If Robert Frost was correct when he quipped that "a liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel," then America has descended into the depths of leftism. The systematic way in which government and the media have consistently followed the path of self-loathing and self-negation could be the source of great humor, if the matters being bungled were not so grave.

While the attacks of September 11th roused a dormant patriotism in the collective American bosom, it also unveiled how deeply entrenched public discourse is in political correctness. Day after day the "war on terror" brings more misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Most security measures are either window dressings for public consumption or usurpations of civil liberties by power-hungry elements within the bowels of bureaucracy.

The myths need to be dispelled and the elephant in America's living room needs to be addressed for the sake of that rarest of post-modern commodities - the truth.

Myth #1: Terrorism is not about Islam.

In fairness, someone did try to warn America to this sobering fact last fall in a Wall Street Journal editorial. The author, Amir Taheri, is a Muslim. He declared that "to claim that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam amounts to a whitewash." Some may think it ironic that a Muslim author is the one sounding the warning bell about his own faith. It isn't ironic in the least. Given the ground rules of politically correct discourse, only a minority may criticize a minority - only a Muslim may criticize Muslims.

Myth #2: Profiling is an evil to be avoided at all costs.

Profiling is an integral part of detective work and one component of the process is a person's race. When a cross is set ablaze on a black homeowner's lawn, you can guess that "white male" is placed atop the list of likely attributes of potential perpetrators. A white male is also most likely to be a serial murderer.

Truthfully, there is nothing in the genetic composition of a race that dictates social behavior. The real danger is that similar groups of people tend to share common cosmologies. If an ethnic group (pygmies for example) adopts an evil practice (cannibalism) in their world view, one may rightly call them backwards and savage - not because they are animists or short or black or from a different part of the globe, but because they have chosen to dine on human flesh. Terrorists are, overwhelmingly, Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 40 and from Middle Eastern ethnicities. If there doesn't exist a genetic predisposition to terrorism in the genes of peoples of the Tigres and Euphrates, then it must be their shared belief system - Islam.

If you are a young Islamic Arab male, you fit the profile for 19 of 19 terrorists of September 11th and you should be prepared to face additional security in airports.

Myth #3: Part of the FBI's failure on September 11th was lack of Arab or Muslim agents.

This laughable idea comes from the spin machine of the FBI's restructuring. Director Mueller has announced an Arab-American/Muslim affirmative action hiring policy as a part of the new proactive FBI. What Mueller or Attorney General Ashcroft have not done is explain exactly how having stuffy white-bread types at the Bureau led to the success of the attacks. If anything, there is evidence to the contrary.

FBI counter-terrorism special agent-turned-whistleblower Robert Wright has related an episode of some import. Wright asserts that while investigating possible Islamic terrorist activities, a Muslim special agent refused to wear an undercover wire, stating that "Muslims don't record other Muslims." Mueller and Ashcroft have not addressed this claim.

Uncooperative Islamic FBI agents aside, the FBI does not receive the lion's share of the blame for the incidents of September 11th. That honor goes to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Because of INS's incompetence, the United States is overrun with illegal immigrants - some are past terrorists, some are potential terrorists.

Myth #4: We must ally the "moderate" Muslims.

The truth be told, we don't understand who's who in the world of Islam. President Bush trotted out Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi as the imam of "peaceful Islam." However it wasn't long before Tantawi was advocating the suicide bombers in Israel.

Even Mullah Omar calls himself a "moderate" Muslim, in that his Taliban regime did nothing more nor less than is called for in the Koran. With casuistries like that, Omar should move to Washington. After all, the FBI is hiring.

C.T. Rossi writes on cultural issues for the Free Congress Foundation.

© This column is the property of the Free Congress Foundation and may not be reproduced without their permission. For comments and inquiries, contact Angie Wheeler at awheeler@freecongress.org. Visit our website at www.FreeCongress.org