The concept of culture seems to have eluded the political left in America. By this I don´t mean good music, art and cinema – although a quick glance at what passes for entertainment today certainly reinforces such a judgment. I mean culture in the wider sense, for it is culture that underlies and therefore determines the values and manner in which the majority of people in a nation live their daily lives.

The culture of the Western world grew out of Christian values. Among these are the immense value and significance of each human life, as demonstrated by God´s willingness to sacrifice his own son, Jesus, rather than destroy humanity because it had failed to meet His standards. Another is the concept of human equality: Our differences shrink to insignificance when confronted with the glory, power, holiness and majesty of God. Thus with the widespread growth of Christianity, earthly kings suddenly found themselves accountable to God for the governing decisions they made. "Lex Rex" turned the world on its head, and ultimately helped give birth to America.

Today, there is another culture vying for America´s attention. The values underlying this culture are watered from the deep springs of Islam. We see it expressed in "honor killings," forced religious conversions, women held as property and the slaughter of noncombatants to generate a day´s headlines.

When confronted with the stark contrast between a Christian and Islamic culture, the wealthiest and best-educated media the world has ever known turn their heads and mumble excuses. Thus you have the ritual Islamic murder of a Christian family who fled to America dismissed as a burglary, as Joseph Farah details in "Jihad in Jersey City":

Yet, the media´s focus hasn´t been the horror of this kind of centuries-old anti-Christian persecution apparently coming to America. Instead, there has been a concerted effort, it seems, to downplay this gruesome slaughter as some kind of anomaly, to search desperately for motives other than religious hatred – in effect, to ignore the kind of oppression that Christians and Jews in the Middle East have been experiencing since Islam became dominant in that part of the world more than 1,300 years ago. I don´t like it.

In Iraq, truck drivers have their heads sawed off by Islam´s followers, aid workers who have devoted their lives to that country are drawn and quartered for recruitment posters, and the American media can´t stop wailing about the terrible evil of America´s inquisitors marching terrorists around with panties over their heads. This is the focus of individuals who live in utter, complete and self- imposed exile from reality.

Such widespread ignorance has been fostered by the modern academy under the guise of "education," when in fact all that today´s academy provides is technical training on the one side of the compound, and leftist indoctrination on the other. Academia´s gatekeepers worship at the alter of affirmative action when it comes to hiring leftists of the correct skin color, but demand the ability to silence religious or conservative voices with whom they disagree. There was a time when the university sought truth.

We have now arrived at this curious point: Today we have feminists who decry Christian efforts to reduce infanticide (partial-birth abortion), but are strangely silent when an Islamic father or brother murders a daughter or sister to protect the family "honor" were she to marry an infidel. We have homosexuals railing against America´s failure to sacrifice the next generation of its young to homosexual marriage, but silent on the Islamic Taliban´s favored treatment for the homosexual malady – which is to toss its practitioners from the roofs of tall buildings.

Leftist city governments demand the curtailment of Christian churches, while they roll out the red carpet for Saudi-funded, Islamic mosques. Portland, Ore., home to a number of these mosques, has refused to cooperate with federal efforts to stem terrorism, yet as the Seattle Times reported on Tuesday, the FBI is aware of terrorists who have trained in Afghanistan and other training camps, pledged death to Americans, and who are living in Oregon:

"[Special FBI Agent in Charge] Jordan contrasted the known "jihadists" living in Oregon with the so-called "Portland Seven," a group of seven Portland-area people accused of plotting to wage war against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. One of them was killed in combat; the six others returned to Oregon, where they eventually pleaded guilty to all the charges against them.

Note the reporter´s efforts to shield Islamic terrorists in the story: The use of quotes surrounding the words to describe them, and the word "accused" despite guilty pleas to all charges.

We have the largest, richest media in history, but it is staffed with reporters and editors too uneducated and self-absorbed to ask meaningful questions, or even to report the facts as they actually occurred. Thus our public "debate" becomes a series of "he said, she said" press releases by ideologues on either side of an issue, packaged into 15-second sound bites and video segments.

News stories that raise disturbing questions about the underlying motives of other cultures are relegated the bit-bucket and cutting- room floor. Today´s media are cut from the same cloth as those before them who referred to murderous Mao as an "agrarian reformer" while he murdered millions of Chinese who disagreed that communism was the answer, regardless of the question. They are the same people who lied about the Vietnam War while promising the public "that´s the way it is."

Our collective shame is, we believed them. (© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. 01/27/05)