My New York Post column on the politically correct pusillanimity that gave us Major Hasan, the Fort Hood “soldier of Allah,” is up. Excerpt:

America bent over backward after 9/11 to assure Muslims that we weren’t at war with Islam. Our country offered the hand of friendship to people like Maj. Hasan — ignoring his radicalism, his praise of suicide bombers, his sympathy for Osama bin Laden and his belief that his religion, as the report notes, “took precedence over the US Constitution he swore to support and defend as a US military officer . . . Hasan’s statements about the primacy of religious law occurred as he was supporting a violent extremist interpretation of Islam and suggesting that this radical ideology justified opposition to US policy and could lead to fratricide in the ranks.”

He certainly was right about that.

Surely, a subject upon which principled conservatives can agree is that we must destroy “political correctness” in all its forms. Fascism of the mind and the tongue, PC is used by the Left as a bludgeon, in order to render discussion on certain topics (especially their little darlings, “fairness,” “tolerance,” and “diversity”) off limits.

Instead, let us heed the words of “Cato” (Trenchard and Gordon), quoted approvingly by Ben Franklin:

WITHOUT Freedom of Thought, the can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the Right of another. And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know.

This sacred Privilege is to essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors.