This political correctness is national suicide

Well said.

FROM THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER.COM:

This political correctness is national suicide

When we're at war with an ideology, it's absurd to avoid profiling
JOHN LANE
Special to the Observer
In 1942, my father left for North Africa and we moved from our home on Fort Bragg to Charleston. Although I was just a kid, I vividly remember the effect World War II had on our lives.
Gasoline was not expensive but was rationed, as were sugar and most other commodities. Families were issued books of coupons that had to be presented, along with money, to buy most items. Automobile tires were difficult to obtain, and many other things that we had taken for granted were consumed by the war effort.
People were inconvenienced at best, subjected to hardships at worst, but the entire country was united behind our military and leaders. There were no "war protesters" on college campuses, the newspapers were not filled with sympathy for the enemy or with condemnation of the actions of our fighting men and women.
There were no citizens spouting insults at our president or lawyers suing our government over the alleged mistreatment of prisoners of war. In short, treason was easily recognized and hardly tolerated. Once again the great American experiment, the idea that freedom of the individual is the path to all good things, is under assault. The danger doesn't come from those lunatics of the left who seek to blame President Bush and/or Israel for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; nor does it come from the incoherent ramblings of a certain pickled U.S. senator or from any of his colleagues.
Enemy not called by name
We are at war with an enemy who has vowed to cut the heads off our children, who mounts cowardly attacks against the defenseless, who has infiltrated our culture -- and yet some of the presidential candidates refuse to call that enemy by name!Our enemy is busy training children as young as 7 to handle automatic weapons while in this nation we suspend from school 7-year-olds who so much as draw a picture of a gun.
This enemy lacks the courage to put uniformed soldiers on the field of battle but chooses instead to use civilians to blow up other civilians. Furthermore, our national media, led by the Associated Press, call these people "insurgents" or "militants" instead of labeling them the terrorist cowards that they are.
We are at war with an ideology, not a country. This ideology personifies evil, and yet we have national "leaders" who tell us that we must be inclusive in our institutions and avoid offending our enemies at all cost.
Some church leaders are busy preaching that all religions are equal and that it is wrong to teach or even to believe that one religion is right and others are wrong. We must, after all, avoid making those who don't believe as we do upset with us!
Have the news media forgotten that it was a Muslim bent on jihad who deliberately drove a 6,000-pound vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians in Chapel Hill?
Does anybody remember the terror in the Washington area in October 2002? A mystery sniper shot 13 people; 10 died and three were critically wounded. Police arrested 42-year-old John Allen Williams, also known as John Allen Muhammad, and his 17-year-old stepson, John Lee Malvo. Prior to the random attacks, Williams openly advocated jihad and praised the hijackers who flew airliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. How quickly we forget!
Stand up to PC
Security personnel at our airports practically strip-search 80-year-old grandmothers and embarrass 15-year-old girls but ignore the person who actually meets the profile of a hijacker. Yes, I said "profile." This is not a bad word, and profiling is not a bad action; it is simply good police work to act on clues and pay attention to the likely suspects.
The threat we face is not from the free exchange of ideas, even ideas that lack logic or wisdom. The threat comes from "political correctness." The threat comes from the suppression of ideas, the managing of the news and the manipulation of facts to suit a particular agenda.
If we are to survive as a free nation, a country where people believe in and abide by the uniqueness of an individual with inalienable rights, we must abandon the flirtation with political correctness and return to the concept of "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
We must have the courage to say that merely changing the name of a wrong does not make it a right.
John Lane

Observer community columnist John Lane of Charlotte is a security expert who has worked as a police officer and private investigator. Write him c/o The Observer, P.O. Box 30308, Charlotte, NC 28230-0308, or at M1H3L@juno.co