In 2010, NPR fired analyst Juan Williams after he told a Fox News host that he was afraid of flying with people in “Muslim garb.” The episode quickly became a rallying cry for the right, including for E.W. Jackson, now the Virginia GOP’s nominee for lieutenant governor. Shortly after the episode, Jackson wrote a column for American Thinker accusing liberals of treating Williams like a “slave” who “dares to leave the plantation of liberal orthodoxy.”
This “lashing” of Williams, Jackson wrote, happened because “the far left — which NPR represents — does not have the same visceral reaction to the suffering inflicted on Americans on 911 because they believe we brought it on ourselves.” A “normal response” to 9/11, Jackson writes, was displayed by passengers of a plane who were “traumatized” when a number of Muslims on their flight decided to pray before boarding, in what Jackson calls “a bizarre display calculated to disturb those who witnessed it.”
When escaped slaves were caught, they were lashed into submission. This was intended not only as a warning to that particular slave, but to the entire plantation of black servants to stay in their place. Liberals do the psychological equivalent of this to any black person who dares to leave the plantation of liberal orthodoxy. After working over a decade for liberal National Public Radio, Juan Williams was summarily fired, publically ridiculed and told to see a psychiatrist. Liberals have a proprietary attitude toward blacks and other minorities. When anyone one of us dares contradict leftist thought, they try to punish us severely.
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One of my daughters saw a group of Muslims board a plane and sit in different sections. Their behavior caused her such anxiety that she got off the plane and took another flight. My daughter is not a racist or a bigot. We are black and have Muslims in our family. Are we to believe that it is bigotry to admit that the terrorist acts of 911 actually terrorized us? Signals which remind us of that horrific day evoke anxiety, a normal human response to terrible trauma. An entire flight was traumatized when a group of Muslims decided to have open prayers in an airport just before boarding a plane. The passengers became frightened by what seemed a bizarre display calculated to disturb those who witnessed it. Were they also bigots?
Two things are at play here. First, the far left — which NPR represents — does not have the same visceral reaction to the suffering inflicted on Americans on 911 because they believe we brought it on ourselves. America, in their view, is imperialist, greedy and militaristic. Therefore, we do not dare ascribe fault to any group but ourselves. It is alright to say “extremists” attacked us on 911 because America has its own extremists. It is not acceptable to identify those extremists as Muslims. Liberals do not view Juan Williams’ expressed “feelings” as intellectual honesty, but as proof of his own and America’s bigotry. That is the warped thinking of the left.
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The way he was fired demonstrates that it had nothing to do with any objective assessment of his professional conduct. A man who worked for them for ten years had become a political enemy and they meant to harm him financially, emotionally and professionally. When a slave escaped from the plantation, it wasn’t merely a case of one slave being a problem. That slave became a threat to the institution of slavery and to the master’s way of life. The response was brutal or the slave was sold off, i.e., fired. The attempt to break free was a personal affront to the slave master. “After all,” he thought, “I’ve been good to my slaves. Why would they want to be free?”
[Emphases are mine]
