The website of Burlingame’s “organization,” “9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America,” really does give no indication that anyone actually belongs to it. Maybe there is an organization, but it seems weird to me that there is no board of directors, no “about us” page, no place to sign up for membership. Some guy named Tim Sumner writes most of the blog posts, but we don’t know if he’s a member or an employee.

Compare/contrast with the “about us” page of Families of September 11. This organization, btw, is acting as an advocacy group for the many people who worked on “the pile” after the atrocity and are now suffering terrible health problems as a result. So this group is doing something useful and beneficial. They’re also still steering clear of the “ground zero mosque” issue.

So whether Burlingame even leads anything remotely resembling an “organization,” or whether her site is pure astroturf, is anyone’s guess. Really, someone should check this out, although I don’t even know where to begin. Would there be tax documentation somewhere?

See also: Hendrik Hertzberg, “Zero Grounds“; Daryl Lang, “Hallowed Ground.”

At Salon, Justin Elliott explains how the phony “ground zero mosque” issue was fired up by pathological whackjob Pam Geller and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The article begins,

A group of progressive Muslim-Americans plans to build an Islamic community center two and a half blocks from ground zero in lower Manhattan. They have had a mosque in the same neighborhood for many years. There’s another mosque two blocks away from the site. City officials support the project. Muslims have been praying at the Pentagon, the other building hit on Sept. 11, for many years.

In short, there is no good reason that the Cordoba House project should have been a major national news story, let alone controversy.

There really isn’t. But now that it’s been jacked up into a Big Bleeping Deal, the Right is determined to continue Osama bin Laden’s dream of terrorizing America into destroying itself. As Michael Daly writes at the New York Daily News, blocking the building of the Islamic center is exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.

And it’s way past time to say plainly that Pam Geller is Osama bin Laden’s tool, agent, and spokesperson. Plus some other things I don’t say because I don’t care for vulgarity.

At Time magazine, Mark Halperin asks the GOP to not exploit the emotions fueling the “ground zero mosque” controversy as they campaign for the midterm elections. “Do the right thing,” he says. However, Halperin doesn’t make an argument that the issue won’t work for the GOP politically, so he’s whistling in the wind. Decency? Respect for human values? From today’s GOP? On what planet?

Halperin also repeats the assumption, and the fiction, that blocking the building of Cordoba House is “backed by the families of the 9/11 victims, in their most emotional return to the public stage since 2001.” One more time: No one has polled the families. We don’t know what they think. Yes, some of them have loudly denounced the project, while others have more quietly expressed support for it. Two major family organizations, Families of September 11 and the September 11th Families Association, have not taken a stand, one way or another.

Please, everybody, stop assuming that the survivors of the 9/11 victims are against the “mosque.” They are not all of one mind, and we have no way to know what a majority think.

This prediction doesn’t come from polls or from the I Ching. It comes from Bill Kristol, who writes,

The left has collapsed.

Its political support has collapsed. Public opinion polls point to a historic repudiation of the president and the Democratic party this fall—something on the order of a 60-seat Republican gain in the House. The GOP has an outside shot at taking the Senate as well.

There are three sure things in this world — death, taxes, and Kristol being wrong.

Also: At least one recent poll disagrees with Kristol.

Update: TBogg responds to Kristol with his usual measured subtlety.