In Canto V of Dante?s Divine Comedy, the traveler, entering the Inferno, meets the ghost of Francesca De Rimini who tells him that: ? there is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.? Those words should resonate for Americans today. Twelve months after a devastating attack on the country?s largest city, an economic meltdown, accounting scandals that have shaken the foundations of the American economy and an inconclusive war in Central Asia, the American people certainly do have reason to remember happier times.
But Americans have passed through such periods of grief before and the record reveals that mourning, if unchecked, can rapidly transform into a vulgar industry of its own. No one needs prophetic vision to predict that we will soon be deluged with September 11 eulogies. Such portentous phrases as ? dividing line in history,? ? the loss of innocence,? ?historical cataclysm? and ? this generation?s Pearl Harbor ? will doubtlessly be scrambling for attention on your computer screen, proving that the memory of 9/11 has already begun its fade into vapid clich?.
That is not to deny the legitimacy of those pronouncements. They are all accurate. September 11, 2001 is a historical milestone that will largely shape the future of the United States. But protest should be voiced with the current obsession for remembering the day only for its victims, as if it was a natural disaster, while neglecting entirely who the killers were and the reasons for their unprovoked assault. Television documentaries, talk shows, news programs and radio hosts have ably highlighted the harrowing individual tragedies of the day. Politicians regale us with lessons to be learned from the attacks. But few major artists, news commentators, talk show hosts or authors have had the courage to publicly castigate the radical Islamic forces who destroyed so many innocent lives or called to account Muslim American leaders whose reaction has been nothing if not muted.
If there is a predominant feature of American life, it is the unwillingness to challenge the liberal orthodoxy of cultural relativism. Testing a minority to live up to its professed humanitarianism or assigning responsibility to a group for a criminal act is, according to current mores, beyond the pale of acceptability. But the failure to acknowledge the source of the September 11 atrocities and the added fact of their hidden support in this country by many ordinary Muslims is turning such political correctness into an obscene self-parody.
The examples abound: A fired Muslim professor at a South Florida university with proven fund raising ties to Muslim extremists wins the unified support of academia for his reinstatement. A cultural icon such as Bruce Springsteen dedicates an entire album to the events of September 11, but has not one word to say either on record or in interview about the hatred and intolerance that caused them. Colorado College President Richard Celeste?s invites to Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi as a keynote speaker at a conference commemorating September 11 - seemingly oblivious to the fact that Palestinians danced in the street on the day of the attacks.
An equally persistent problem resides in our education system. The National Education Association lesson plan on addressing the events of 9/11 urges teachers to ? address the issue of blame factually? but hedges when it adds ? blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault. In this country all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from the legal authorities proves otherwise.? It seems a standard trope of liberal philosophy that no one is EVER truly guilty because mitigating circumstances can always be found to upgrade the judgment. In a later section, while urging its teachers to discuss historical instances of American intolerance, the NEA?s suggested curriculum has no recommendation about how to address Muslim intolerance or how to show that the events of September 11 were precipitated by an annihilationist philosophy that targets innocent men, women and children.
Any commemoration of last years? terrible events must therefore involve not only a remembrance of the dead but also the concomitant denunciation of militant Islam. It demands that moderate American Muslim clerics stand in their mosques and on public platforms throughout the country denouncing radical Islam and painting it as a scourge. And in the name of the thousands who perished, we must stop making excuses for American citizens ? including academics, pundits and radical black political leaders, who trade in conspiracy theories about CIA or Mossad complicity in the events of that day. They are abusing the privileges of democracy.
At the conclusion of the first part of the Divine Comedy, the traveler emerges from the Inferno to remark, in a burst of enthusiasm and relief ? Then we emerged to see the stars again.? If the stars above the American sky are ever to seem bright again, we should all understand and recognize that there is evil awaiting the next opportunity to destroy innocent human life. Calling terror for what it is and the terrorists for who they are is the first step on the road to our psychological recovery.
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Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies and the senior editorial columnist for Jewsweek.com