For starters, a brief junior high civics lesson is in order. Those who crafted the First Amendment never intended it as license for obscenity or to enable nude dancers to smear various substances on themselves at taxpayers’ expense. Nor was their purpose to secure the “rights” of child pornographers to ply their trade, as former Attorney General Janet Reno asserted.

 

The sole reason for its inclusion in the Bill of Rights was to ensure the ability of the citizenry to engage in political discussion, regardless of any discomfort felt by public officials who might be the targets of criticism from the people.

 

As such, the recently aired ABC miniseries “The Path to 9-11” exemplifies the very manner of public discourse that points fingers and raises questions necessary to call those in government to accountability in order to correct past mistakes. And as such, threats of retribution against ABC, made by such powerful liberals as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D.-NV) and Senator Richard Durbin (D.-IL) represent the most despicable and reprehensible manner of attempted censorship to occur in this country in recent years.

 

At the core of the debate is the ongoing and very real terror war, which will be waged against America whether or not the country possesses the collective courage to recognize it, or the spine to effectively respond to it. The attacks have come and will continue to come. The only matter in question is whether or not the nation has the will to face them and prevail against them.

 

Fearing damage to his fragile but all consuming “legacy,” former President Bill Clinton demanded that the series be withdrawn from broadcast, quibbling and whimpering that in some detail or another, it was not absolutely accurate.

 

Despite these transparent attempts at obfuscation, for Clinton, the very timetable encompassed in the series represented an indictment of him. Regardless of his denials of any preoccupation with skirt chasing and other self-serving endeavors, it is inarguable that the looming danger of a terrorist attack festered and grew during his watch.

 

Were every reference to the Clinton Administration expunged from the program, enough people would still remember exactly when the catastrophe occurred, only seven months after George Bush was inaugurated, and who had been asleep at the watch during the decade preceding the attacks. Thus, the only means of keeping a sufficient number of the electorate focused on current liberal propaganda is to eradicate any stark image of what really happened on that dreadful day.

 

President Bush was admittedly caught by surprise, only seven and a half months after his inauguration, and hamstrung by partisan antics such as the delayed confirmation of pivotal Administration members including his Attorney General, John Ashcroft.

 

A thorough examination of the events leading to the attacks could not help but point an accusing finger at the Clinton White House. It was Clinton who remained asleep at the watch while he obsessively pursued his own sordid interests.

 

Yet the impact of the ABC program reaches further still. More than any particular statement on the treasonous duplicity of the Clinton Administration in leaving America open to the attacks, the very images themselves revive the outrage of the moment, and rekindle resolve among real Americans to appropriately respond. Concurrently, they also highlight the incessant efforts of the left to destroy American determination and morale ever since.

 

Regardless of the incriminating details that ABC may or may not have removed in deference to the liberal/Democrat political machine, it is the images of 9-11 itself, and the horrific reality of that day, which the American left does not want refreshed in the minds of the American people.

 

In part because the present Administration has taken the threat so seriously and has dealt so effectively with it, some short-sighted Americans have once again assumed they have the luxury to go on with life as if the attacks had never happened. The left has abominably played this as evidence that no real danger awaits the country.

 

Yet their very reaction to the miniseries proves that their own self-serving agenda represents a worst-case scenario. By their willingness to suppress and distort the events of that awful day, they display a continued commitment to their political strategy of lulling the nation into a false sense of security that labels George Bush as the problem, and Democrat political gaming as the path to safety and security.

 

Democrats are still playing a ghoulish game of political Ping-Pong, whereby they alternately accuse Bush of either overreacting, or not having done enough to connect the dots prior to 911, or ever since, to prevent the next attack if one ensues.

 

Any serious consideration of the stance they have adopted during the past five years, on every facet of the terror war, can only lead to the conclusion that they regard traditional America as a greater enemy to their political fortunes than the violent encroachment of militant Islam.

 

Such shameless and inconsistent posturing presupposes complete and mindless stupidity among their base. Their success or failure in the November elections will ultimately determine whether or not this contempt for their “useful idiots” of the liberal voting public is indeed warranted.