People have vivid memories of certain tragic events in our history. It used to be common to hear folks ask, “Where were you when JFK was shot?” Or, “What were you doing when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated?” Tragedies etch themselves into our collective psyche and the things we were doing at the time we first heard the news, or witnessed events first-hand, help us to remember.
Such is the case with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Not since Japan’s World War II attack on Pearl Harbor has the United States had its territorial sovereignty violated by such aggression. Everyone who was alive on 9/11/01 recalls today what they were doing, and how they reacted, felt, grieved, mourned, and prayed. For most Americans, that grief, sadness and prayer will never end.
Faith becomes more important to people when they are faced with the loss of loved ones. Religious ceremonies typically accompany the burial process, and the same holds true for memorial events like the upcoming September 11, 2011 ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Except that in the case of the ceremony to be held at the site of the World Trade Center– Ground Zero – Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put the kibosh on having religion be a part of it.
It is a decision that seems to defy all logic and commonsense, and it comes off as cruel, heartless, and suggests Hizzoner is out of touch with the people who elected him to be Mayor (not King) of New York City.
It falls on the heels of another take-your-breath-away decision about the same event. In mid-August, Mayor Bloomberg nixed inviting first responders to the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC.
Faith and first responders defined the attacks and their aftermath. Let’s remember – although the mainstream media tries its best to make us forget – that the attacks themselves were motivated by a perverted sense of faith, by radical Islamists hell-bent on a twisted brand of Jihad against the west. First responders pulled people from the wreckage of this religion-inspired assault, many losing their lives in the process. It is faith that has sustained Americans as they have tried to make sense of the devastation and loss ever since.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani made religion a part of the healing process shortly after 9/11 during an interfaith ceremony at Yankee Stadium. Let’s not forget how President George W. Bush injected faith into everything he did as President, recognizing its importance in a nation grounded in Judeo-Christian roots. So why exclude first responders and faith, Mr. Mayor?
I don’t think Mayor Bloomberg has excluded faith from the 9/11 memorial this year because he is anti-religion. Quite the contrary. In May 2010, he came out in full-force defense of the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero. He’s even on record for saying the government, “shouldn’t be in the business of picking” one religion over another. So why the hostility toward religion at a time when most Americans (indeed New Yorkers) demand it?
There’s a paradox about liberalism that I have observed for many years – if not a downright psychopathology. At the risk of possibly offending a few in the minority, liberals intentionally offend the majority. Mayor Bloomberg is likely guided by this distorted sense of reasoning. He’d rather guarantee that he insults a majority of Christian, Jewish, and people of other faiths in order to avoid even the potential of offending a minority of Muslims. We saw it with his decision to support the Ground Zero Mosque, and we’re seeing it with the decision to remove religion from the 9/11 anniversary memorial. But how to explain the prohibition on first responders? I can only think of the famous punch line comedian Ron White uses often: “You can’t fix stupid!” But you can vote it out of office.
Follow Mike Angley on Twitter: @MikeAngley and on FaceBook: mike.angley.
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