Kathy Platoni's piece in the Wall Street Journal should get the widest of attention:
It was more than five years ago that the gunshots rang out, but those of us who survived can still hear their echoes. On Nov. 5, 2009, an Army psychiatrist named Nidal Hasan—an American radicalized by extremist Islamic beliefs—opened fire on his fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 14 people, including an unborn child, and wounding 32.
I was there. A beloved friend, Capt. John Gaffaney, died at my knees. I was slated to become the shooter’s direct supervisor and later learned I was at the top of his hit list.
That day has faded from the minds of most Americans. But the survivors and the families of the
deceased continually relive its horror. They also continue to face betrayal by the government they served.
***
At about 1:34 p.m., Hasan, seated in a building on base and armed with an FN five-seven pistol and a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, paused to bow his head. Then he stood up from behind a cubicle, shouted “Allahu akbar!” (God is great) and began spraying bullets throughout the room. Soldiers, including my friend John, charged the shooter but were gunned down before they could reach him.
Hasan took direct aim at those in uniform, including 21-year-old Pvt. Francheska Velez, who had disarmed bombs in Iraq and recently learned she was nine weeks pregnant. One survivor testified that she heard Velez plead, “Please don’t, please don’t. My baby, my baby!” Hasan shot her in the chest. Velez was headed home to Chicago for leave. Instead, she and her child died on the floor at Fort Hood.
The shooter continuously reloaded his weapons as unarmed soldiers tried to escape. After he left the building to continue his rampage, others dashed inside, secured the doors with a belt and began rendering emergency treatment. The floor was so slick with blood that those responding later said they found it hard to reach the wounded and dying.
Hasan exchanged gunfire outside with civilian police Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was struck in the thigh and femur. As she fell, her weapon reportedly jammed and the shooter kicked it from her grasp. Finally, 10 minutes after the massacre began, Hasan was downed by five shots from another civilian police officer, Sgt. Mark Todd, and taken into custody.
Investigators found 146 shell casings inside the building and another 68 in the surrounding area. The shooter had almost as many unused rounds, 177, tucked in his pockets in 20- and 30-round extended magazines.
Hasan’s goal was to kill as many soldiers as possible. He was cold-eyed and systematic. We should have seen him coming.
The FBI and the Defense Department possessed sufficient information, collected over several years, to have detected Hasan’s radicalization. During his training, Hasan routinely and unmistakably violated strict standards by communicating with suspected terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki—email that the FBI intercepted. In 2007 he was required for his residency to give a scholarly psychiatric presentation. Instead he lectured on Islam, stating that nonbelievers should be beheaded and set on fire, and suggested that Muslim-Americans in the military pose a risk of fratricide. In another talk, Hasan justified suicide bombings on grounds that the U.S. is at war with Islam.
Both an instructor and a colleague referred to Hasan as a “ticking time bomb.” But his shocking conduct was ignored. Officer-evaluation reports “sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism,” a 2011 congressional review states. Political correctness, to which the military continues to bow, led many to fear that reporting Hasan would result in career-ending charges of racial or religious discrimination.
***
It is a gross miscarriage of justice that no one who supervised the shooter—overlooked his behavior and promoted him—has been held accountable.
The rest, detailing what victims have experienced since that shooting, should be read by all.
The cancer that is political correctness is in fact an idol, refocusing society from actual truth to manipulative faux truth purposed in establishing a new social standard.
Sadly, we are allowing it to happen to us largely because we're so quick to turn our backs on Truth Himself.
The Rev. Val J. Peter expounds, in part:
Every epoch, including our own, has its own idols. One of our challenges is to find ways to avoid the Gospels being shackled in service to them.
Political correctness is one of the idols or secular sins of our times. Sometimes it is described as being trendy, up-to-date, attuned to the times and worthy of praise. Political correctness is not the same as being stylish or following the fads in the clothing industry. There is correctness there, but it is not political. It is different from the cultural norms of society, which involve customs and mores. European society is different from African society. The difference is not about political correctness. New England hospitality is different from southern hospitality. That is not about political correctness. Political correctness has to do with movements that set a new social standard to be imposed on others by an elite group. What makes it a scourge is that it insists on forced conformity for the sake of conformity.
Political correctness has been around for centuries. What is new in this post-modern age is the use of super sophisticated tools of social manipulation to help people gradually change their view without being conscious of these efforts of social manipulation.
...
Pope John Paul II reminded the bishops of Ireland in June 1999: "Christianity teaches the truth, a truth which, we ourselves, have not devised, but which comes to us as a gift . . . " He then added that they should "proclaim the truth courageously, even if what you teach sometimes goes against socially accepted opinion."
In Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II said: "If there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power".
Read the whole thing.
Be aware of what's happening and pray for a turning tide.
