TAKE BACK THE MEMORIAL

The lead editorial in the July 12, 2005, edition of the New York Times slams the "Take Back the Memorial" intiative.

The Times is obviously driven by its usual liberal PC agenda. It is so blinded by its radical left-wing ideology that it pulls no punches in blasting 9/11 families. Although virtually all organized family groups have opposed the Freedom Center, the Times insists:

[W]e've watched a handful of vocal family members, who may not represent a majority of 9/11 families, change the dynamic at the World Trade Center site for the worse. They have begun a movement to "take back the memorial," which means, in essence, eventually purging ground zero of its cultural partners, including the International Freedom Center.

The Times editorial also bashes Gov. George Pataki for siding with the families and criticizing the location of the International Freedom Center at Ground Zero.

It goes on:

The World Trade Center site is of enormous importance to all New Yorkers, to all Americans and to people around the planet who have united to fight the insidious forces that led to 9/11. Mr. Pataki's job is to represent all those deeply interested parties. By attempting to appease one small, vocal group of protesters who are unlikely to be appeased anyway, he is abrogating the rights of everyone else. And he runs the risk of turning ground zero into a place where we bury the freedoms that define this nation.

There must be no mistake about this. If the Drawing Center is forced to withdraw from ground zero rather than accept the censorship of exhibitions that are yet to be imagined, no other respectable arts institution will take its place.

What was offered as an open invitation to restore the artistic life of Lower Manhattan will have turned into an invitation to provide only the kind of cultural offerings that please a vocal group of people whose genuine grief has already taken on a sharply political edge. Those are unacceptable conditions that would undermine the very purpose of the arts. If the International Freedom Center must continually bend over backward to placate a handful of angry family members, then all of its commitment to the conscience of that site, to what it can teach us about the character of freedom in the world, will have been compromised.

What we build at ground zero has to honor the memory of one terrible day in the history of America, but it also has to belong to the future as well, a future as optimistic and forward-looking as we can imagine. It cannot be a place devoted entirely to death. If ground zero is not a place of life and creativity, of true artistic and political freedom, then it will not be successful even as a place of grief.

This is just wrong.

It is extremely arrogant for the Times editorial board to charge the families with taking on a "sharply political edge." I would suggest that it's the Times and its handful of vocal, always angry PC allies that have chosen to twist and politicize the memorial in an attempt to reconstruct what the site symbolizes.

Ground Zero is hallowed ground.

From 911Memorials.org:

The fact there is this strong of a debate over the Freedom Center should be a red flag for a memorial that should not have red flags.

Our standard line is that Freedom Center is diverting attention from Ground Zero’s mission. The Freedom Center and Drawing Center can be anyplace else in the city just not at Ground Zero.

We have opposed the Center for two years principally because it will monopolize more than one quarter of the memorial site — in an area better served by park land.

I completely agree.

We live in a big country. There are plenty of other sites for the Freedom Center.

It boggles my mind to read how the Times diminishes the significance of Ground Zero.

How can the editorial board refer to the events of September 11, 2001, as "one terrible day in the history of America"?

For the loved ones of thousands of victims, the impact of that "terrible day" will last for a lifetime of days. Like it or not, it is a place of death. It is disrespectful to them to distract from what transpired there.

Those wishing to use the site to commemorate other terrible days in history or promote nonjudgmental, no-fault displays of enemies of freedom should find another locale to make their politically-charged statements.

Doesn't it make sense that the 9/11 Memorial would honor the victims and heroes of 9/11?

Was Gettysburg turned into a place of "creativity"?

How about Auschwitz? Was "artistic life" restored there?