The New York Post reports that the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero—which was at some point renamed the “International Freedom Center”—is morphing into “multimillion-dollar bash-America palace.”

The fireworks started earlier this month when Debra Burlingame, a sister of the pilot of one of the hijacked 9/11 planes, wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Ground Zero has been stolen right from under our noses.”

Burlingame, a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, specifically charged that [International Freedom Center president Richard] Tofel and others are planning to host exhibits at Ground Zero devoted to such wholly off-topic issues as the alleged “genocide” of Americans Indians, the fight against slavery, the Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag.

Worthy subjects for study, each and every one — but not at Ground Zero.

Tofel, for his part, insists that the controversy is all about nothing.

But when Cavuto asked, specifically, whether the museum would feature “atrocities Americans have committed,” Tofel repeatedly refused a direct answer.

“Atrocities is such a loaded word,” he stammered, the weasel.

[...]

“The International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you — and I — will disagree,” Tofel wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Debates?

Like, whether America is sufficiently sensitive to other cultures?

Whether Muslims — and non-Americans generally — need to protect themselves from U.S. “hegemony”?

How did this happen? The Post notes some of the more ideologically-driven people steering the project:

Tom Bernstein, an IFC founder, and Michael Posner, an advisor, also run the George Soros-funded Human Rights First, a bash-America forum of the first order. If you doubt it, visit the Web site: humanrightsfirst.org.

Board member Anthony Romero of the ACLU (aclu.org) reportedly wants exhibits on what he believes have been post-9/11 “curbs to civil liberties.”

Stephen Heintz, the board’s secretary, is with the Rockefeller Bros. Fund (rbf.org), which at present is concerned with what it terms the “pressing need to examine the content, style and tone of U.S. global engagement and to ensure that they reflect an understanding of the reality and implications of increasing global interdependence.” (Translation: Blame America First.)

Eric Foner, a Columbia University professor who, three weeks after 9/11, said he wasn’t sure which was more frightening, the attack or the White House’s response, is another adviser.

If the project proceeds, it wouldn’t be the first time such a memorial was taken over by the forces of political correctness, the Post says:

Ten years ago, the Smithsonian Institution proposed a seemingly benign plan to commemorate the 50th anniversary of end of World War II in the Pacific.

The undertaking swiftly morphed into a naked attack on American war motives, tactics and strategy that highlighted Japanese suffering and totally ignored the fact that Tokyo started the conflict.

That happens these days when academics are left to their own devices.

These developments inspired Debra Burlingame, the sister of the pilot whose hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th, to set up a “Take Back the Memorial” petition.