On the anti-mosque hysteria

Christopher Hitchens swings a mighty bat even when he is not well when he points out that:

Where to start with this part-pathetic and part-sinister appeal to demagogy? To begin with, it borrows straight from the playbook of Muslim cultural blackmail. Claim that something is "offensive," and it is as if the assertion itself has automatically become an argument. You are even allowed to admit, as does Foxman, that the ground for taking offense is "irrational and bigoted." But, hey—why think when you can just feel? The supposed "feelings" of the 9/11 relatives have already deprived us all of the opportunity to see the real-time footage of the attacks—a huge concession to the general dulling of what ought to be a sober and continuous memory of genuine outrage. Now extra privileges have to be awarded to an instant opinion-poll majority. Not only that, the president is urged to use his high office to decide questions of religious architecture!
Nothing could be more foreign to the spirit and letter of the First Amendment or the principle of the "wall of separation." In his incoherent statement, Foxman made the suggestion that it might be all right if the Cordoba House was built "a mile away." He appears to be unaware that an old building at the site is already housing overflow from the nearby Masjid al-Farah mosque.

Fellow Indian-American, Fareed Zakaria, is disgusted with the ADL's statement and has returned their honors from four years ago for their "Hubert Humphrey Award for First Amendment Freedoms":

I hope the Palins, Gingrichs, and Foxmans will lower their rhetoric right away ... else, here is one possibility: Ramadan begins on August 12th, and this unnecessary attention on a proposed Islamic Center in New York could easily become the topic for inflammatory sermons from some of the imams in Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia and ... who are always looking for a good fight portraying the US as the satan ... and we want to provide them with more ammo?