Thoughts on the "Ground Zero Mosque" (and community center)

Pointing out that Sarah Palin is being hypocritical is like pointing out that a Mama Grizzly shits in the woods – not exactly revelatory – and yet I feel it needs to be done, if only to counteract the hurricane gust of half-truths and hot air that unceasingly blows from her general vicinity.

In this case, I actually happen to agree with the former governor of Alaska. The leaders of the Cordoba Initiative, the group behind the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” (which is actually a planned community center), should be sensitive to the feelings of those who lost loved ones on 9/11 in choosing the center’s location. By the same token, opponents of the community center should be sensitive to the feelings of Muslim Americans who had nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center, and yet have been made to feel like outsiders in their own country. I don't mean to engage in a debate about whose pain is more strongly experienced; my point is simply that both are worthy of acknowledgment.

And that’s where the hypocrisy comes in. Because Sarah Palin’s pleas for “Peace-seeking Muslims” to reject the community center “in the interest of healing” because “it stabs hearts” expresses a desire for compassion strikingly similar to the "political correctness" that she has taken so many occasions to lament and lambaste and generally use to criticize those who disagree with her. Even if this is an honest calculation, and not a cynical one – even if Mrs. Palin would regard the one as different from the other because of its extreme nature – I wonder, how high are we willing to set the standards for tolerance?

It makes perfect sense that people whose loved ones were murdered by Islamist militants would be opposed to seeing a Muslim community center two blocks from the site of the tragedy and, if the families of 9/11 victims unanimously felt that way, Mrs. Palin’s would be a stronger case. But they don’t. Some seem to feel that the best way to honor their loved ones, as Mayor Bloomberg so eloquently put it, is by defending the freedoms that the terrorists attacked. Both views should be respected and carefully considered by the owners of the land, with whom the decision ultimately resides (as it should).

Whatever happens, I can only hope that we will all take away an appreciation for what it is to feel marginalized, and a recognition that having different opinions and values makes us Americans and not enemies. Whether you call it political correctness or not, sensitivity is vital to our success as a nation; it can be overdone, certainly, but that is hardly cause to “refudiate” it.