Window to reality

If we have the courage to look, we can learn a great deal about ourselves and others during times of national crisis, particularly those times, such as now, when the danger gets personal. We are in a hard wind that is separating the wheat from the chaff. History is taking its measure of us as a nation and as individuals.

In the words of Thomas Paine, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” In the midst of danger, we have the opportunity to see people as they really are, defenses down, forced out into the open. We see people display a strength and character we never knew they had. We also see crass opportunism, hypocrisy and exploitation more clearly than ever before. We rethink. We change our minds.

On the positive side, I always believed President George W. Bush would be a good leader – I now know that the crisis in America tapped the greatness in him. He will lead us on a hard and dangerous journey to victory. He will advance the cause of America as “one nation, indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

On the negative side, there is no longer any doubt in my mind that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an anti-God organization, whose primary goal is the establishment of religious apartheid in America. All doubts evaporated when this hideous group of left-wing legal zealots demanded that Breen Elementary School in Rocklin, Calif., remove a message on a marquee in front of the school that said, “God Bless America.”

The ACLU declared that these three words were “a hurtful, divisive message.” This ideological assault on God and country tells all thinking Americans everything they need to know about this twisted organization. The names of the people who contribute to the ACLU should be revealed and widely broadcast.

I note that much of the pacifistic, America-last, multicultural, heathen drivel heard these days originates out of major universities. I would give this advice to parents whose children are ready for college: Never send your child to a college or university that does not have a large, centrally located chapel and an active Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).

Perhaps my greatest disappointment is this: In the war between good and evil, the liberal media have chosen to remain neutral. Reuters news service, for example, has issued a policy forbidding its reporters to use the word “terrorist” when describing those murderers who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. They are “alleged hijackers.”

The liberal advocacy group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) takes the position that showing the American flag is tantamount to taking sides. How unthinkable that American reporters would take sides between the Taliban and America!

Barbara Walters of ABC explained that her network does not want its people to wear a flag on their lapel because it “confuses people.” I must confess that I have always been confused by ABC, but it had nothing to do with the flag.

NBC’s top anchorman, Tom Brokaw, expressed the view that wearing a flag “is a sign of solidarity toward whatever the government is doing, and that is not our role.” How many of those Americans Brokaw praised as the “greatest generation” would agree that this is the flag of the government and not the flag of the American nation?

While considering the merits of a White House request to news networks to stop airing unedited videotapes from Osama bin Laden, Washington Post staff writer Howard Kurtz wrote, “You think about it. On the one hand you don’t want to hand the White House a propaganda victory by blacking out the other side.” One wonders if Kurtz would have fretted over the journalistic ethics of denying Hitler “equal time”?

CBS spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said that, as a matter of rule, “our people do not wear their hearts or their politics on their sleeves.”

This journalistic transcendentalism in search of absolute objectivity is either crass hypocrisy or a bad case of self-delusion. It is well-known that most TV journalists vote the straight Democrat ticket. A child would recognize their bias in favor of abortion, affirmative action, homosexuality, gun control, higher taxes, bigger government and an emasculated military.

We are in a war. We mourn thousands of innocent dead and send our soldiers into mortal combat – and yet, we wonder which side, if any, the liberal media is on. They see themselves, bare of any allegiances, floating ethereally above two morally equivalent nations. They give the impression they are reporters first and Americans second. It is difficult to believe they could bring themselves to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.