Was there ever a better illustration of the rank hypocrisy of the Republican Party than this: they are building a monument to “freedom”– upon which they lavish their tearful adoration– that will exclude anybody they don’t like.
The museum, the “International Freedom Centre”, is out of the new World Trade Center. Gone. Excluded. Rejected. Dismissed. Because in spite of the efforts of “patriotic” Americans like George Bush, because it was being built in a tax-payer funded government owned building, it would and could not guarantee that it would only ever pander to and praise those patriotic values espoused by the paragons of virtue, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and his fellow Republicans.
The law is clear: it would have to actually allow for freedom of speech.
Yes, Governor Pataki put the fix in, not only for the museum, but for every occupant of the new building, who must now pass a litmus test of political Republican orthodoxy before being allowed in. Naturally, some of the tenants have declined to give enlightened people like Bill Frist or Donald Rumsveld a veto over what sort of speech should be permitted there. The Republicans, you see, identify mindless obedient conformity with true “patriotism”.
A patriot does not stand for freedom of speech.
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles, a pilot of one of the 9/11 planes, had screeched that she must be the one who decides what may or may not go into the new World Trade Centre because anyone who disagrees with her shrill views on the meaning of 9/11 just isn’t American like her, even if they too lost relatives in 9/11.
This is so ridiculous, and repulsive, and absurd that it strains credulity, as they say. The monument to American freedom must be unfree, and cowards who cannot abide the slightest dissidence must control the design of a monument to courage, and puritanical Republican harpies must control the expression of democracy.
Don’t let conservatives bullshit you: this is real political correctness.
Here is what Debra Burlingame and Governor Pataki and Anne Coulter would deny you: freedom to consider both sides of the issue– a link to a website with eloquent discussion of the issue.