WSJ.com on "The Great Ground Zero Heist"

I didn't link to this earlier. It hits close to home. But enough is enough! The end says it best. Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

I was out of work on 9/11/2001. My mother called shortly after the first plane struck the first tower. My wife and I rushed downstairs and turned on the TV. I saw the second plane hit the second tower. Like many, I sat rivitted to the sight, a prisoner to history. I cried as the towers fell. Later, I learned that a family from my old parish lost a loved one. A friend told me that one of the Novotny brothers talked to his brother Brian via cell-phone. He was still on the phone when the tower collapsed.

To think that on such holy ground such a monstrosity of ideology as this could be erected is inexcusable:

The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

And the patriots who bring this about? The usual, reasonable suspects:

• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the world-wide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable."

• Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who is pushing IFC organizers for exhibits that showcase how civil liberties in this country have been curtailed since September 11.

• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself.

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."

Disgraceful. As Catholics, we are dishonored even more. Why? Two reasons:

First, the political ideology supported by these men virulently attacks Roman Catholicism with seething hostility. George Soros, in particular, seeks to institutionalize the sovereign individual as the focal point of law. There is no room for Transcendent truth and Natural Law in his worldview, let alone the Call of Christ to evangelize the world. On the contrary, he supports those policies so enathemaic to the family that one wonders just what place any religion has in his vision. Let along Roman Catholicism. It's clear that the usual politically correct groups will be included in these "freedom" exibitions. Expect to see Catholics in this exibit only when they run specials like "Inquisition: Bane of Freedom."

Second, and more poignantly for New Yorkers, this 300,000 acre monstrosity marginalizes the sacrifice of New York's Bravest. Many of the firefighters that died on 9/11 were Catholics. Indeed, Catholic chaplains were among those that gave their lives in the line of duty. Their sacrifice is confined to a 50,000 acre parcel, all underground, where not nearly enough artifacts of that fateful day can be publically displayed.

Ms. Burlingame says it best: "Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"


Update: Here's how! Hat tip to Praire Fire.