Wanted: A Spine in the White House

Yesterday, I wrote about the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center to be built at Ground Zero. As I discussed yesterday, the government has no right to interfere with the building of the mosque on religious grounds. This is as it should be. We cannot pick and choose which religions receive Constitutional protection. Our liberties are being eroded so quickly in this current administration that we cannot be complicit in the further weakening of our Constitution.

But while the government cannot prohibit this project from being built, the citizenry has not only the right, but the responsibility to object. In his role as leader of the United States, President Obama should rebuke the Cordoba Project. While he cannot bring a legal challenge to bear, he certainly can use his bully pulpit to bring attention to this travesty and to apply public pressure on those that would desecrate the site where so many innocents died at the hands of Islamic extremists.

Unfortunately, President Obama has not expressed an opinion on the situation, except to say, through his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, that he will “not get involved in local decision-making like this.”

Obama’s reluctance to express opinions on local issues must come as a surprise to the citizens of Arizona. Or the Cambridge police. Or anyone who objects to the idea of the government mandating that they purchase a product. It doesn’t get much more local than that.

Coming from the President, this is not surprising. While Obama has wasted no amount of overheated rhetoric blasting talk radio, Fox News, Tea Partiers, and anyone else who would dare to voice disagreement with any of the power grabbing schemes he has spearheaded, he has been strangely conciliatory to the Arab (read: Islamic) world. I have no doubt that if he would answer honestly, if he’s capable, he would say that Rush Limbaugh is a greater threat to democracy and world peace than radical jihadists.

Can you imagine what Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or Ronald Reagan would have said about the Ground Zero mosque? I suspect that they would not have mumbled that they “ . . . [would] not get involved in local decision-making issues like this.”

Of course, all of those previous Presidents possessed a spine.