Juan Williams was fired by National Public Radio on Wednesday night for remarks he made on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News Channel show on Monday night. When asked by O’Reilly if America is facing a dilemma with respect to Muslims, Williams said this:

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

National Public Radio is funded in part by your tax dollars and it’s run by a bunch of liberals.

This radio station is funded by the advertisers in this community and by my personal investment in it. I own this radio station so it’s harder to fire me. Therefore, I’m going to say with less fear of retribution than that which Juan Williams suffered that I agree with him. It is undoubtedly unfair to law abiding, peace loving Muslims that I feel this way but I’m human and I care first and foremost about my safety and that of my family. Thus, as a result of the fact that nearly every high-profile act of evil that has occurred in the past two decades has been carried out by Muslim men under the age of 35, it’s not unreasonable to be somewhat nervous when you see such an individual getting on an airplane. Terror is a powerful conditioning agent. That’s why our enemies use it.

If industrial scale terror were being carried out by old Scotsmen we’d be cool with Muslims but afraid of Scotsmen. If the planes that were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been flown by redheaded, kilt-wearing men sporting thick mustaches, smoking Meerschaum pipes and speaking in thick brogues, we’d say to ourselves in the airport gate lounge, “Oh oh. Look over there. A Scotsman.”

Such a reaction is not only reasonable, it’s necessary. If we were incapable of spotting patterns that were portents of danger, if we could not learn to associate danger with its source, we would not survive. Every sentient creature does it. And to say that we shouldn’t flies in the face of our very nature.

That includes NPR’s CEO Vivian Schiller. If she is sitting in the gate lounge at Reagan National in Washington, D.C. or at JFK and sees three young men of obvious Middle Eastern extraction waiting to board the airplane she’s about to board, you can be sure she thinks about what happened on 9/11 and who did it. If she tells you otherwise, she’s lying.

I say again, this is unfair to law abiding, peace loving Muslims. But it is instinctive. Living things react strongly to the stimulus of seeing members of their own species killed.

Juan Williams is no right wing ideologue. If you don’t know who Williams is, he is a longtime news analyst for National Public Radio, an author of books on the American civil rights movement and from what he has said on countless TV appearances, a liberal. Oh, and one other thing. Juan Williams is an African American.

If Juan Williams can’t speak truthfully about what’s on his mind for fear of politically correct censure, our republic is in trouble.

On NPR’s website, a portion of its mission statement says this,

The mission of NPR is to work in partnership with member stations to create a more informed public – one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.”

If a member of NPR’s editorial staff can’t say in an interview what he legitimately feels or thinks about those who have conducted terrorism, the mission has failed.

Memo to the 112th Congress. When you do the appropriations bills, don’t use any more of my money to fund NPR. Let NPR live off money like the $1.8 million it just accepted from George Soros.

The fact that they took Soros’s money but fired Juan Williams should tell you all you need to know about NPR.

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