Columnist Susan Snyder: She’s right: Ignorance breeds hate

Friday, Nov. 30, 2001 | 3:54 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column also appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Call me unpatriotic.

I think ignorance breeds hate.

You do, too? Gee, then we belong on the list -- the one of unpatriotic Americans compiled by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The nonprofit group was founded by the U.S. vice president's wife Lynne Cheney and Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat.

But fret not. We're in good company. Las Vegas' Wasima Alikhan ended up on the list for saying "Ignorance breeds hate" during a September open house at a local mosque.

A Las Vegas Sun report published earlier this week explained how her quote ended up in an Oct. 4 Canadian newspaper column. The Canadian author was exploring colloquial uses of the word "breed" and erroneously identified Alikhan as being from the "Islamic Academy of Las Vegas."

From there, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni's Purloining Patriots of Prose plucked it and placed it 49th on the list of 117 "morally ambivalent" quotes included in its report, "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America And What Can Be Done About It."

Wordy bunch.

Lazy, too.

For not only did these Presumptuous Purveyors of Protest take Alikhan's quote out of context, they didn't even check to see whether there is an "Islamic Academy of Las Vegas" or find out whether she indeed works there.

There isn't and she doesn't.

Alikhan sells jewelry at Wal-Mart.

The council's president told the Sun that the staff didn't have the time or resources to track down the veracity or exact origin of every quote.

Nope, they were too busy lambasting the nation's universities -- the places to which we give big bucks so young adults can learn to think for themselves -- for having professors who "refused to make judgments" about the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes for evil," the report says.

Cripes, string 'em up and hide the women! Yer darn tootin' this is the "land of the free" -- so long as we all agree to think the same things.

The report doesn't list the names of the people who made the quotes. To find the context from which they were swiped, you have to read the appendix and trace those references back to the sources.

If they didn't know one of their "university officials" actually works at a Wal-Mart, how much more of the report is completely false or made up?

Talk about unpatriotic. Hidden sources. Quotes used without attribution. Presenting false material as fact and using it as the basis for trying to strip a free society of its freedoms is about as ugly as it gets.

Look out in the parking lot. Does your car have an American flag on it? Then feel free to question your government and the motives behind this, or any, war. It's what the flag stands for.

On the cover of its report the council quotes an Oct. 5 speech by Cheney (we can only assume they made time to at least quote her accurately). It says:

"We need to know, in a war, exactly what is at stake."

What's at stake is the freedom to stand up in a meeting in your hometown and say what you think.

Ignorance breeds hate.

And we can't forget that.

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