The biggest impediment to source analysis – to a greater likelihood of connecting the dots – is the human or systemic resistance to sharing information. The U.S. government has access to a vast amount of information. When databases not usually thought of as “intelligence,” such as customs or immigration information, are included, the storehouse is immense. But the U.S. government has a weak system for processing and using what it has.
… information is available, and someone [must ask for it]… [yet currently] it cannot be shared … a demonstrated “need to know” [must exist] before sharing. This approach assumes it is possible to know, in advance, who will need to use the information. Such a system implicitly assumes that the risk of inadvertent disclosure outweighs the benefits of wider sharing. Those Cold War assumptions are no longer appropriate. The culture of agencies feeling they own the information they gathered at taxpayer expense must be replaced by a culture in which the agencies instead feel they have a duty to share the information – to repay the taxpayers’ investment by making that information available.
--- 9/11 Commission Report
Among the several recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission in its report almost a dozen years ago, this one put its finger on the major intelligence breakdown – petty intelligence turf protection coupled with bureaucratic incompetence. Since the publication of the recommendations, little has changed to keep America safe.
The Boston bombing by the Tsarnaev brothers could have been the plot for an old Mack Sennett Keystone Kops movie starring Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security and Robert Mueller of the FBI with a supporting cast of thousands. Not only was the bombing aided a breakdown in information sharing between the bumbling Napolitano and inadequate Mueller, either of whom could be Inspector Clouseau stand-ins, but this tragedy is only the latest chapter of political correctness gone amok and a flawed immigration policy.
The Tsarnaev family was allowed to immigrate to the US in 2002 and granted asylum from anti-Muslim persecution in Chechnya. The father spoke English poorly and had modest skills as a mechanic. The mother also had limited English and worked as a cosmetologist. Tamerlan, a son, was about 15. He had been named for the 14th-century Muslim conqueror whose triumph over the infidels was commemorated by their skulls piled in pyramids. The other son, Dkhokhar, was about eight years old.
Around 2004 the father quit his job and the family lived on welfare. The family is dysfunctional. Anzov, the father, and Zubeidat, the mother, divorced. The father returned to Chechnya where he lives in no fear of the “anti-Muslim persecution” that got his family into the US.
Tamerlan, the older brother, was charged with domestic violence for beating up his girlfriend in 2009. He married another woman a year later and fathered a child, both of whom joined him on the welfare dole. Then he abruptly gave up smoking and drinking and became increasingly religious, praying five times a day. He irregularly attended a mosque in suburban Boston and was thrown out on one occasion for disrupting the service. In 2011 the FBI received notice from Russian intelligence that Tamerlan was a radical Islamic. The FBI interviewed him but concluded he wasn’t a threat and failed to keep him under surveillance.
The mother was arrested for shoplifting about $1,600 in clothing from a Boston-area Lord & Taylor in 2012. She left the country for Russia rather than appear in court. Her life too suffered no religious persecution after returning to her homeland.
With both parents gone, the brothers had to fend for themselves, not very well, I might add. Tamerlan, the older brother, had no job. He had a green card but was denied citizenship because of the Russian intelligence warning. The younger brother was still in his teens. His grades turned south with his mother’s departure. He failed two semesters and left school.
Despite receiving public welfare support and having no job, Tamerlan had money to return to Russia and live there for six months. In 2012 he left Dkhokhar in the US and returned for an undisclosed purpose to visit Russia and travel to Chechnya, a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. He too suffered no religious persecution while he is abroad, defying the basis for asylum which admitted the family to the US. Upon his return from Russia, Tamerlan posted a YouTube video with his name which extolled al-Qaeda and terrorism.
On September 11, 2012 Dkhokhar became a naturalized citizen but he too had no job and remained on welfare with his brother’s family. An uncle living in Maryland called the pair “losers.” US immigration authorities didn’t know they existed.
Two weeks ago on April 15 two homemade “pressure cooker” bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. That they were homemade gives the misleading impression that they weren’t sophisticated. This is not true. No pair of “losers” could have assembled these two bombs or other bombs used by the Tsarnaev brothers against the police in the ensuing pursuit. In addition to the three people killed at the Marathon finish line, and hundreds maimed and injured, the Tsarnaevs murdered an MIT campus policeman, Sean Collier, as he sat in his cruiser. The apparent motive was to take his pistol because the brothers had only one. Because police side arms have three-way holster locks, the Tsarnaevs were unable to get the pistol out of the holster after shooting Collier in the head multiple times.
Their plan evidently was to hijack a vehicle and drive to NYC where they would set additional bombs in Times Square. Their plan worked to the point of hijacking an SUV and forcing the owner out unharmed. They told him they had bombed the Marathon and killed a police officer so “don’t f--- with us.” The victim’s cell phone was on and remained in the car, allowing police to pinpoint the brothers in the Boston suburb of Watertown.
A shootout with the Watertown police occurred which included tossing the pressure cooker bombs at the police. When Tamerlan ran out of ammunition, the police tackled him and were in the process of handcuffing him when Dkhokhar tried to run over the group with the stolen SUV. The police jumped out of the way and only Tamerlan was hit and his bullet-riddled body was dragged some distance before Dkhokhar abandoned the SUV and escaped in the night. Tamerlan died at the hospital. Dkhokhar was later found severely wounded and hiding in a boat under its tarp.
He was taken to a hospital and placed under guard as care was administered. Treating him as an enemy combatant would have given the FBI 48 hours to question him – not to get a confession – but to learn if he was part of a sleeper cell and how the pair produced the pressure cooker bomb.
It was not to be. After 16 hours of cooperative questioning, Federal Judge Marianne Bowler, a woman with known Middle East sympathies, and several public defenders showed up in Dkhokhar’s room. This could only have happened on Attorney General Holder’s orders. Over the protests of the investigators who wanted to continue their questioning, Bowler held a hearing in the hospital room and read Dkhokhar his Miranda rights. The terrorist ceased cooperating after that.
Holder and Obama could have filed an immediate suit to block Bowler. They didn’t because, as they have in other acts of terror, both consider these as criminal offenses. Dkhokhar’s new lawyers now have access to anything the FBI learned and can effectively neutralize its intelligence value by introducing it in open court. Bowler’s CV can be found on the Internet. Her guest lectures in Middle Eastern countries not hospitable to women, not to mention women in positions of authority over men, is extraordinarily telling.
Against the background of the Boston bombing story, consider the role the Keystone Kops played in facilitating this tragic act of terror. In a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week Napolitano testified that her department’s "system pinged when [Tamerlan Tsarnaev] was leaving" en route to Russia. Homeland Security didn’t bother to share that information with the FBI and CIA. The FBI had interviewed Tamerlan in 2011 after being told by the Russian intelligence that he was an Islamic radical with ties to underground groups. The FBI decided he wasn’t a terrorist and dropped the matter – something they didn’t bother to tell Homeland Security or the CIA.
It was 9/11 déjà vu all over again. Buildings and thousands of lives had been destroyed in 2001. This time we have the Russians doing our intelligence work and our FBI ignoring their warnings. Russia doesn’t have American scruples about human rights and privacy. They learn what they want to learn. So who’re you going to believe? The FBI or the SVR? And where will the next intelligence tip come from – Iran?
Forgetting the millions who are in this country illegally, let’s focus on just the Tsarnaev family and ask this question: What does it take to get deported from here? The Tsarnaevs came here as refugees from religious persecution. Yet Papa returned home a few years later and faced none. Mama returned home to escape a theft charge and faced none. Tamerlan the older brother left for six months to live there and faced none. Evidently lying about your immigration status isn’t cause for deportation – that awful “D” word so despised by the Obama administration.
How about getting a job and not living off of the good charity of the American taxpayer? If you fail to work and become self-supporting is that cause for deportation? Apparently not.
How about behaving yourself … should an immigrant be expected to follow the law as a condition of remaining in this country? I guess not. Tamerlan’s domestic violence and Mama’s theft didn’t result in deportation. Mama fled a trial that could have had consequences. Had she stayed and faced the music, would she have been deported? Not likely.
One final question. As a guest of this country should you be deported if you threaten to disturb the domestic peace and tranquility? It seems not. The FBI was warned Tamerlan had ties with radical jihadist groups, he posted YouTube videos that were the equivalent of a neon sign flashing “Look at me” in terms of his anti-western sympathies, but he wasn’t deported. He was allowed to stay and kill.
Deportation and illegal immigration is the elephant in the room when it comes to keeping Americans safe as they go about their lives every day. The Boston Marathoners and their cheerleaders along the way thought they were out to have a good time that afternoon. It was just another afternoon. Until the bombs went off and changed lives forever.
And then we come to the biggest threat to the security of every person in the US – political correctness. In the hours following the Boston bombing, Obama couldn’t bring himself to use the “T” word and admit this was an act of terrorists.
On his orders the FBI has expurgated the words “terrorists” and “radical Islam” and “jihad” from its training materials because American Muslims affiliated with the militant Muslim Brotherhood are offended by the use of “terrorist.” The anti-Israel Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America, and advocates for American Muslims say it offends them too. These organizations, which have never taken a formal stand against violent Islamism, have forced us to censor ourselves and our language.
Isn’t it ironic that while all Muslims aren’t terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim? Yet we will wand a blue-haired old granny while a Muslim man (or increasingly woman) passes through airport security without screening. Profiling, you know.
Major Nidal Hasan shouted “God is great in Arabic” and killed 13 people, wounding another 30. The Army brass knew he was a radicalized Islamist – they had read his emails to Anwar al-Awlaki, an American who had fled to Yemen and has since been vaporized. Hasan asked al-Awlaki for guidance in killing Americans. That he was in contact with a member of al-Qaeda should have waved a red flag. It did. The Army however didn’t want to violate his “rights”! Instead of calling his murderous Ft. Hood killing spree an act of terror, Obama called it “workplace violence.” And this is the smartest man ever to be president?
As if that weren’t bad enough, Army Chief of Staff George Casey made the breathtaking statement that, “as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” I once admired Casey when he was a commander of the war in Iraq. Now I’m glad he’s not wearing an Army uniform.
Even as he was telling investigators that he’d worked with al-Qaeda to explode his underwear on a flight into Detroit, Obama was calling the bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, an isolated extremist. Months later, Faisal Shalizad attempted to explode a car bomb on Times Square and Keystone Kop Napolitano called it a “one off” attack.
Are these people operating with a full deck? Do they believe we are in a war with Islamic terrorists? No.
The Boston bombing was the most photographed crime scene in history. Could anyone living outside a padded cell look at the bombing photos and mug shots published later and not believe the Tsarnaev brothers were the thugs who did it? Was there any connection between the shootout with the Watertown police, the murder of the MIT police officer, the bombs thrown from the hijacked SUV, the murder of one Tsarnaev by his own brother, and the capture of a shot-up survivor – any connection between all of that and the Marathon bombing? Yet the New York Times started an article shortly afterward with the words, “The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week ...” What’s this “alleged” stuff?
Political correctness is going to get a lot of people killed! Why don’t we call things by their right name?
The words we use either engage or suspend our critical thinking. Yet the Associated Press came out with a pronouncement early this month declaring that its stylebook would no longer include the term “illegal immigrant” or use “illegal” to describe a person. No human being is illegal, according to the AP editor’s Sinaitic pronouncements. “Illegal” should describe an action such as living “illegally” in a country. Well, I sure wouldn’t want to damage an illegal immigrant’s self-image by calling him an “illegal immigrant.”
Moreover, the stylebook continued, no one should hereafter be called “paranoid” or a “schizophrenic.” Instead, they should be described as a person “diagnosed with paranoia or schizophrenia.”
For those of us who believe in the omnipresence of evil – i.e. that it exists both before it manifests itself and after its full fury is plainly seen in the inexplicable actions of some humans – this kind of word silliness removes the moral anchor that gives words meaning. We can fancify abortion by calling it “pro-choice” but the actions of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist, were so heinous that I’ve been unable to follow the details of his trial. It sickens me. Can a human soul exist in a person like him or has its light gone out?
I watched the pathetic performance of John Brennan at his Senate hearing for Director of the CIA when he tried to glorify jihadism as a “holy struggle … an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose … not the murder of men, women, and children.” Really? Go tell that to the family of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was decapitated by the jihadist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
I am offended by the political correctness that calls religiously motivated killings “workplace violence.” I’m not at all concerned about offending terrorists by characterizing them as such because of what they do. An illegal immigrant does not become less a criminal by separating his act from his label. And does anyone believe a human life is any less unspeakably terminated by benignly calling the act a “choice” instead of the malignant procedure called abortion?
Mark Twain famously said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” The advocates of political correctness are tolerant of everything except an opposing viewpoint. They appeal to high-minded tolerance by sanitizing our words of their moral gravity. This cripples society’s ability to argue the issues that confront it.
Judgment of right and wrong is, after all, what separates us from animals. Blaise Pascal wrote 400 years ago that man is a reed, easily crushed, but he is a thinking reed. Thinking is what gives him dignity. For that reason alone, the philosopher said, we should strive to think well because it is the offspring of morality. I would add that morality equally compels us to argue well with words of unmistakable clarity.
When our words are robbed of meaning, we are no longer able to engage in honest debate because we fear being labeled a hater or racist or homophobe. That path leads to a less tolerant society, not a more tolerant one. If we follow it, how could we possibly hope to make Americans fundamentally different, indeed better, than the fanatical adherents of Islam?
… information is available, and someone [must ask for it]… [yet currently] it cannot be shared … a demonstrated “need to know” [must exist] before sharing. This approach assumes it is possible to know, in advance, who will need to use the information. Such a system implicitly assumes that the risk of inadvertent disclosure outweighs the benefits of wider sharing. Those Cold War assumptions are no longer appropriate. The culture of agencies feeling they own the information they gathered at taxpayer expense must be replaced by a culture in which the agencies instead feel they have a duty to share the information – to repay the taxpayers’ investment by making that information available.
--- 9/11 Commission Report
Among the several recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission in its report almost a dozen years ago, this one put its finger on the major intelligence breakdown – petty intelligence turf protection coupled with bureaucratic incompetence. Since the publication of the recommendations, little has changed to keep America safe.
The Boston bombing by the Tsarnaev brothers could have been the plot for an old Mack Sennett Keystone Kops movie starring Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security and Robert Mueller of the FBI with a supporting cast of thousands. Not only was the bombing aided a breakdown in information sharing between the bumbling Napolitano and inadequate Mueller, either of whom could be Inspector Clouseau stand-ins, but this tragedy is only the latest chapter of political correctness gone amok and a flawed immigration policy.
The Tsarnaev family was allowed to immigrate to the US in 2002 and granted asylum from anti-Muslim persecution in Chechnya. The father spoke English poorly and had modest skills as a mechanic. The mother also had limited English and worked as a cosmetologist. Tamerlan, a son, was about 15. He had been named for the 14th-century Muslim conqueror whose triumph over the infidels was commemorated by their skulls piled in pyramids. The other son, Dkhokhar, was about eight years old.
Around 2004 the father quit his job and the family lived on welfare. The family is dysfunctional. Anzov, the father, and Zubeidat, the mother, divorced. The father returned to Chechnya where he lives in no fear of the “anti-Muslim persecution” that got his family into the US.
Tamerlan, the older brother, was charged with domestic violence for beating up his girlfriend in 2009. He married another woman a year later and fathered a child, both of whom joined him on the welfare dole. Then he abruptly gave up smoking and drinking and became increasingly religious, praying five times a day. He irregularly attended a mosque in suburban Boston and was thrown out on one occasion for disrupting the service. In 2011 the FBI received notice from Russian intelligence that Tamerlan was a radical Islamic. The FBI interviewed him but concluded he wasn’t a threat and failed to keep him under surveillance.
The mother was arrested for shoplifting about $1,600 in clothing from a Boston-area Lord & Taylor in 2012. She left the country for Russia rather than appear in court. Her life too suffered no religious persecution after returning to her homeland.
With both parents gone, the brothers had to fend for themselves, not very well, I might add. Tamerlan, the older brother, had no job. He had a green card but was denied citizenship because of the Russian intelligence warning. The younger brother was still in his teens. His grades turned south with his mother’s departure. He failed two semesters and left school.
Despite receiving public welfare support and having no job, Tamerlan had money to return to Russia and live there for six months. In 2012 he left Dkhokhar in the US and returned for an undisclosed purpose to visit Russia and travel to Chechnya, a hotbed of Islamic radicalism. He too suffered no religious persecution while he is abroad, defying the basis for asylum which admitted the family to the US. Upon his return from Russia, Tamerlan posted a YouTube video with his name which extolled al-Qaeda and terrorism.
On September 11, 2012 Dkhokhar became a naturalized citizen but he too had no job and remained on welfare with his brother’s family. An uncle living in Maryland called the pair “losers.” US immigration authorities didn’t know they existed.
Two weeks ago on April 15 two homemade “pressure cooker” bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. That they were homemade gives the misleading impression that they weren’t sophisticated. This is not true. No pair of “losers” could have assembled these two bombs or other bombs used by the Tsarnaev brothers against the police in the ensuing pursuit. In addition to the three people killed at the Marathon finish line, and hundreds maimed and injured, the Tsarnaevs murdered an MIT campus policeman, Sean Collier, as he sat in his cruiser. The apparent motive was to take his pistol because the brothers had only one. Because police side arms have three-way holster locks, the Tsarnaevs were unable to get the pistol out of the holster after shooting Collier in the head multiple times.
Their plan evidently was to hijack a vehicle and drive to NYC where they would set additional bombs in Times Square. Their plan worked to the point of hijacking an SUV and forcing the owner out unharmed. They told him they had bombed the Marathon and killed a police officer so “don’t f--- with us.” The victim’s cell phone was on and remained in the car, allowing police to pinpoint the brothers in the Boston suburb of Watertown.
A shootout with the Watertown police occurred which included tossing the pressure cooker bombs at the police. When Tamerlan ran out of ammunition, the police tackled him and were in the process of handcuffing him when Dkhokhar tried to run over the group with the stolen SUV. The police jumped out of the way and only Tamerlan was hit and his bullet-riddled body was dragged some distance before Dkhokhar abandoned the SUV and escaped in the night. Tamerlan died at the hospital. Dkhokhar was later found severely wounded and hiding in a boat under its tarp.
He was taken to a hospital and placed under guard as care was administered. Treating him as an enemy combatant would have given the FBI 48 hours to question him – not to get a confession – but to learn if he was part of a sleeper cell and how the pair produced the pressure cooker bomb.
It was not to be. After 16 hours of cooperative questioning, Federal Judge Marianne Bowler, a woman with known Middle East sympathies, and several public defenders showed up in Dkhokhar’s room. This could only have happened on Attorney General Holder’s orders. Over the protests of the investigators who wanted to continue their questioning, Bowler held a hearing in the hospital room and read Dkhokhar his Miranda rights. The terrorist ceased cooperating after that.
Holder and Obama could have filed an immediate suit to block Bowler. They didn’t because, as they have in other acts of terror, both consider these as criminal offenses. Dkhokhar’s new lawyers now have access to anything the FBI learned and can effectively neutralize its intelligence value by introducing it in open court. Bowler’s CV can be found on the Internet. Her guest lectures in Middle Eastern countries not hospitable to women, not to mention women in positions of authority over men, is extraordinarily telling.
Against the background of the Boston bombing story, consider the role the Keystone Kops played in facilitating this tragic act of terror. In a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week Napolitano testified that her department’s "system pinged when [Tamerlan Tsarnaev] was leaving" en route to Russia. Homeland Security didn’t bother to share that information with the FBI and CIA. The FBI had interviewed Tamerlan in 2011 after being told by the Russian intelligence that he was an Islamic radical with ties to underground groups. The FBI decided he wasn’t a terrorist and dropped the matter – something they didn’t bother to tell Homeland Security or the CIA.
It was 9/11 déjà vu all over again. Buildings and thousands of lives had been destroyed in 2001. This time we have the Russians doing our intelligence work and our FBI ignoring their warnings. Russia doesn’t have American scruples about human rights and privacy. They learn what they want to learn. So who’re you going to believe? The FBI or the SVR? And where will the next intelligence tip come from – Iran?
Forgetting the millions who are in this country illegally, let’s focus on just the Tsarnaev family and ask this question: What does it take to get deported from here? The Tsarnaevs came here as refugees from religious persecution. Yet Papa returned home a few years later and faced none. Mama returned home to escape a theft charge and faced none. Tamerlan the older brother left for six months to live there and faced none. Evidently lying about your immigration status isn’t cause for deportation – that awful “D” word so despised by the Obama administration.
How about getting a job and not living off of the good charity of the American taxpayer? If you fail to work and become self-supporting is that cause for deportation? Apparently not.
How about behaving yourself … should an immigrant be expected to follow the law as a condition of remaining in this country? I guess not. Tamerlan’s domestic violence and Mama’s theft didn’t result in deportation. Mama fled a trial that could have had consequences. Had she stayed and faced the music, would she have been deported? Not likely.
One final question. As a guest of this country should you be deported if you threaten to disturb the domestic peace and tranquility? It seems not. The FBI was warned Tamerlan had ties with radical jihadist groups, he posted YouTube videos that were the equivalent of a neon sign flashing “Look at me” in terms of his anti-western sympathies, but he wasn’t deported. He was allowed to stay and kill.
Deportation and illegal immigration is the elephant in the room when it comes to keeping Americans safe as they go about their lives every day. The Boston Marathoners and their cheerleaders along the way thought they were out to have a good time that afternoon. It was just another afternoon. Until the bombs went off and changed lives forever.
And then we come to the biggest threat to the security of every person in the US – political correctness. In the hours following the Boston bombing, Obama couldn’t bring himself to use the “T” word and admit this was an act of terrorists.
On his orders the FBI has expurgated the words “terrorists” and “radical Islam” and “jihad” from its training materials because American Muslims affiliated with the militant Muslim Brotherhood are offended by the use of “terrorist.” The anti-Israel Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America, and advocates for American Muslims say it offends them too. These organizations, which have never taken a formal stand against violent Islamism, have forced us to censor ourselves and our language.
Isn’t it ironic that while all Muslims aren’t terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim? Yet we will wand a blue-haired old granny while a Muslim man (or increasingly woman) passes through airport security without screening. Profiling, you know.
Major Nidal Hasan shouted “God is great in Arabic” and killed 13 people, wounding another 30. The Army brass knew he was a radicalized Islamist – they had read his emails to Anwar al-Awlaki, an American who had fled to Yemen and has since been vaporized. Hasan asked al-Awlaki for guidance in killing Americans. That he was in contact with a member of al-Qaeda should have waved a red flag. It did. The Army however didn’t want to violate his “rights”! Instead of calling his murderous Ft. Hood killing spree an act of terror, Obama called it “workplace violence.” And this is the smartest man ever to be president?
As if that weren’t bad enough, Army Chief of Staff George Casey made the breathtaking statement that, “as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” I once admired Casey when he was a commander of the war in Iraq. Now I’m glad he’s not wearing an Army uniform.
Even as he was telling investigators that he’d worked with al-Qaeda to explode his underwear on a flight into Detroit, Obama was calling the bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, an isolated extremist. Months later, Faisal Shalizad attempted to explode a car bomb on Times Square and Keystone Kop Napolitano called it a “one off” attack.
Are these people operating with a full deck? Do they believe we are in a war with Islamic terrorists? No.
The Boston bombing was the most photographed crime scene in history. Could anyone living outside a padded cell look at the bombing photos and mug shots published later and not believe the Tsarnaev brothers were the thugs who did it? Was there any connection between the shootout with the Watertown police, the murder of the MIT police officer, the bombs thrown from the hijacked SUV, the murder of one Tsarnaev by his own brother, and the capture of a shot-up survivor – any connection between all of that and the Marathon bombing? Yet the New York Times started an article shortly afterward with the words, “The alleged involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the Boston Marathon last week ...” What’s this “alleged” stuff?
Political correctness is going to get a lot of people killed! Why don’t we call things by their right name?
The words we use either engage or suspend our critical thinking. Yet the Associated Press came out with a pronouncement early this month declaring that its stylebook would no longer include the term “illegal immigrant” or use “illegal” to describe a person. No human being is illegal, according to the AP editor’s Sinaitic pronouncements. “Illegal” should describe an action such as living “illegally” in a country. Well, I sure wouldn’t want to damage an illegal immigrant’s self-image by calling him an “illegal immigrant.”
Moreover, the stylebook continued, no one should hereafter be called “paranoid” or a “schizophrenic.” Instead, they should be described as a person “diagnosed with paranoia or schizophrenia.”
For those of us who believe in the omnipresence of evil – i.e. that it exists both before it manifests itself and after its full fury is plainly seen in the inexplicable actions of some humans – this kind of word silliness removes the moral anchor that gives words meaning. We can fancify abortion by calling it “pro-choice” but the actions of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist, were so heinous that I’ve been unable to follow the details of his trial. It sickens me. Can a human soul exist in a person like him or has its light gone out?
I watched the pathetic performance of John Brennan at his Senate hearing for Director of the CIA when he tried to glorify jihadism as a “holy struggle … an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose … not the murder of men, women, and children.” Really? Go tell that to the family of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was decapitated by the jihadist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
I am offended by the political correctness that calls religiously motivated killings “workplace violence.” I’m not at all concerned about offending terrorists by characterizing them as such because of what they do. An illegal immigrant does not become less a criminal by separating his act from his label. And does anyone believe a human life is any less unspeakably terminated by benignly calling the act a “choice” instead of the malignant procedure called abortion?
Mark Twain famously said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” The advocates of political correctness are tolerant of everything except an opposing viewpoint. They appeal to high-minded tolerance by sanitizing our words of their moral gravity. This cripples society’s ability to argue the issues that confront it.
Judgment of right and wrong is, after all, what separates us from animals. Blaise Pascal wrote 400 years ago that man is a reed, easily crushed, but he is a thinking reed. Thinking is what gives him dignity. For that reason alone, the philosopher said, we should strive to think well because it is the offspring of morality. I would add that morality equally compels us to argue well with words of unmistakable clarity.
When our words are robbed of meaning, we are no longer able to engage in honest debate because we fear being labeled a hater or racist or homophobe. That path leads to a less tolerant society, not a more tolerant one. If we follow it, how could we possibly hope to make Americans fundamentally different, indeed better, than the fanatical adherents of Islam?
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