King, the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, came under fire as a hypocrite earlier this year when he launched his own hearings into "domestic radicalization" in the American Muslim community. Critics, including a civilian survivor of a 1990 Irish Republican Army bombing in London, called out King for being an unrepentant supporter of the I.R.A. King built his career in the Irish Catholic community of Nassau County as a pro-I.R.A. firebrand in the 1980s, and was even involved with a fundraising organization suspected of providing the militant group with money and weapons.

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Just in case you thought that "political correctness" had been thoroughly discredited in the culture wars of the 1990s, it's back -- and this time it's being treated as a stalking horse for terrorism and getting pummeled all over again.

You only had to listen to the recent hearings convened by New York Republican Congressman Peter King on radicalization and the Muslim religion to know that, if the ascending right in Washington (and elsewhere) has its way, the age of tolerance in America is over. In the name of putting political correctness in its grave, a surprisingly sizeable contingent of politicians, judges, and other influential figures are now calling for transforming draconian behavior -- that once would have made Americans blanche -- into the order of the day.

Blaming Political Correctness for Terrorism

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There is a dual lesson in recalling what Madison and Jefferson did in embracing freedom of religion while sending warships to silence pirates and bullies on the shores of Tripoli. Their prescience may surprise you.

Echoes of "what the founders believed" reverberate all the time, especially coming from the lips of those with axes to grind who are seeking scriptural support from the Constitution. Take the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Long Island congressman Peter King, who opened his remarks last week on the threat posed by radical Islam by charging "special interest groups" with having caused "hysteria" in anticipation of the extended hearings he is now orchestrating. Actually, he has it backward. Hysteria is what he is feeding.

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Yesterday Rep. Peter King was mocked on The Daily Show, and today he's in the New York Times for his longtime support of the Irish Republican Army -- which killed hundreds of civilians in attacks against the British. While acknowledging that "terrorism is terrorism," the New York politician made no apologies for his support of the IRA, telling the Times that "the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States."

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For some background, check out some of our past coverage: civil liberties groups voiced concern that King is running a witch hunt; King's past support for the terrorist IRA came under scrutiny; and King backed off some more controversial anti-Muslim witnesses after criticism.

1:50 The hearing ends with a brief statement from Rep. Thomas Marino (R-PA) defending the hearing itself (he also invokes the inevitable "I have many friends who are Muslims" line). Indeed, much of the hearing was taken up arguing about the propriety of the hearing. Marino also assures a Democratic colleague that he would be on board with a similar hearing about the KKK and Christian terrorism in the future.

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To this day, even while he's taking a hard line against Muslim terrorism, King still describes the IRA as a "legitimate force." (At the same time, King wants to brand WikiLeaks' Julian Assange a terrorist.)

At least one victim of an IRA attack has called out King for his "hypocrisy." So, for the sake of the record, we thought it would be worth collecting a few of King's more striking quotes about the IRA when its campaign of terrorism was in full force. None of this is to say that terrorism is not a complex issue that deserves to be considered in a nuanced way. But now that King is chairman of the Homeland Security committee and taking the lead looking at terrorism, it's worth knowing his history.

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King is in the news right now because he's holding a hearing Thursday on "radicalization" of U.S. Muslims, and many people have pointed out the contradiction between his defense of Irish terrorism and his opposition to Muslim terrorism.

Now, King's standard of good versus bad terrorism seems to have a lot to do with whether King supports the cause in question, but has also specified some characteristics of acceptable terrorism. Here's what he told the Times:

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Write the groups:

"[T]he Committee, like law enforcement, must distinguish between First Amendment-protected ideological beliefs – whether radical or not – and criminal terrorist activity or plots. Only the latter may properly be the subject of official inquiry. Congress simply has no business examining Americans’ religious or political beliefs in official hearings – even if these beliefs are considered 'radical' by some."

The letter also raises the specter of McCarthyism:

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The New York Republican says the IRA and al-Qaida are very different -- the IRA was a narrowly focused homegrown movement while al-Qaida has attacked the U.S. and other countries. King said in an interview Tuesday he was right to advocate that the IRA be brought into peace negotiations to stop the violence.

King will preside over Thursday's congressional hearing, which has sparked protests on grounds it unfairly targets Muslims. King says he believes the Muslim community should do more to renounce al-Qaida and work with law enforcement.

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In advance of the hearing, King is making the media rounds, and he made a telling comment to the New York Daily News over the weekend:

Muslims, he said, have a “misguided” belief that they were victimized by a backlash of hatred after the Sept. 11 attacks. The congressman argues the hate they feel is imagined, and Muslims need to put aside any fears they have towards official America and police.

"I think a lot of that is a self-imposed fear they have, and that seemed to put them underground, put then in a sense of non-cooperation," King said. "I'm hoping that the hearing will bring this out, and encourage people in the Muslim community to come forward and realize that they should cooperate."

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King is a loudmouthed creep who frequently says bigoted things about American Muslims, but he looks like he's actually treading carefully when it comes to his hearings. To the dismay of some of his ideological peers, who were hoping their feverish imaginings about the American Muslim menace would be lent credence by the House of Representatives, King has declined to call some of the more extreme anti-Islam cranks to testify, and he has invited the participation of Muslim congressman Keith Ellison.

While it'd be a mistake to expect too much in the way of seriousness from the hearings, he made news yesterday by hiring respected journalist James Gordon Meek, formerly of the New York Daily News, to act as an investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee. Meek actually knows his stuff, and isn't a bomb-throwing activist:

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“Look, when I meet with Muslim leaders, people who are successful in their community, it is clear that there is no support for al-Qaeda. I don’t sense that at all.” King says. “What I do sense is that they feel like they are under siege.” That fear, he says, is natural, but unfortunate. “If they did speak out, it would make them a much more positive force.”

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But King is now facing criticism from an unlikely source: the self-described "anti-jihadist" writers who make their living by crusading against Islam and would be expected to be King's biggest supporters. As blogger Pamela Geller (of "ground zero mosque" fame) wrote in the American Thinker last week: 

Methinks Representative King is a wee bit in over his head. I am filled with dread and sorrow at another lost opportunity. Doesn't King know he is going to be smeared and defamed for these hearings no matter what? So why not achieve something? Why not have the courage of your convictions?

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The problem all these ideas have in common, he points out, is that nobody has yet been able to get a handle on what actually caused the events. Instead, every proposal has been -- though well-intentioned -- reactionary, and not feasible in the long term. As he puts it, "a slow and thoughtful process that goes nowhere is infinitely preferable to rushing to pass the first crazy law that you barfed out of your brainpan while stewing in a broth of worry, adrenaline, and panic."

He lists each representative's proposed piece of legislation and makes strong cases for why they are either unenforceable, won't actually create change, or both. We've condensed the list here, so you can see who they are and what they're suggesting:

Representative Pete King, D-N.Y.

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Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, is planning to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, according to a person familiar with the congressman's intentions.

As I explored in a piece today, the chances that gun control legislation will pass through this Congress, even in the wake of the Arizona mass shooting, are slim.

But still, it's worth considering King's proposal. And if the goal is to prevent further incidents like the one on Saturday, it seems fair to conclude that King's legislation would not have any effect at all.

Consider if such a law had been in place when Jared Loughner went on his rampage Saturday. Nothing would have changed, except that he would now be facing one or two extra felony charges, on top of the five federal murder and attempted murder charges he already faces (and the state charges that are expected later).

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But for Tom Parker, an official at Amnesty International in Washington who hails from Britain, the distaste for King is personal. As Parker notes in a new Op-Ed, and explained further in an interview with Salon Thursday, he survived an IRA terrorist bombing in 1990 when he was 21.

"I have no problem with his support for a unified Ireland. What really bothers me is the hypocrisy of the man," says Parker, who is now policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International USA.

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GOP Congressman Peter King -- the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee -- had this rancid outburst today in Politico regarding Eric Holder's decision to investigate whether laws were broken by the Bush administration's torture:

"It’s bullshit. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on. [It's' a] declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense. . . . When Holder was talking about being 'shocked' [before the report's release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys' fingers off or something -- or that they actually used the power drill. . . "

Pressed on whether interrogators had actually broken the law, King said he didn't think the Geneva Convention "applies to terrorists."

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King also called the move a "declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense," and lambasted his own party's response to the move, which he saw as weak.

"They’ve declared war on the CIA. We should resist and fight back as hard as we can," King said. "It should be a scorched earth policy ... This goes to the heart of our national defense. We should do whatever we have to do."

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