It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious, so it is not surprising that the intelligentsia are out in force, decrying those who criticize this calculated insult.

What may surprise some people is that the American taxpayer is currently financing a trip to the Middle East by the imam who is pushing this project, so that he can raise the money to build it. The State Department is subsidizing his travel.

The big talking point is that this is an issue about “religious freedom” and that Muslims have a “right” to build a mosque where they choose. But those who oppose this project are not claiming that there is no legal right to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center.

If anybody did, it would be a matter for the courts to decide — and they would undoubtedly say that it is not illegal to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center attack.

The intelligentsia and others who are wrapping themselves in the Constitution are fighting a phony war against a straw man. Why create a false issue, except to evade the real issue?

Our betters are telling us that we need to be more “tolerant” and more “sensitive” to the feelings of Muslims. But if we are supposed to be sensitive to Muslims, why are Muslims not supposed to be sensitive to the feelings of millions of Americans, for whom 9/11 was the biggest national trauma since Pearl Harbor?

It would not be illegal for Japanese Americans to build a massive shinto shrine next to Pearl Harbor. But, in all these years, they have never sought to do it.

When Catholic authorities in Poland were planning to build an institution for nuns, years ago, and someone pointed out that it would be near the site of a concentration camp that carried out genocide, the Pope intervened to stop it.

He didn’t say that the Catholic Church had a legal right to build there, as it undoubtedly did. Instead, he respected the painful feelings of other people. And he certainly did not denounce those who called attention to the concentration camp.

There is no question that Muslims have a right to build a mosque where they chose to. The real question is why they chose that particular location, in a country that covers more than 3 million square miles.

If we all did everything that we have a legal right to do, we could not even survive as individuals, much less as a society. So the question is whether those who are planning a Ground Zero mosque want to be part of American society or just to see how much they can get away with in American society?

Can anyone in his right mind believe that this was intended to show solidarity with Americans, rather than solidarity with those who attacked America? Does anyone imagine that the Middle East nations, including Iran, from whom financial contributions will be solicited, want to promote reconciliation between Americans and Muslims?

That the President of the United States has joined the chorus of those calling the Ground Zero mosque a religious freedom issue tells us a lot about the moral dry rot that is undermining this country from within.

In this, as in other things, Barack Obama is not so much the cause of our decline but the culmination of it. He had many predecessors and many contemporaries who represent the same mindset and the same malaise.

There are people for whom moral preening has become a way of life. They are out in force denouncing critics of the Ground Zero mosque.

There are others for whom a citizen of the world affectation puts them one-up on those of us who are grateful to be Americans, and to enjoy a freedom that is all too rare in other countries around the world, even at this late date in human history.

They think the United States is somehow on trial, and needs to prove itself to others by bending over backwards. But bending over backwards does not win friends. It loses respect, including self-respect.

Faith is often defined as having confidence or trust in a person or thing. In this case, though, faith means adding another $35 billion in unemployment benefits to the infinite intergenerational tab — sometimes referred to as the budget — and mailing out as many checks as possible before Election Day.

Yet, the jab is revealing in other ways. To begin with, what mysterious brand of public policy has Obama employed that exemplifies this sacred trust between public officials and the common citizen?

Was it the administration’s faith in the wisdom of the American parent that persuaded it to shut down the voucher program in Washington, D.C., and continue the left’s decades- long campaign denying school choice for kids and parents? Or was that just faith in public-sector unions?

Was faith in American industry behind the Democrats’ support of a stimulus bill that was almost entirely predicated on preserving swollen government spending at the expense of private-sector growth?

Is this hallowed faith in the citizenry also what compels the administration to dictate what kind of car we will be driving in the future, what kind of energy we will be filling these “cars” with and what amounts of that energy will be acceptable?

Is faith in American know-how why Washington funnels billions of tax dollars each year to its handpicked industry favorites rather than allowing the best and brightest to — please pardon the pun — organically figure out what the most sensible energy policy is, as we have in every other sector?

It must be that deep confidence in conscientious Americans that persuades the left to fight against the rights of gun owners who most often want nothing more than to defend life and property.

The same faith in Americans surely precipitates the administration’s defense of censorship (even book banning) to ensure that the citizenry is protected from the despicable reach of political ads funded by corporations. People, you see, are too gullible and too uninformed to withstand the force of Fox News — much less Wal-Mart.

Similarly, that faith has led to the 20-year explosion of paternalistic regulations (often with the help of Republicans) that propose to regulate everything from the size of candy to tanning salons to fast-food restaurants to the pressure in your showerhead. A faith that the American citizen has the self-control of a deprived toddler.

It was faith in the American people that led to health-care legislation that denies you the right to buy insurance outside of state lines, or to have any useful portability, or even enjoy the same tax break that corporations are afforded. The left has so much faith in Americans that it has to force you to purchase a government-approved plan.

One only needs to propose the idea that citizens be allowed to allocate a portion of their Social Security retirement funds — extracted from their paychecks and deposited in a faith-based government account — to witness the level of faith many on the left have in your decision-making abilities.

Republicans may not have faith in the American people, but in this instance, Obama is probably confusing faith in people with faith in power. Because as hard as one tries, it is difficult to find any instances of choices expanding under this administration. That’s the true test of confidence in the citizenry.

Then again, progressives regard government as a moral enterprise. And in church, you gotta have faith.

In America we stand for equality. But for the large majority of us, this means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

If you are like most Americans, you believe we all should start at more or less the same place with more or less the same opportunities to succeed in life. But you also believe that, within reason, it’s perfectly all right if we end up in different places.

If you are in the 70 percent majority, you believe that everyone should get a chance to succeed. Or everyone should fail on his or her own merits. If this leads to income inequality — above some acceptable floor — so be it.

The intellectual and political leaders of the 30 percent coalition disagree. They prefer a world in which we all end up in roughly the same economic place regardless of our abilities and efforts.

This fundamental difference in worldview leads to a major disagreement about the role of government. The majority believes government should protect the returns for hard work and merit. The 30 percent coalition effectively wants the government to penalize success. This is America’s culture war in a nutshell.

The definition of fairness for those in the 30 percent coalition, fundamentally at odds with the worldview of the 70 percent majority, is a huge liability for them. They have concealed the central pillar of their ideology — income inequality — under a misleading definition of fairness.

They say one thing but mean another. The 70 percent majority needs to expose this fact and reclaim the language of fairness for the free enterprise system.

The 30 percent coalition is clever when it comes to redistribution. It would have you believe that income inequality is equivalent to equality in other areas, such as law or politics or religion. And because America, the world’s first modern democracy, was founded on the principle of equality, its rhetoric can seem highly compelling if you don’t think too deeply about it.

Legal equality, political equality, religious equality — almost all Americans would agree that these values are vital to our nation. But equality of income? That’s a fundamentally different kind of equality.

We can all agree that everyone has an equal right to a fair trial, but we certainly don’t all agree that everyone has a right to receive a verdict of “innocent.” Only the innocent people deserve that.

Likewise, without our political system, we believe everyone has the right to vote, but we don’t believe everyone has the right to see his or her chosen candidate elected to office.

This is what makes the 30 percent coalition’s reliance on the rhetoric of “fairness” so duplicitous. It implies that equality of outcome is a core American principle, when in fact what Americans believe in is equality of opportunity and the potential to earn success.

It is easy to be intimidated by the rhetoric of “fairness.” Nobody wants to sound anti-poor. It is no surprise, therefore, that many in the 70 percent majority have chosen just to cede to the 30 percent coalition the fairness issue and content themselves with making the case for economic efficiency.

Proponents of free enterprise must not make this mistake. Fairness should not be a 30 percent trump card but rather its Achilles’ heel. Equality of income is not fair. It is distinctly unfair.

If you work harder than a coworker but are paid the same, that is unfair. If you save your money but still retire with the same pension as your spendthrift neighbor, that is unfair. And if you stay in your house and make the mortgage payments even when its value drops but your neighbor walks away without recourse, that is unfair.

People who remember the old comic strip “Peanuts” will recall an often repeated situation where Lucy offers to hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick. Then, as Charlie comes running up to kick it, Lucy snatches away the ball and Charlie Brown loses his balance and goes crashing on his backside.

The reason this same scene remained funny, despite how often it was repeated, is that in the later repetitions Charlie Brown would express suspicion at Lucy, recalling how she had tricked him before. She would then come up with some claim that she wasn’t going to do that any more— and of course she did.

There is a similar routine that has been repeated many times in Washington, over the years, with the Democrats playing Lucy and Republicans playing Charlie Brown.

It goes like this: Democrats start spending money wildly, handing out goodies to a wide range of people who they want to vote for them, while Republicans complain about deficits and the national debt. Then, when the public becomes alarmed about the debts that are piling up, the Democrats get the Republicans to vote for higher taxes to deal with the debt crisis, in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

Sometimes the deal is sweetened by the Democrats promising to make spending cuts if the Republicans vote for higher taxes, so that there can be one of those “bipartisan” solutions so beloved by the media. But, after the Republicans vote for the tax increases, and come running up to find the spending cuts, the Democrats snatch away the spending cuts and the Republicans fall right on their backsides, just like Charlie Brown.

This old trick is now being unveiled by the Obama administration, like so many other old political tricks used in this “change” administration.

In one of President Obama’s many prissy little sermonettes, complete with finger wagging, he has declared: “Next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits step up. Because I’m calling their bluff.”

There is already a bipartisan commission set to provide political cover for the Democrats’ wild spending that has increased the national debt from 63 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product in 2004 to 83 percent in 2009— and official estimates of more than 90 percent this year, with more increases in sight.

Why Republicans join such transparent attempts to rescue the Democrats from the political consequences of their own actions is one of the many unsolved mysteries of human nature in general and the Republican Party in particular.

What this political game boils down to is that Democrats get all the political benefits of playing Santa Claus to all sorts of groups and special interests, while Republicans who vote to raise taxes to pay for all this are cast in the role of Frank Nitti, the enforcer for the mob.

Many elections have confirmed that Santa Claus is more popular than Frank Nitti, surprising as that may be to some people.

Republicans are not the only suckers in this game.

The voting public’s willingness to believe fancy rhetoric and ignore hard facts is a crucial part of this scam.

When the Obama administration said that it could provide health insurance to millions of additional people without increasing the national debt, shouldn’t common sense have told you that somebody was just insulting your intelligence?

When the two thousand page bill was rushed through Congress too fast for anybody to read it, shouldn’t that have made you realize that you were being played for a sucker?

When this bill that was passed with lightning speed was scheduled to take effect only after the 2012 election, didn’t that suggest that they didn’t want you to find out how it works in practice in time to turn against Obama when he is up for reelection?

Recent polls show that a lot of people are against ObamaCare. But there are still a lot of other people, though not as many, who are for it.

Even more amazingly, there are still Republicans lured by the siren song of “bipartisanship” and apparently unaware of the difference in popularity between Santa Claus and Frank Nitti.

The legal case against the Arizona immigration law is unassailable. The Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union argue that the law impermissibly “conflicts with federal law and enforcement priorities,” in the words of the ACLU suit.

And who can disagree? Clearly, Arizona’s priority is to enforce the nation’s immigration laws; the federal government’s priority is to ignore them as much as possible. Case closed.

President Obama last week warned ominously of a “patchwork” of immigration laws arising as “states and localities go their own ways.” Sanctuary cities acting in open defiance of immigration laws have never notably been the object of his wrath. (Who’s to judge the good-hearted people of Berkeley?) There’s only one part of the dismaying patchwork that stirs Obama’s Cabinet to outrage and his attorney general to legal action — Arizona’s commitment to enforcement.

The legal fight between the federal government and Arizona will be a case of dueling insincere arguments. The federal government will pretend that it objects to Arizona supposedly creating a wholly new scheme of immigration regulation, when its real problem is that the state wants to take existing law too seriously.

Arizona will pretend that it is acting in keeping with long-standing federal intent, when its law never would have been necessary if the feds intended to enforce their own statutes.

The case against Arizona rests on “pre-emption,” the notion that federal law “occupies the field” on immigration and prevents states from passing their own regulations.

Arizona has been here before. Pro-immigration groups sued over its workplace-enforcement law passed in 2007. All the same arguments were mustered about federal pre-emption. The federal courts rejected them because the state law so closely tracked the federal law and didn’t contradict its stated purpose.

The drafters of the new law attempted to meet these same standards by directly drawing on federal statutes for its definition of immigration offenses. The courts have long upheld the right of states to make arrests for violations of federal immigration law, and the Supreme Court in a 1976 decision said federal immigration law didn’t intend “to preclude even harmonious state regulation.” Regardless, the courts will now decide.

The Obama administration hasn’t always been such a stickler for national uniformity. Last year, it reversed Bush policy and stopped prosecuting violations of federal marijuana law by users and suppliers of medical marijuana in states that have legalized it. The upshot is that the direct violation of federal drug laws is acceptable at the state level, whereas the direct enforcement of federal immigration laws at the state level is not.

The animus toward Arizona is nakedly political. Obama, the former hopemonger, has become a movable feast of cynicism. He promised that he’d move comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office. This became known as la promesa de Obama in the Latino community — and it suffered the same ignominious fate as his pledges to enact a net-spending cut and comb through the federal budget line by line. La decepción de Obama.

According to Gallup, Obama’s approval rating has held steady this year among whites (41 percent) and blacks (91 percent). But it has dropped from 69 percent to 57 percent among Latinos. On cue, Obama gave an immigration speech touting comprehensive reform even though there’s no legislative path forward, and his attorney general sued Arizona.

So the battle is joined, with the federal government making the plea: Please, whatever you do, let our immigration laws molder on the books.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty guideline was $22,000 for an urban four-person family. In 2009, having income less than that, 15 percent or 40 million Americans were classified as poor, but there’s something unique about those “poor” people not seen anywhere else in the world. Robert Rector, researcher at the Heritage Foundation, presents data collected from several government sources in a report titled “How Poor Are America’s Poor? Examining the ‘Plague’ of Poverty in America” (8/27/2007):

• Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.
• Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
• The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
• Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
• Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
• Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
• Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

What’s defined as poverty is misleading in another way. Official poverty measures count just family’s cash income. It ignores additional sources of support such as the earned-income tax credit, which is a cash rebate to low-income workers; it ignores Medicaid, housing allowances, food stamps and other federal and local government subsidies to the poor. According to a report by American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt, titled “Poor Statistics,” “In 2006, according to the annual Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, reported purchases by the poorest fifth of American households were more than twice as high as reported incomes.” That additional money might represent earnings from unreported employment, illegal activities and unreported financial assistance. A proper measure of well-being is what a person consumes rather than his income. A huge gap has emerged between income and consumption at lower income levels.

Material poverty can be measured relatively or absolutely. An absolute measure would consist of some minimum quantity of goods and services deemed adequate for a baseline level of survival. Achieving that level means that poverty has been eliminated. However, if poverty is defined as, say, the lowest one-fifth of the income distribution, it is impossible to eliminate poverty. Everyone’s income could double, triple and quadruple, but there will always be the lowest one-fifth.

Yesterday’s material poverty is all but gone. In all too many cases, it has been replaced by a more debilitating kind of poverty behavioral poverty or poverty of the spirit. This kind of poverty refers to conduct and values that prevent the development of healthy families, work ethic and self-sufficiency. The absence of these values virtually guarantees pathological lifestyles that include: drug and alcohol addiction, crime, violence, incarceration, illegitimacy, single-parent households, dependency and erosion of work ethic. Poverty of the spirit is a direct result of the perverse incentives created by some of our efforts to address material poverty.