Sept 11 anniversary set for Muslim center marches | Reuters

Sept 11 anniversary set for Muslim center marches | Reuters

Let's start with our first freedom: Religious Freedom.

Park51's founders have a right to build their facility as long as local zoning, permitting, etc. are observed.

There is nothing more to this story than that. This is not a mosque. These are not terrorists building this. No one in charge here murdered anyone at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Islam did not attack the WTC and the Pentagon on 9/11.

The freedom here should be absolute. 600,000 Muslims live in NYC according to official demographics. If in any area of the US any other religious group was denied the right to observe the opponents would be called anti-American lunatics - what would you say if we denied the LDS church or Seventh Day Anventists to build a facility after proper traffic studies etc., simply because they weren't our religion?

The stated goal of Park51 is to "create a deep tolerance in intra-faith affairs. It’s a place for Muslims to come together in a place where divisions would gradually peel away and a new vision of Islam that is culturally American would emerge." according to one of their founders, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Tell me you don't want that. Go ahead, I'm listening.

Opposition to this project is about as anti-American and unpatriotic as one can get. Your religion might be next.

Support for this shouldn't have to be a brave act, but it seems nearly impossible to do the right thing to support our values and our Constitution these days. Costs - personal, professional, and political - can be high. Politicians are all over the map on this, instead of remembering the simple constitutional rights we have and defending them. Republicans at this point are deeply divided over most issues and spend their time saying nothing but no and encouraging a complicit media to go along with them. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is our Velcro President, letting all of this stick, to the detriment of our government and society. The Republicans can't even agree on whether the media's fascination on this contrived controversy keeps them on-message to distract us from the good our President is doing, or if they have to keep hammering against anything this administration accomplishes.

Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilderset,etc., need to be ignored and put out of public life, forever, for their anti-American activities in this matter.

Barack Obama, Harry Reed, etc., should do their patriotic duty - stand up and unashamedly speak out for Freedom, and Liberty.