Mayor Rocky Anderson is a leader. He is the kind of leader who stands before his troops, shouts "Follow me!" then leads the charge into the fray. It is a role he played with the ACLU. It is a role he has resurrected as the mayor of Salt Lake City.

Unfortunately, that is not the kind of leadership called for in the subtle and often bedeviling politics of Utah.

Memo to the mayor: Salt Lake City is not Managua — with the resistance standing up to establishment thugs. Salt Lakers are decent people with differing concerns. What's needed is consensus, not conflict.

The mayor's most recent rallying cry for true believers is a list of "Seven Freedoms." The phrase, or course, immediately calls to mind Norman Rockwell's series of paintings, "The Four Freedoms." Rockwell's freedoms were the grand hallmarks of American liberty. The mayor's freedoms include the freedom to dance after 2 a.m., and the freedom to have easier access to alcohol.

With soldiers dying in foreign battlegrounds, and given the legacy of America, even the mayor's most ardent followers must wince at the irony. The Anderson freedoms cry out for caricature — a cartoon of the mayor, perhaps, perched on a fiery steed with a raised sword in one hand and a dry martini in the other.

The ramifications of the mayor's battle cry, however, are not quite so jolly. His single-minded pursuit of an aggressive social agenda has now forced the hand of others who would rather have a conversation than cross sabers. Members of the LDS Church are not unreasonable people. They know others inhabit the city and state who have different views of the world and varying notions of what is and is not appropriate. Coalitions can be formed. Common ground can be found. But one would have to be guilty of willful ignorance to believe a frontal assault will soften the position of legislators and other leaders.

The mayor has simply heightened the rhetoric.

The LDS Church now owns much of downtown north of 100 South as well as the Triad Center. If the church feels that Temple Square is threatened, it will do what it must to protect it.

And that leads to the most disheartening cartoon of all. A drawing — a New Yorker-style cover — showing Main Street. South of 100 South are the rock bands, pubs and the early morning mambo kings. To the north is a quiet village with families strolling in the twilight.

In the drawing, they have gathered along 100 South to stare each other down.

The image prompts a smile at first. Then a sigh.

It didn't have to be this way.