The controversy over the mosque — all fifteen stories of it– planned for Ground Zero is one of those issues that divide ordinary Americans from elites. It is a debate that convinces average Americans that the governing and media elites are not cut from the same cloth as they. In fact, it strikes many as evidence that our “leaders” are stricken with a sort of political and cultural insanity, an obtuseness that defies explanation.

The ADL tried to explain it in personal terms to the dim set:

We are ever mindful of the tragedy which befell our nation there, the pain we all still feel — and especially the anguish of the families and friends of those who were killed on September 11, 2001. …

[U]ltimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain — unnecessarily — and that is not right.

But there is, of course, a larger cultural issue in play here. What passes for the liberal intelligentsia is convinced that we have no right to protect the sensibilities of our citizens (whom the left scorns as brutes and xenophobes), nor to be wary of unidentified funding from groups wishing to send some sort of a message atop the ashes of 3,000 dead Americans. (The ADL politely explained that “we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.”) The supposedly sophisticated left prefers to ignore the message that the mosque-builders are sending to their co-religionists.

Imagine if the United Daughters of the Confederacy wanted to build a 15-foot shrine to Jefferson Davis on the Gettysburg battlefield. The backlash would be fast and furious, the arguments about “free speech” and “reconciliation” would be given the back of the hand. The shrine-builders would rightly be seen as trying to conquer the landscape and the history books — a vile sort of one-upmanship, which does a grave injustice to those slaughtered on that spot.

Well, you say, that is just the loony left, which does not grasp the issue. But wait, it’s most of the chattering class and a great many of our elected leaders, who are clueless. They can’t seem to muster up the indignation to prevent the insult to the dead or to acknowledge that the mega mosque will be interpreted by much of the Muslim World as a symbol of cultural aggression and defiance — and a sign of the West’s submission.

Come to think of it, where is the president on this? He’s been mute, too busy excoriating Fox News over the Shirley Sherrod incident and blaming Republicans for scuttling his statist agenda. In “a spirit of bipartisanship and patriotism,” Bill Kristol offers Obama a helping hand and some smart advice:

Americans by a margin of nearly 3-to-1 think the 15-story mosque and community center, planned by a shadowily financed Wahhabi imam to dominate Ground Zero, is offensive. You don’t have to (yet) move to do anything legally to stop it. Just say that in your opinion it’s a bad idea, that it’s unnecessarily divisive and likely to pit American against American, faith against faith, neighbor against neighbor. Urge the sponsors, financiers, and developers of the mosque to rethink their plans, and the various entities of the City of New York their approval.

But what are the chances that the president who excised “Islamic fundamentalism” from the administration’s vocabulary would do that? Because he won’t, he again demonstrates the vast gulf between his own mindset and the values that his fellow citizens hold dear. He reminds us once more that he has absolutely no interest in rallying the country and the Free World in the civilizational war in which we find ourselves. To the contrary, he denies that such a war even exists.

It’s not enough simply to order up more troops or swap generals in the war against Islamic fundamentalism. A commander in chief in our times must champion American civilization and challenge those who seek to undermine and defile it, whether by violence or by symbolic architecture. Too bad we don’t have an Oval Office occupant willing to do his job — all of it.