Director, Commonwealth Policy Center

Twelve years ago our nation changed forever. We were jolted out of a routine morning of school and work when we heard news of an airliner crashing into the World Trade Center. Then a second plane struck.  We were under attack. “But why?” everyone asked.

Since then, our military has suffered nearly 20,000 casualties in Afghanistan alone—2200 dead and 17,000 wounded. Bin Laden, the perpetrator behind the attack is gone, killed when our special forces discovered him hiding in Pakistan.

We’ve since endured sniper attacks around Washington D.C. and Columbus, Ohio: a military recruiting office bombed in New York; one recruiter killed in Arkansas; congregants at the Seattle Jewish Federation attacked and killed; students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill mowed down; and soldiers killed by a maniac at Fort Hood. Of course, most recently we suffered the Boston Marathon bombings which left three dead and 180 maimed and injured.  There have been other attacks and scores of Islamic extremist plots foiled by the FBI.

Yet something strange happened in September of 2011. The highest levels of our federal government restricted within the Defense Department mention of jihadi ideology or Islamic religious motivation behind terrorism. There is one word for this: censorship.  Certain training material mentioning al-Qaeda has been banned and the Gatekeepers of Information carefully filter the language and dismiss those who fail to comply.  As a result, the Fort Hood shooting became known as “workplace violence.” And the Boston Marathon bombing became “violent extremism.”

We all know better. Even the simplest among us know that shouting “Allah Akbar” while mowing down your fellow soldiers with a machine gun probably means a little more than you are having a bad day at work. We know that when Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar plowed into six pedestrians with his SUV in North Carolina and later said he did it to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world," it was motivated by more than just waking up on the wrong side of bed that day.

We all know. Even if we cannot say it.

Big Brother might manipulate information, but it will result in being less informed. They might pervert the language, but we will be less able to communicate truth. And they might marginalize those who speak clearly and accurately, but it won’t make our enemies like us any better.

This is not even political correctness. It is however, flirting with death.    Should we continue on this path of stupidity, we as a society are likely to be in the running for a Darwin award.