Opinion: A Failure of Government? 9/11 Hijacked by 'Tolerance', Political Correctness

This double standard is not new

This year the ninth anniversary of 9/11 was hijacked by the liberal ideologues of tolerance. On this solemn day, I would expect our president to go to the site where the sword was plunged the deepest, so that he could help heal our wound. Instead, he used this day to assuage Muslim feelings while he lectured America about tolerance.

P>KNOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - Nine years ago four passenger jets were hijacked and used as weapons to attack us on American soil. All on board the jets were killed along with thousands of others at the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia. Thanks to the heroism of those on United's Flight 93, the fourth plane failed to reach its intended target and crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania. This year the ninth anniversary of 9/11 was hijacked by the liberal ideologues of tolerance.

I believe the anniversary was hijacked because it was overshadowed, in part, by the news about Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who vowed to burn two hundred copies of the Koran, by some reports. Liberal ideologues told us that Jones was intolerant, and that he would endanger our troops and increase the chance for violence in the world if he burned the Koran. However, that is not what I observed.

Before I go further, I want to make my position clear. I do not approve of  Terry Jones' vow to burn the Koran. It is offensive. But based on what I have observed, it seems to me that the accusations against Jones were grossly exaggerated, and that some contemporary liberals are the ones who are intolerant, endangered our troops and are responsible, at least partly, for the ensuing violence. In this article I am simply trying to put my observations into perspective.

The first thing that I observed was the exaggerated language that the liberals were using. For instance, take Barbara Nelson, Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA School of Public Affairs. In an article for the Huffington Post, she described Mr. Jones and his vow to burn the Koran in the following ways: "an act of . . . breathtaking disregard for the norms of decent behavior. . . ; gross violence and recklessness; hateful threats; a repellent provocation; vile rhetoric; lies; bigot; a disgusting stunt; and act of religious hatred." Possibly the only language she left out of her article that others included in their articles was "Islamophobe" and "international villain."

My second observation was that while the liberal ideologues of tolerance were outraged over Terry Jones, I do not recall any instances where they were outraged over real intolerance and hatred, that is, threats and violence against Christians by some Muslims. Many examples were reported in the news. I have listed a few.

According to police, several threats were made toward Terry Jones and other church members. In Kabul, Afghan, protesters shouted "Death to America" and "Death to the Christians." In Jakarta, Indonesia, a Christian worshipper was stabbed in the stomach and a minister was beaten in the head with a wooden plank. In Kashmir, protesters set fire to a Christian missionary school. Through it all, the liberal ideologues of tolerance were silent.

This double standard is not new. For example, how many of us have heard about the Iranian government burning hundreds of Bibles this past summer; or the desecration of St. Paul's Church in a Pakistani village about a week before Christmas in 2008? In this second example, it was reported that the Bible was burned and Christians were threatened to convert to Islam. Then in 2007, a Catholic school and convent in the Gaza strip were ransacked, burned and looted. Rocket-propelled grenades were used to blow off the doors to the church and school. Bibles were burned and crucifixes were destroyed.

This same double standard has existed in our own country for many years. Two high profile examples come to mind, though there are many others. In 1987, Andres Serrano photographed a crucifix in a jar of his urine. He entered it in an art competition and received $15,000 in prize money. Then in 1999, a painting by Chris Ofili titled The Holy Virgin Mary was displayed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York City. It is a picture of an African Mary surrounded by pornographic images of female genitalia and actual elephant dung.

Perhaps we can now see the true nature of this double standard for what it is, intolerance or "Christophobia," and it is getting worse. In 2006, Massachusetts state law forced Catholic Charities of Boston to shut down unless it agreed to place children with homosexuals. In 2009, the state of Connecticut tried to take control of Church property. The preceding year Paul Myers, an atheist and biology professor at the University of Minnesota, drove a rusty nail through a consecrated host. Liberals did not voice any outrage. Apparently they did not think this terrible sacrilege equaled the burning of a Koran.

Besides their ridiculous and hypocritical accusations against Jones, the liberal ideologues of tolerance also said that Jones would endanger our troops and cause increased violence throughout the world if he burned the Koran. While this seems true, I suspect that it is true mainly because liberal and Muslim agitators pounced on this story and blew it out of proportion. They, not Jones,  manufactured a world-wide drama.

Some of our leaders also participated in this hysterical drama. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, actually called Jones to convince him not to do it. Senator Hilary Clinton and even President Obama publicly denounced Jones. A private citizen burning the Koran, although inappropriate and offensive, does not rise to the level of the Secretary of Defense, a senator and the President's intervention.

Furthermore, during the Bush administration, liberals routinely endangered our troops and caused violence in the world. I have noted some examples. For instance, just before the first free elections in Iraq for over fifty years, Senator Charles Schumer predicted that the newly elected government would fail because it was being imposed on the Iraqi people. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that the war was lost, and he basically called our Commanding General in Iraq a liar. And during the Democrat presidential primaries, then Senator Barrack Obama said America was "air-raiding villages and killing civilians."

Then there was the stink about torture at Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad and abuse at Guantanamo Bay located in Cuba. While some of these accusations were true, most of them appear to have been exaggerated or pure fiction. For instance, Senator Dick Durbin compared the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to the Nazis, Soviet gulags and Pol Pot's Cambodia. This media circus enraged many Muslims, and Arabic newspapers predicted revenge. The torture and beheading of Nick Berg, a civilian, was one act of revenge that we know of.

American soldiers were also falsely accused of atrocities by liberals, and I am certain it continues to this day. I can recall examples that go back to 2004, but I will only mention the most recent one. The most recent example occurred in 2009 when Navy Seals captured Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected leader of the gruesome murder of four Americans in Fallujah. After the Seals turned the prisoner over to the Iraqis, he told the Iraqis that the Seals punched him. Based on reports, the only hard evidence was a bloody lip. They risked their lives; their mission was successful; and they were charged with abuse. These brave men were supposedly sacrificed because of the hysteria over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Of course, there is more to our nation's defense strategy than just undermining our military and intimidating our soldiers. The Obama administration has injected neutral language into our official defense strategy. For instance, the "Quadrennial Homeland Security Review" and the "Quadrennial Defense Review," both congressionally mandated documents, apparently do not use the words "Islam," "Islamic" or "Islamist." Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, refers to terrorism as "man-caused disasters."

Now, lets fast forward to the ninth anniversary of 9/11. I would think that our president would be at Ground Zero on this solemn day. So where was Obama? He chose to be at the Pentagon site. There is nothing wrong with going to the Pentagon, but I would expect our president to go to the site where the sword was plunged the deepest, so that he could help heal our wound. Instead, he used this day to assuage Muslim feelings. But America felt the absence of its leader.

Obama also used this day to lecture America about tolerance. He called September 11th "an excellent time" for the country to reflect on the millions of Muslims who are American citizens and that Islam was not the enemy. There is nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but this day did not belong to Muslims. It was not about them. It was about our dead, our pain and our healing. What President Obama said was insensitive and disrespectful.

All of these examples give us insight into the liberal idea of tolerance. What liberals call tolerance is taken directly from the writings of a 1960's neo-Marxist philosopher, Herbert Marcuse. He wrote that "genuine tolerance" required discrimination. In his 1965 essay titled "Repressive Tolerance," he wrote, "Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left." He also advocated restrictions on freedom of speech and assembly for those who opposed his Marxist views.

If we want a true and more humane understanding of tolerance, we only need to look at the Catholic Church. "Catholic" means universal. From the very beginning we observe Jesus associating with sinners, women and Samaritans. Good Jews did not do such things, but Jesus did. He brought a cultural revolution, and it included all people from both sexes and from every race, time and place.

If we want a visual example of what tolerance looks like, we can look at a list of Catholic saints. They are from all over the world. We can even see this when we look at the most elite list of saints, the Doctor's of the Church. There are only thirty-three. Some of them are from the Middle East and North Africa, and lived there long before Mohamed conquered these lands. Some of them are dark skinned. And three of them are women. The saints are proof that the Church has lived out the true meaning of tolerance since its inception.

Based on the observations that I have mentioned, I believe that our government no longer represents the majority of citizens in this country. In a certain sense, then, the hijacking of the ninth anniversary of 9/11 may be a good thing, because it reminds us of something that Pope Benedict said in his first encyclical, God Is Love. He said that the laity are to participate in the political process to the extent that they are able. This November we will get our chance to participate in that process and elect representatives who will represent us rather than discriminate against us.

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Michael Terheyden was born into a Catholic family, but that is not why he is a Catholic. He is a Catholic because he believes that truth is real, that it is beautiful and good, and that the fullness of truth is in the Catholic Church. However, he knows that God's grace operating throughout his life is the main reason he is a Catholic. He is greatly blessed to share his faith and his life with his beautiful wife, Dorothy. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.

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