On September 11, 2001 nearly 3,000 people died when terrorists attacked the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Now the survivors are being attacked by people carrying the banner of political correctness.

Where you would expect to find a memorial filled with artifacts of the tragedy designed to bring to life the memories of 9/11 you will instead find a shrine to political correctness and an expiation of liberal guilt. When it opens in 2010, most of the so-called International Freedom Center will be devoted to a series of cringing mea culpas for America’s alleged mistreatment of slaves and Native Americans and prisoners in Abu Ghraib, along with the tragedy of Soviet gulags and the Third Reich’s Holocaust.

Debra Burlingame sits on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. She is also the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. She wrote in The Wall Street Journal in June that visitors to Ground Zero will “want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

“Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.

“While the International Freedom Center is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach visitors how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground.” Debra added that there is simply no room for most of the cherished artifacts salvaged from Ground Zero. “But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees.”

This outrage is the work of a collection of far-left crazies, including the anti-American ACLU, who are dishonoring the memory of those who died and their survivors in order to promote their corrupt agendas. They want us to acknowledge our alleged guilt for what happened to Native Americans and slaves even though not a single one of us ever killed a Native American or mistreated a slave, much less ever owned one.

I don’t go to Pearl Harbor to read how Native Americans or slaves or victims of the Holocaust suffered, or silly reasons why the Japanese were justified in attacking us. I go there to honor fallen Americans who died while serving our country.

If we allow these whacked-out liberals to get away with this we will deserve the scorn of every American who loves this country and honors those who gave their lives in its service.

This is an outrage, but you don’t hear about it in the mainstream media. CBS, NBC and ABC are too busy trying to pin the results of a national disaster in New Orleans on the president to tell the American people what is going on at Ground Zero. The protests of the survivors of those who perished on 9/11 go unheard.

I’ll give the final words to Debra Burlingame: “The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hangar at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center’s multi-million-dollar insult.

“Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?”

Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s new book “Twice Adopted”. Order autographed books at www.reagan.com. Email Comments to mereagan@hotmail.com .

(c)2005 Mike Reagan. If you’re not a paying subscriber to our service, you must contact us to print or web post this column. Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc. Cari Dawson Bartley email Cari@cagle.com, (800) 696-7561