Every year, for one day, progressives maintain a lower profile than usual. It is a day when all the multi-culti mumbo-jumbo and morally relative rot gut sound completely out of place. It is a day when America confronts two realities utterly anathema to progressives everywhere: one, genuine evil exists; and two, in the war against Islamic terrorism, one must choose sides.
It is no secret that the further we get from the worst domestic attack this country has ever endured, the greater the effort has become to sanitize the events of that particular day. In Friday's New York Post there is a story about the 9/11 museum and its intention to display "gruesome, stomach-churning photos snapped minutes after the World Trade Center attacks." The Post calls the photos "controversial," noting that images including "desperate victims jumping to their death" from the upper window ledges of the burning buildings "have widely been considered taboo."
Widely considered taboo? Since when did the truth become taboo? When it stopped accruing to the interests of the Blame America For Everything crowd? No doubt it does get a bit harder to lecture one's fellow Americans about the evils of our foreign policy against a backdrop of some innocent person choosing to leap off a ledge eighty-plus stories above the ground to avoid being burned to death. In this case, a picture truly is worth a thousand words--especially when those words are aimed at meting out equal measures of blame to 19 Islamic savages determined to execute as many men, women and children as possible, and American "imperialism."
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the more “real” 9/11 becomes, the more Americans are forced to confront this catastrophe head on--absent the editing, the “expert” commentary, and the historical revisionism. And when that happens, the more this historical tragedy becomes an albatross around the necks of those who think all men are “reasonable” given sufficient amounts of “multicultural understanding.”
This is precisely why, in the last couple of years, progressives have endeavored to turn September 11th into a "National Day of Service and Remembrance." We were told that the purpose of such was to "rekindle the spirit of unity and compassion" that America experienced in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
Yet if unity and compassion need rekindling, it begs and obvious question: who "unkindled" that spirit?
It wasn't conservatives, independents, or middle America who tried to undermine wartime president George W. Bush right in the middle of two wars. It was Democratic Senator Harry Reid who declared the war in Iraq "lost." It was former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry who characterized our troops as "terrorists" or stupid enough to get "stuck in Iraq." It was yet another Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, who compared the treatment of captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to the victims of "Nazis, Soviet gulags and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge." All while American troops remained, and still remain, in harm's way.
Can anyone find a historical slogan such as "Roosevelt lied, people died" while America was in the midst of prosecuting WWll? How about a mainstream media more than willing to publicize top-secret strategies designed to protect Americans from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan? How about Hollywood putting out anti-war movie after anti-war movie while the bombs were still exploding and the bullets still flying across Europe and Asia?
Why is it that progressives would rather fight a culture war against their fellow Americans, than a real one against America's mortal enemies?
Because the latter requires one to choose sides against a real enemy instead of an imaginary one. The general scorn progressives harbor for Flyover Country Americans is virtually consequence-free. Challenging Islamic jihadists, on the other hand, has a genuine element of risk associated with it. Even as I write this, the feds are chasing down yet another "credible threat" involving the possibility that terrorists will attempt to detonate car bombs in New York and Washington, D.C.
Real bombs that make no distinction between progressive apologists and other Americans when they explode.
In California, they are holding a festival entitled "9/11 Reclaiming the Truth, Reclaiming our Future" in which a lineup of films and speakers will once again promote the idea that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by our own government. "We've had rallies every year," said Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance co-founder Carol Brouillet. "Nobody has the same idea of what happened, because it was big, complex, and no one has access to all the information," she contended. Ms. Brouillet believes the government knew the attacks were going to happen and allowed them in order to promote a shift in foreign policy.
Why would such people remain in a country with a government monstrous enough to allow the wholesale slaughter of its own citizens? Because their indignation is as phony as a three-dollar bill. After they finish swapping conspiracy theories, not one of them will be headed for "kinder, gentler" destinations such as Syria or Iran. That would take a genuine commitment to one's stated beliefs. Beliefs in perfect alignment with every America-hating jihadist thug across the planet.
America remains a divided nation on many fronts. That is not necessarily a bad thing in a vibrant democracy. Yet for all but the terminally confused and the morally bankrupt, the war against Islamic radicalism, much like WWll, has produced two easily definable sides. On one, there are those who believe in individual rights, freedom of religion and representative government. On the other, those who believe in oppression, subservience to theological tyranny, and inferior status for women and non-believers. And despite all the intellectually elitist double-talk and hand-wringing, there is no middle ground.
Never forget what REALLY happened on September 11th, 2001, my fellow Americans–no matter how hard anyone tries to spin it.
