QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:15 A.M. ET:  The usual religious suspects were out in force yesterday, holding press conferences to protest against a rising tide of American Islamophobia which, strangely, doesn't show up in any survey.  The Ground Zero mosque controversy is too much for these pious pipers:

WASHINGTON — Prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders held an extraordinary “emergency summit” meeting in the capital on Tuesday to denounce what they called “the derision, misinformation and outright bigotry” aimed at American Muslims during the controversy over the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero.

“This is not America,” said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the emeritus Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, flanked by three dozen clergy members and religious leaders at a packed news conference at the National Press Club. “America was not built on hate.”

This is totally outrageous.  I've seen very little hate in this national discussion.  In fact, according to FBI statistics, Muslims rank rather low, as compared, say, to Jews, in the number of hate crimes committed against them.

Most of the hate I've seen has been directed at those who, out of sensitivity to the dead and the mourning, oppose the location of the mosque.  They've been called racists, bigots, morons, fascists and warmongers. 

The great Andy McCarthy, who prosecuted the terorrists in the first World Trade Center bombing, replies with some blistering truth, at NRO:

For the better part of two decades, Americans have been murdered by Islamists and then lectured that they are to blame for what has befallen them. We have been instructed in the need for special sensitivity to the unceasing demands of Islamic culture and falsely accused of intolerance by the people who wrote the book on intolerance. Americans have sacrificed blood and bottomless treasure for Islamic peoples who despise Americans — and despise us even more as our sacrifices and gestures of self-loathing intensify. Americans have watched as apologists for terrorists and sharia were made the face of an American Muslim community that we were simultaneously assured was the very picture of pro-American moderation.

Americans have had our fill. We are willing to live many lies. This one, though, strikes too close to home, arousing our heretofore dormant sense of decency.

That is the quote of the day, maybe the quote of the year.

We are all for respect here.  We're perfectly prepared to show respect for Islam.  But to get respect, you've got to give some.  We're still waiting for the Muslim world, which this country has helped time and time again, without so much as a simple thank you in return. 

We wait, and we hear the silence, and we're told by the fashion plates of the American elite that it's all our fault.  No it isn't, and we draw the line.

September 8, 2010