Political Correctness Kills and You Don’t Need to Be an Accessory to Murder Randolph Kahn

In my spare time, I teach the Politics of Information at a liberal university. That narrows down the institution to, well, all of them. But, please don’t click on my Linked-In account to determine which undergraduate university I am referring to as you will never figure it out. Hint: it rhymes with Luniversity of Misconsin.   

I have taught this class in the past, and on the first day, I give the new students my 3 simple ground rules, all of which shock their senses a bit. Rule # 1: “You must come to class, because it costs out-of-state students about $300 per class and in-state students about $100 a class and you need to benefit from your financial outlay. Plus, you will learn a lot if you come to class.” Rule # 2: “Please don’t raise your hand. If you have something to say, just blurt it out. It won’t obstruct the flow of the class.” Rule # 3: “This class is a “safe” zone. It’s a safe place to say whatever the heck you want to say and I don’t care if it’s not welcome anywhere else on campus. It is welcome in my class. Even if I personally don’t share the view, I won’t penalize you for it.”  

Some faces light up as they feel how freeing it is to be able to say anything. Others are uneasy with the notion that anyone can have any view on any issue even if wildly unpopular. “Objectionable” speech is welcome, but be respectful to fellow students, I say.  On a personal note, two of my students have confided in me that they have never felt free to speak in class and they filter what they say in other classes out of fear of ridicule. That’s a good $200,000 investment in “learning”, I think quietly to myself!  

I have this visceral revulsion to Political Correctness (PC) and have loathed it for over three decades now. PC is a religion of “liberals” who advance the idea that on certain topics there are limited “right” answers, and they possess those answers and everything else is apostacy, morally wrong, and unacceptable.  In other words, views contrary to PC views are necessarily evil and reflect a dirty will and hard heart. It’s tough being on the receiving end of PC shaming.   

So, I can’t raise the issue of global warming science, as that means that I have already purchased my ringside seat to gleefully watch the people living near the coasts drowning from melting ice caps. I can’t talk about Ferguson or Michael Brown, without being considered racist, or at a minimum, insensitive. I can’t advocate for strong borders or “extreme vetting” without being thought of as heartless and Islamophobic. I can’t discuss the legal standard for investigations of sexual assault on campus, as that means I too want to abuse women? It’s almost as though PC asserts that I don’t have the credentials or moral standing to be heard talking about a topic.  

In some ways, that explains why Trump is the President. There is a huge segment of the U.S. population that is tired of being force-fed the “right” answer or to be marginalized for their views. No one wants to be told they can’t feel or think a certain way, and that’s exactly what has been happening for decades. But that’s not what I really want to talk about.  

I have spent most of my career in one way or another dealing with information. I didn’t set out to spend my life’s work dealing with information issues, but it’s the way it turned out. Information is the currency that runs your business, and thankfully it is the same currency, sort of, that feeds my kids. As someone that thinks about information all day, every day, I care about how its managed and protected. I care about who owns it and has access to it. I care whether it’s complete and accurate. And I care if it can be harnessed to protect interests. Information is our economy’s currency, and good information is the difference between winning and losing. That brings me to how accurate information and political correctness are on a collision course.  

On November 5, 2009, a Muslim Army psychiatrist walked into Fort Hood and unloaded dozens of semi-automatic rounds into his fellow soldiers. In moments, a military officer, albeit a radicalized Islamist, assassinated 13 Americans and injured 32 others. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t exacting retribution on his workplace for a bad review or a lack of a pay raise. No, he was merely advancing the cause of Islam against the infidel. It’s at this point you may be silently saying to yourself, “His brand of Islam.” Already apologizing for his actions as not being representative of ALL Muslims? Let me get this out of the way, all Muslims are not terrorists, and many are good, kind people. On the other hand, most terrorist attacks and nearly every suicide bombing in the last twenty years have been perpetrated by a Muslim and/or in a Muslim country. If you are about to say “Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing,” please stop as that proves my point. You are looking for one data point that’s 22 years old while overlooking hundreds of thousands or millions of dead in the name of Islam. Islam is on fire all over the world, but for some reason many good people overlook that reality and that’s both scary and troubling.  

If you ignore these truths, then you are much more likely to make a moral equivalent between the Jews fleeing the Nazis and Syrians fleeing the Islamic State as justification for your belief that America should take all Syrian refugees. America is not an unending life boat, and the Syrians are only one of many people slaughtered or displaced by radical Islam or other political problems around the world. But we can’t and won’t let every person in need, come live in America. And that forces us to pick ones who can be productive members of our society, and refrain from taking the U.S. down and killing Americans along the way. Frankly, it’s stupid to let anyone come to America if they want to undermine your belief system, unravel your political institutions and kill your people. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about either.  

I want to talk about what was known about Nidal Hasan, and why so many good people, including military officers and even the FBI, overlooked the facts. Lots of information was known about Hasan. Lots of information was overlooked. Lots of quality intelligence was rewritten to make it look less Islamic focused. There was so much information out there that any reasonable person would have concluded that Hasan needed to be discharged from the military and monitored very closely, as he was a threat to national security. But that’s not what happened. Hasan got promoted. Hasan bought a gun. And then Hasan killed Americans in the name of Islam. And political correctness is to blame. Because smart people didn’t want to be branded “Islamophobic”. Yet the information was clear and he was going to kill.  

I am stupefied by what was overlooked and why. What follows is just a few select portions of the nearly 100-page report addressing the Fort Hood attack, entitled, “A TICKING TIME BOMB COUNTERTERRORISM LESSONS FROM THE U.S. GOVERNMENT’S FAILURE TO PREVENT THE FORT HOOD ATTACK.” I dusted off the old news clippings and Congressional report as I was teaching my Politics of Information class about intelligence. Not the smart kind of “intelligence,” but rather the unearthing-secrets kind.  

This is only a small part of the scathing U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Report:

• Although both the public and the private signs of Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism while on active duty were known to government officials, a string of failures prevented these officials from intervening against him prior to the attack.
• Evidence of Hasan's radicalization to violent Islamist extremism was on full display to his superiors and colleagues during his military medical training. An instructor and a colleague each referred to Hasan as a "ticking time bomb." Not only was no action taken to discipline or discharge him, but also his Officer Evaluation Reports sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism.
• FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) …learned that Hasan was communicating with the Suspected Terrorist…

As noted, DoD possessed compelling evidence that Hasan embraced views so extreme that it should have disciplined him or discharged him from the military, but DoD failed to take action against him…  

(Click on the link to read the whole report: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Fort_Hood/FortHoodReport.pdf?attempt=2)  

In a joint CBS/AP article on July 19, 2012, entitled “Lawmaker: Report Shows FBI Ignored Accused Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hasan Out of Political Correctness,” the article begins “The FBI was too concerned about political correctness and did not launch an investigation into a man who was later charged with killing 13 people in the 2009 attack in Fort Hood, Texas, despite significant warning signs that he was an Islamic extremist bent on killing civilians, according to a lawmaker briefed on the new report.”   

Everyone overlooked endless hateful acts and compelling evidence, including those done in front of military brass, because they didn’t want to be accused of being a Muslim-hater. If Hasan had been a neo-Nazi, everyone would have been comfortable taking action, and the event would have been averted. But we are just too afraid to speak truth.  

Oh, I forgot Rule #4. I tell my students to take in as much information as they can on a topic from multiple sources with differing political views. So, read the National Review and The Nation. Read the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. Expose yourself to different ideas and attack your own beliefs as that will make your analysis more complete and your thinking more rigorous.  

By the way, it’s OK for a white person to say, based on the evidence, that Michael Brown died because he attacked a Ferguson police officer in his police car, and because he assaulted the police officer hitting him multiple times and because he tried to wrestle the officer’s gun away from him. Brown was a punk, and if he was white or purple, he would still have been a punk. His punk status comes from his actions. His dead status also comes from his actions. And according to Obama’s Justice Department, Brown’s death had nothing to with the officers’ views towards black people. It’s OK to talk about racism, no matter your color. We need to speak truth or we will implode. For that matter, the President needs to be able to brand “radical Islam.” Stop searching for the “right” words, and just use the honest and accurate ones.  

What we need is for everyone to be allowed to speak their truth. You can be honest and kind. Speak softly and listen intently. Let the other person have more air time than you. Don’t try to change thinking, simply and respectfully share your view. There is way too much rancor and not enough listening.  

If you listen more, you will start to hear that good people have ideas, while different than yours, are nonetheless worthy of consideration. I believe if the FBI agents felt comfortable merely reciting the truth about Hasan, those 13 soldiers would be living today.  

Yes, Political Correctness kills, and you don’t need to be an accessory to murder. And Political Correctness is killing the American soul. And that is what I wanted to talk about.