Forkum has a great blog this evening about the kidnapping of Ground Zero:
However, a new op-ed in today’s The Wall Street Journal in defense of the IFC’s approach to the memorial is more revealing. In A Fitting Place at Ground Zero, Richard J. Tofel throws around a lot of quotes from Bush to Lincoln about “freedom” as if the concept will be important to the memorial, but then he admits that it really won’t be:
To be sure, the International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you — and I — will disagree. But that is the point, the proof of our society’s enduring self-confidence and humanity. Moreover, the International Freedom Center will rise above the politics of the moment. It will not exist to precisely define “freedom” or to tell people what to think, but to get them to think — and to act in the service of freedom as they see it. And it will always do so in a manner respectful of the victims of September 11.
Keep in mind the context here: the “Guantanamo is a gulag” ACLU and other leftists groups are involved in the memorial. How can the memorial be “respectful of the victims of September 11” if, like the ACLU, we do not “precisely define ‘freedom'”? True political freedom is not a matter of opinion. After all, didn’t Mohammed Atta and his fellow Islamic mass murderers “act in the service of freedom as they [saw] it“? Didn’t they want the Islamic world to be “free” from Western culture and “globalization”? Isn’t that the very reason they chose to attack the capitalistic World Trade Center in the great New York City? Will views sympathetic to Atta’s “point of view” be allowed on the hallowed ground where thousand were slaughtered by him? Have they already?
If one iota of appeasing, multicultural, moral-equivalence, anti-freedom ideology is allowed to desecrate the 9/11 memorial, it will be a victory for the very monsters who brought down the towers. Ask yourself: would it prove our “self-confidence and humanity” if we rose “above the politics of the moment” and allowed Nazi-sympathizers to express “freedom as they see it” at Auschwitz, or even the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum? No, it would not. It would be an insult to the victims. And likewise we must not allow terrorist-sympathizers and apologists any platform at the WTC memorial.
In fact, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., should serve as a model for the WTC memorial, as a guiding principle on how to create a real tribute to the 9/11 victims that does not shy away from naming the enemy, its anti-freedom ideology, and telling the full, horrible story. It’s not a matter of scale but of content and presentation. Not only does the Holocaust Museum explain how and why Nazism came to power but also how and why the Nazis systematically murdered millions. It tells survivors’ stories and how the free state of Israel was born. It shows how life was reclaimed from a culture of death, destruction and tyranny. There are even television monitors — conscientiously shielded from children — that unblinkingly show the true horror committed against Jews and others.
This site must not be allowed to happen…
Email and write the following folks to let them know how you feel:
We all need to contact NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Then Gov. George Pataki.
Then President Bush.
Then Your Congressman.
Then Your Senator.
Also, make some comments here.
Please write a hard copy to the Govenor who has alot of say in this matter
Governor George E. Pataki
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224
Do It Now!
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