Alongside Douthat’s “first America” — that is, J Street, CAIR, the ACLU, and the Friday and Sunday but not the Saturday Obama, all of whom support the Ground Zero mosque — is that bastion of religious toleration and goodwill toward men, Hamas. The New York Post reports:

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.

“In every area we have, [as] Muslim[s], we have to pray, and this mosque is the only site of prayer,” he said on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on WABC.

“We have to build the mosque, as you are allowed to build the church and Israelis are building their holy places.”

Now wait. The mosque, the left punditocracy keeps telling us, is a warm and fuzzy statement about tolerance and reconciliation. But Hamas didn’t get that memo. In fact, Cordoba House has a rather different meaning for the terrorists:

Zahar said Muslims around the world, including those who live in this country, are united in a common cause. “First of all, we have to address that we are different as people, as a nation, totally different,” he said. “We already are living under the tradition of Islam. “Islam is controlling every source of our life as regard to marriage, divorce, our commercial relationships,” Zahar said. “Even the Islamic people or the Muslims in your country, they are living now in the tradition of Islam. They are fasting; they are praying.”

Sounds like a message about Islamic triumphalism and separatism. Pity the poor slobs in second America, who think we shouldn’t be cheering that sort of thing.