At best, the Democrats have been cowards. With the exception of Jerrold Nadler, the great (and normally voluble) liberals in the New York congressional delegation have kept their mouths shut. Harry Reid has actually come out against the mosque. We’re supposed to believe, we savvy, pragmatic liberals, that the Democrats fleeing the anti-Muslim stampede are mere opportunists, not actual bigots. I guess we’ll have to take their word for it. A few years back, you’ll remember, Democrats rushed to demagogue a company from Dubai that bought the rights to manage some American seaports. Evidently that was just opportunism too. In the end, it doesn’t much matter what it’s in your heart if you lack the backbone to express it. That was the rap against Democrats in the Clinton and Bush eras and evidently, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

So let’s stop sneering when Dick Morris comes on TV. The behavior of today’s Democratic pols must have made him proud. And it’s time for New Yorkers to stop talking haughtily about the prejudices of flyover country. According to Fox, 30 percent of Americans support building the mosque near Ground Zero. In New York City, according to Marist, it’s 34 percent. That, evidently, is the margin of blue state decency. Turns out that when push comes to shove, folks in the Big Apple are about as concerned about the rights of Muslims as folks in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Who says we’re a nation divided, that we can’t find common ground? Almost a decade later, we’ve finally done it: The memory of September 11 has brought us together again.