I've heard the phrase "freedom of religion" to justify plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero in New York City a zillion times in the last two weeks, and frankly, I consider it a copout used by weak-kneed, spineless apologists who are in denial and won't face reality.

The so-called Cordoba House, named after an infamous mosque in Spain which had been a Christian church until Islamist invaders conquered that area and "converted" the building to their beliefs, has no place at the site of an attack on the United States by Islamist invaders. Referring to our Constitution and its guarantees of religious freedom as an excuse to allow construction of an in-your-face monument to the 9-11 attacks on our country is sheer cowardice, there is no better explanation for it.

Associated Press photo.


Our Constitution documents rules of behavior for our government, outlining its limits - although it is doubtful the Founding Fathers envisioned an all-powerful bureaucracy - as well as the freedoms guaranteed to US citizens. That includes the right to worship as you please, so long as that worship isn't imposed on others who don't share your beliefs and it doesn't break reasonable laws of morality - some people have pretty strange ideas as to what constitutes "religion."

But nowhere in that freedom to worship does it say "freedom to attack the United States in the name of your religion, kill 3,000 people, and then build a monument to your barbarity at the site of your attack and confront the outraged citizenry with outlandish claims of religious freedom."

People representing the cretins who attacked the US on September 11, 2001 have no business insulting the memories of the people who died, the survivors, their families, and the remainder of the US citizenry. They certainly have no Constitutional "right" to build a monument crowing about their alleged superiority. In the opinion of most Americans, the people who organized those attacks should be killed, along with their supporters and sympathizers - who, after all are no better than the people who planned and executed the attacks.

I hear all the time that there is a vast ocean of Islamists who do not agree with their militant brethren - there is no point is saying anything about sisters because Islamist women rank lower than livestock in their point of view - but I never see or hear from these phantoms. So, I have to believe that building a monument to savagery is universally accepted in their faith.

But their faith is not the dominant faith in the world, and especially not in America. (I saw a news report last year that said Islamists outnumber Catholics, which was spun as outnumbering Christians, but that ignored the Protestants, Episcopalians, etc., etc.) In fact, if you line up Christians along with Hindus, and secularists, atheists, and so on, you find out that Islam is the religion of choice for only about one in five people world wide.

In the United States that ratio is far more in favor of non-Islamists so frankly, I don't see what the big deal is about. The Constitution doesn't give them the right to build a monument to themselves or their brutality and that is that.

We have Freedom of Speech in this country, but you still can't yell Fire! in a crowded theater. You can't libel someone either.

We have the Second Amendment giving us the right to keep and bear arms, but not to go about shooting people without a good cause.

Why is it that every time a difficult issue arises on the national scene, we are confronted with wishy-washy, gutless reactions from people who call themselves "leaders?" We seem to be deteriorating in this country, at least in the Backbone of Our Leaders Department.

Think not? Check out these photos from World War II. First the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is the USS Arizona exploding during the attack. Thanks to the US Navy archives.




Then we have this poster, which was produced within months of the Japanese sneak attack on us that left more than 2,000 dead.



It says "we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain." That comes from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Below that it says Remember December 7th!

In World War II America went on to smoke out and hunt down our attackers on two fronts, committing the entirety of our populace, our economic and our industrial power to bringing the Japanese militants and the German Nazis to their knees. We weren't sensitive about it, we didn't apologize for it, and until two generations later you didn't hear people whining and wringing their hands over how we went about it - and most of that was about using the atomic bomb on Japan. (I can't help but wonder if weak, pacifist cave people back in the Stone Age whined about the development of the spear. Just a thought.)

When we wanted to make a point about taking over someone else's land on the way to defeating the government of a people that believed in savagery as a way of life, we were upfront about that too. We didn't make believe we were building a "community center" or some other public relations ploy. America and our allies freed Europe, and in the Pacific Allied armed forces took islands either owned or controlled by the Japanese one by one and when they were successful they planted our flag on them and said, "Now this belongs to us!"


This is Joe Rosenthal's Associated Press photo, of the second flag-raising on Iwo Jima in February 1945.

What are we going to have in America to commemorate the bravery of the members of our Armed Forces, men and women by the way, who have bled and often died forcing the Islamist militants back into their caves? Will there be a similar photo of a victory for our country, our way of life and the real meaning of our Constitution?

Or will it be a group photo of millions of Americans following the example of President Obama, subjugating themselves before conquerors who ultimately prevailed simply because the weak and spineless never understood the concept that it is better to die a free man than live as a slave?

The choice is ours, but if that monument to savagery is permitted at Ground Zero or anywhere in the United States for that matter, then the fight will become much harder than it has been thus far, and the casualties will be much higher, and measured in categories far more insidious than body counts.