The Day I Reaffirmed A Belief I've Held Since Eighth Grade

It has taken far too long for me to ruminate about this, with so many angles, aspects, and division among peers as well as various groupings across our diverse nation. But I've finally settled on one angle: the surefire first-person confessional.

The controversy surrounding Park51 (née Cordoba House, née "Mosque" "at" "Ground Zero", née Burlington Coat Factory) has echoed back and forth from media outlets across the U.S. and beyond the past two months, especially with demonstrations (abandoned or not) that coincided with the ninth anniversary of the atrocities of 9/11. And during my trip to New York last month (photos on the blog's fan page on Facebook) I took a walk down Park Place toward the run-down five-story Italian Renaissance building. And there it stood: the flashpoint testing religious tolerance in the U.S., flanked by a 15-story skyscraper to its right with an AT&T store, another 15-story skyscraper that houses an Amish goods shop, all facing south toward a parking garage and even taller building, across the street where taxis advertising adult entertainment venues in the area cruise.

After standing across the street under construction scaffolding, overhearing a couple people also snapping pictures and talking about the proposed project while two demonstrators utilized their First Amendment rights to show support for freedom of religion, I continued my one-man tour of Lower Manhattan with, oddly enough, one of my core political beliefs re-affirmed.

I, for lack of a better term or way to spin this, am a Tenther.

I believe that problems involving the economic and social well-being of a community and its members are best solved at localized levels. Broad-stroke applications like No Child Left Behind, health care reform, Kelo v. New London, and every perverted interpretation of the interstate commerce clause conceivable, are one-size-fits-all attempts to graft a federal solution onto what are really situations that differ from state to state and district to district. I make no qualms about being among the 70 percent of Missouri voters who backed Proposition C last month.

However, unlike most of the newfound Tenthers out there, I accept a critical tangent of this belief: what's best for one state is not necessarily best for another. Which is why I, as a Missourian, really have no tangible reason to weigh in on whether a New York organization should be allowed by a governing body in New York to build a facility that serves Muslims who live in New York. While I may be able to transplant myself with ease in this great country from state to state as the economy and I please, I am no more a resident of Lower Manhattan than the many pundits, preachers, and politicos who have railed against this proposal. Zoning has long been a local issue, and the boards that voted to allow construction of Park51 did not lose or cede jurisdiction of Lower Manhattan, nor did similar boards serving Arlington or Somerset County, Pa., after 19 (insert choice expletives to your heart's content) terrorists committed the most brazen attack on our country.

Now, I must admit that I did have my reservations about this project. It's within a five-minute walk of Ground Zero, ten if you get stopped at every crosswalk signal and you actually abide by them. The previous name for the project, Cordoba House, was criticized by a politico from Georgia, who said the name commemorated the forcible conversion of the Spanish city of Córdoba during the eighth century. But then I find out the inspiration for the project is a Jewish community center that's operated in Manhattan's Upper East Side since the 1920s, and that a mosque has operated in Lower Manhattan since before the twin towers opened forty years ago. And then there's the strip club advertising itself on hundreds of New York taxis, just one block behind the site.

Instead of figuring out a way to spin a baptism story out of my taking swimming lessons at the YMCA on Vivion Road as a kid, it occurred to me the dangerous precedent that could be set by my supposedly fellow Tenthers, were their vehement objections to a project in New York, waged from far-flung corners of the U.S., enough for a local decision to be overturned. Would they be keen to people from outside Alaska or Georgia telling them what their local bodies they can and can't zone? Would they be willing to cede to a federal government, one that they repeatedly call out of touch with the electorate and having too much power already, the right to determine what is appropriate to place 1000 feet away from a site of historical significance?

If (God, Allah and/or any other deity or deities forbid) a harrowing scar were to be delivered onto Kansas City or St. Louis, I would want anything proposed in its place, be it a memorial garden, Methodist chapel, mosque, Mormon temple, mega-screen complex, or museum where visitors can observe the anhydration of decorative mastic epoxies, to be debated on and decided by our local bodies, free from undue influence by political & publicity-craving forces who have no vested interest in our day-to-day lives. This has been, and should remain, a local decision. And as non-residents of that local jurisdiction, we must respect what has been done, lest we prepare ourselves for people from outside our communities to tell us what not to build in our own back yard.