IFC Will Not Leave Ground Zero Without A Fight
Thursday, September 22nd, 2005The International Freedom Center, included in the proposed Ground Zero Memorial in New York, will not remove itself without a fight.
The International Freedom Center, a proposed museum that is facing expulsion from ground zero under pressure from angry relatives of 9/11 victims, will make a forceful new appeal today to stay at the World Trade Center site.
The museum’s decision to stand firm would force the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Gov. George E. Pataki to make a tough choice. They could either infuriate hundreds of impassioned relatives of those who died, or alienate influential cultural, academic and business figures, as well as family members who support the center.
The Freedom Center was chosen by the development corporation in June 2004 to occupy the cultural building on the memorial quadrant. It would portray the history and role of freedom around the world in exhibits and programs.
“You could not put it someplace else,” said Tom A. Bernstein, its chairman and co-founder.
But the Freedom Center is now fighting for its life, in part because some victims’ relatives do not want anything around the memorial that smacks of anti-American politics or detracts from the story of 9/11.
Regardless of what Mr. Bernstein says, the IFC needs to be removed from any planned memorial at Ground Zero. Put simply, the IFC is a forum for extremists and other America-hating liberals to spew their blame-America first rantings to the large number of visitors the memorial is likely to attract. Since no one in their right mind would willingly travel to listen to these crackpots, the crackpots are trying to hijack the memorial so they can leech off of it’s ability to attract visitors.
So, what kind of content can we expect to be presented at the IFC?
An exhibition on “The World and Sept. 11″ will greet visitors to the Freedom Center, which is to be housed in a building designed by the firm Snohetta. “Visitors will learn that Canada declared a national day of mourning,” the report said, “and that 100,000 people gathered at a service in Ottawa; that in Berlin the crowd numbered 200,000; that at a soccer match in Tehran, 60,000 people observed a moment of silence.”
Visitors will then be shown a brief orientation film, “To Be Free,” before proceeding to the Freedom Walk, a long concourse of historical displays that will wind around the perimeter of the building and offer views of the memorial, said Peter W. Kunhardt, the center’s other co-founder and its creative director.
Galleries off the concourse will cover freedom’s origins; historical documents; the evolution of freedom, as exemplified in an initial exhibit about the lives of Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and the “Four Freedoms” outlined by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of all people to worship God in their own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
Evening programs in the 300-seat Freedom Hall will be developed in cooperation with the Aspen Institute and a group of universities including City University of New York, Columbia University, New School University, New York University, Princeton, Yale and others. The hall will also be used by the TriBeCa Film Festival.
Did you notice, like I did, the almost total lack of material pertaining to the Twin Towers, the people who died at Ground Zero, and the rescue personnel who gave their lives to save others? I’m happy to hear that Canada had a national day of mourning, and that soccer players in Iran had a moment of silence, but these are hardly the types of things that visitors to Ground Zero will want to see. It is all very well and good to talk about FDR’s “Four Freedoms,” but it just isn’t appropriate, or relevant, in a memorial to the September 11 attacks.
Also, just what kind of programs will be developed for the “Freedom Hall?” Previous press releases from the IFC noted lectures and debates about America’s role in the 9/11 attacks and other outrageous topics. Again, these are completely inappropriate for the Ground Zero site.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The Memorial at Ground Zero should be about one thing and one thing only — the events which occurred on September 11, 2001. Nothing else is appropriate for this hallowed ground. Debates about freedom and America’s role in the world are just fine, but they do not belong at Ground Zero. The Memorial needs to be a place for people to visit where they can think about all that took place that day, the people who died that day, and how those who survived acted and reacted to the events of that day. Period. Anything else is pointless and, frankly, insulting.
Previously:
The Liberal Desecration of Ground Zero
Liberal Desecrators Respond
Cavuto: Stop It and Wake The Hell Up!
Far-Left Wack-Jobs Continue To Plan The Desecration Of Ground Zero
Take Back The Memorial: Why We Fight
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September 24th, 2005 at 12:03 am
So you see no validity in discussing representing what the attacks of spetember eleventh really should be percived as, an attack on the concepts of free market, equal rights, and the concepts of what makes America what it is? I feel you are completly foolish to belive the meaning of this attack was purley created to only damage human life and not the mental state of the United States and in part the entire free and democratic world? If this was the case it would most likley have been in the interests of the terrorists to plan a later flight allowing for the actual occupency of the building to be as near to capacity as possible. rather than the early hours of the day prior to the buliding really filling up. I think that you meerly argue agains the IFC because you feel they have vaugley leftist concepts. You, your writing, and this website have virtually no means to accomplish anything rather than feed the egos of you, and Ann Coulter.
I will never forget what occured september 11th. But I also will not begat violence with more senseless violence, the destruction of the moral and ethical basis of this Great Nation, and I will never let fear put for by terrorism, or those who seek to capitalize of that evil as means to further their own lives.
I hope you will contact me as I do not mean for this to be scene as a one time stab at your argument. I am interested to futher understand the hardline conservatives veiwpoint on both the United States, and furthermore the world.
-Thanks for reading, if you did fully and without bias.
-Benjamin.