National fairy tales.

We have long thought that the distinguishing characteristic of contemporary American life is a steadfast devotion to absolute fairy tales.

For example, there is the fairy tale that Islam itself poses no threat to this country. And you'll wait in vain for any official expression of alarm over what Islam is doing to transform Europe into Dar al-Islam.

The despicable Al Sharpton is allowed to share a platform with Democrat presidential, mind you, contenders; corporate shakedown artist Jesse Jackson will get a respectful TV interview any time of the day or night he picks up the phone; and the execrable white-hater Louis Farrakhan can believe that there is a giant spaceship hovering in space over the earth but be lionized for organizing a march on Washington for who knows what.

John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper, killed 10 innocent people in cold blood and good luck finding any mention of, let alone emphasis of, his former membership in the fruitcake Nation of Islam or the black militant Islamic group Jamaat al-Fuqra. The latter group's the one that actively recruits among black ex-cons and is one that the inestimably fine Gates of Vienna has followed closely. Muhammad's admiration for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda also receive little play in the reporting about his reign of terror and its origins. And won't.

Why upset everybody?

Ninety-five percent of the intellectuals of this country can't explain why fascism is a purely left wing phenomenon. They also cannot draw a short, straight extrapolation from the historical experience of countries with mild state controls over the economy (with mild loss of freedom) to countries with total state control (and huge loss of freedom coupled with mass killing and degradation of life).

The wholesale murder, torture, starvation, and oppression that were the essence of life under communism are to the leftist intellect what stealth bomber technology is to radar -- virtually invisible. And regiments, divisions, armies, and corps of leftists at this very moment pine for ever more state control over every aspect of our lives as though there is no continuum from here to that pitable "there."

When Ronald Reagan spoke of the Soviet Union as "the evil empire" -- the very mildest of sobriquets imaginable -- the left acted like he'd undertaken to discuss the symptoms of scrofula, gangrene, and cancer of the eye at the family Thanksgiving dinner table.

Above all there cannot be an honest discussion in this nation of the true disparity in black and non-black crime rates:

As long as blacks commit crime in numbers wildly disproportionate to their representation in the population, police data are going to show higher involvement with blacks than with whites. According to victims and witnesses, blacks committed 68.5 percent of all murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults in New York last year, though they are only 24 percent of the city’s population. Whites, who make up 34.5 percent of New Yorkers, committed 5.3 percent of those crimes. Blacks are nearly 13 times more likely to commit violent crimes than whites.

These are the figures just for New York. Regardless of where the data come from, you can be sure of one thing: there WILL BE NO HONEST DISCUSSION ABOUT IT.

No. We must only indulge ourselves in the fairy tale of the evils of baseless, "racist" "profiling." And order endless reports analyzing and decrying this "insane" practice.

And . . . we must go on searching all those wheelchair-bound grandmothers at airports lest anyone accuse us of searching according to a rational profile of those most likely to commit terrorist acts in our country, viz., dark-skinned Middle Eastern- or South Asian-appearing males.

We can't lap them up fast enough, . . . those nation-killing fairy tales.

The brothers Grimm have nothing on us.

"Why Cops Stop and Frisk So Many Blacks." By Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, 2/7/07.