At some award’s ceremonies, for kid’s organized sports, you sometimes see every kid getting a certificate of some sort. This is done, presumably, in the interest of fairness and in the hopes of building self esteem in every child. Never mind that in just about any team, there are some members who excel and some who - don’t.
There’s a perverse idea floating around the liberal elite that, in my opinion, finds its roots in the notion of “fairness” and how it supposedly relates to moral and cultural standards.
NBC’s Brian Williams, in a conversation with Chris Matthews, compared Islamic terrorist suicide bombers with U.S. Special Forces and New York City rescue personnel on 9/11. From the interview,
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: But, here we have maybe 24 people who have lived in London and England and the free world for all these years that become citizens, subjects of the Crown, and yet, after having gotten to know us, they want to kill themselves to hurt us. Isn’t that an even deeper conundrum here than the chemicals being used in these attacks.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: And that, Chris, that last aspect, the willingness to take one’s own life. I always tell people there are guys on our team like that, too. They’re called Army Rangers and Navy Seals and the Special Forces folks and the first responders on 9/11 who went into those buildings knowing, by the way, they weren’t going to come out. So we have players like that on our team. (emphasis added)
I guess it doesn’t matter to Williams whether one intends to give their life or one is willing to give their life? And I don’t buy the argument that Williams was attempting to praise “our guys.” No, Mr. Williams, the guys on our team are not like that, too. Our players do not want to kill themselves to hurt the enemy. Is that really so hard to understand?
Evidently, for Williams, it is. Consider his equating, last year, of American Revolutionaries to current day terrorists. He said,
Many Americans woke up to a curious story this morning: several of the former Iran Hostages have decided there is a strong resemblance between Iran’s new president and one of their captors more than 25 years ago. The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I’ll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.
Such inane moral blindness is not limited to Williams. CBS’ Mike Wallace recently said of Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (remember, the one who wants to wipe Israel off the map),
Hannity: You don’t think he’s an anti-Semite?
Wallace: Anti-Jew? No, no I don’t…
I ask you to bring not prejudice, not your own beliefs or prejudices, when you watch him…
And, lest we forget, Ed Peck, chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter, and deputy director of the cabinet task force on terrorism under Ronald Reagan, thinks our GIs who “invaded” France in 1944 could potentially be considered terrorists. After all, whether or not one is a terrorist is in the eye of the beholder.
Tell you what… let’s take Williams’, Wallace’, and Peck’s logic to its conclusion:
IF:
Navy Seals = suicide bombers
Army Air Rangers = suicide bombers
NYPD & NYFD = suicide bombers
American Presidents circa American Revolution = terrorist
U.S. GIs entering Europe circa 1944 = terrorist
Wanting to wipe Israel off the map = Jew lover
THEN:
FDR = Hitler
Winston Churchill = Mussolini
Enola Gay = kamikaze bombers
MLK = James Earl Ray
Lincoln = hates blacks
Bush I = Khadafy
Bush II = Saddam
South Korea = North Korea
Jesus = ?
August 11th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
These guys need to think first, then speak. Or perhaps they did and they really meant it?!
Those who find moral equivalence between suicide bombers killing innocent civilians and heroes risking their lives to save innocent civilians must be so wedded to their liberal / atheist worldview that they have lost their critical thinking skills.