Enough With This 'Liberal Piety'

Dorothy Rabinowitz hopes the debate over the New York City mosque ends up backfiring on the preachers of "liberal piety." Elites such as Michael Bloomberg deliver patronizing lectures to those who dare oppose the mosque as an affront to 9/11 victims, she writes at the Wall Street Journal. "The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacred principles of our democracy."

Opponents may end up losing this fight, but "the politicians intent on jamming the project down the public throat, in the name of principle," will pay a price. "Liberal piety may have met its match in the raw memory of 9/11, and in citizens who have come to know pure demagoguery when they hear it. They have had, of late, plenty of practice." (More liberals stories.)