It was a beautiful day in Amherst, New Hampshire—it was 85 degrees and the kids couldn’t wait to get down to the old schoolhouse for Open Tent night. Sure, Open Tent night…never heard of it? You will. It’s the latest schoolhouse craze and if the PC crowd and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have their respective ways Open Tent night will be a recurring event until everyone has converted to Islam. Oh, joy-joy! It was Pretend-To-Be-A-Muslim night at Amherst Middle School, that’s what it was. Ethan Allen must be scratching his head.

Amherst was founded in 1733 under land grants obtained by veterans of King Philip’s War. Horace Greeley was born in Amherst. So was Frank Selee. Who was Frank Selee? Selee was a famous baseball manager. He’s in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. Nobody remembers him today but he put together baseball’s most famous double-play combination—Tinker to Evers to Chance. What Johnny ‘Crab’ Evers would have though of Open Tent night at Amherst can only be imagined. The chances are it would not have been politically correct. Evers was closer to Ethan Allen than to John Esposito or Tokyo Rose.

The affair drew more than 250 guests. Security was tight. Guests had to check in at a Saudi customs desk. A what? A Saudi customs desk? Of course, haven’t you ever been to an Open Tent? It’s beyond make-believe and it’s so much fun. Each guest chooses an Arabic name, is given a badge and then fills out a Saudi customs form. Well, for land’s sake! Isn’t that something! At the top of the form is the warning: Death for Drug Trafficking.

But this is a tale of two tents and the other tent is on the other side of the world and it is much smaller and a lot sandier. The following episode illustrates just how small. Close your eyes and make believe you are dreaming. Brian O’Connor, 36-years-old, a Christian from India, was beaten severely by religious police in that other tent for possessing a Bible and other Christian literature. He was sentenced to 10 months and 300 lashes. He was eventually deported to India. He was lucky he wasn’t dealing in drugs. Possession of the Bible is against the law in Saudi Arabia. Last year a Saudi court sentenced a teacher to 40 months in prison and 750 lashes. His crime? Discussing the Bible and praising Jews! He was charged with mocking religion and promoting a dubious ideology. This is not what the rubes, ah, make that what the guests in Amherst were being told about what was going on in the other tent. But they are not the only ones buying—pardon the un-Islamic expression—a pig in a poke.

On a recent visit to Princeton University, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal spoke eloquently on the wonders of Islam. “Arab tradition and Muslim tradition is geared toward an open mind,” he said. ”Muslim religion accepts Christians and Judaism.” Sure, like Jeff Davis accepted Frederick Douglass and the Frankenstein monster accepted the Wolfman. Open Tent: Closed Mind. They go together like Paris and Hilton. Lester Maddox would make a better next-door neighbor than any Turki from Saudi Barbaria. Don’t they have a Republican Club at the Amherst Middle School—somebody to sell Star of David T-shirts to Hunter Thompson wannabes?

Seventh-grade boys hosted food stations—there was lamb, three kinds of chicken, peta bread. No pork rinds, no pork chops, no hamburgers. Pigs are impure. They are 7th on Islam’s list of impure things—one step below the 250 guests at Open Tent night. Figure it out—non-Muslims are 8th on the impure list. Eleventh is the sweat of things that eat impure things. A non-Muslim (Nr. 8) who owns a dog (Nr. 6) that eats impure things and sweats a lot is in big trouble. Think of what fun Seinfeld and Kramer could have had with that story line—before the fatwa, of course.

This is no drill. A Muslim checkout clerk in a Minneapolis Target store refused to handle pork because of its impurities. She had to call for assistance—like a janitor who doesn’t do toilet bowls. Why did she take the job in the first place? One would like to think it was stupidity, but with Muslim cab drivers refusing to transport seeing-eye dogs and booze-toting customers while noisy Imams a few yards away are testing airline security makes one wonder. Would the clerk have displayed the same reluctance if the product involved had been a suicide bomber’s belt? No one asked.

The guests at the Amherst Middle School Open Tent were separated by sex. Men and boys were on one side, women and girls on the other. Drapes were hung from the ceiling to prevent Blondie from enticing Dagwood into some lewd act. Can’t be too careful.

Seventh-grade girls were busy hawking hijabs and veils. Rosie O’Donnell should have been there. There was an antique trunk full of black abayas—like the one 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi wore when she was hung in Iran for talking back to a judge. Atefeh had been arrested for prostitution, for not resisting a rapist to the death and had given the judge a piece of her mind. The judge’s name was Haji Rezaie. Write that down somewhere. Rezaie makes Roland Freisler, head of the People’s Court in Nazi Germany, look like a schoolboy. When Rezaie reaches the Pearly Gates, let’s hope Judge Roy Bean is the Gatekeeper.

There were prayer rugs, books on Islam and call to prayer items for those interested in religion. The prayer rug came with a compass to make it easier for an aspiring John Walker Lindh to located Mecca. This particular item could be of some use to Tom Tancredo should he ever be elected President of the United States. He might need to locate Mecca in one heck of a hurry.

Among the cultural items on display were Arabic newspapers and magazines. The sponsors avoided using the word Muslim. It was Arab this, Arab that. The Center for Religious Freedom made a study of the literature available to Muslims in American mosques. Samples were gathered in Washington, DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego and elsewhere. After a lengthy evaluation, the Center released an 89-page report. The findings were less than encouraging. The report said the publications found in the mosques stressed that when Muslims are in the lands of unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines. Either they should acquire knowledge and make money to be used in jihad against infidels, or proselytize until some convert to Islam. Saudi textbooks and other publications propagate a Nazi-like hatred of Jews, treat the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and proclaim the Muslim duty to eliminate the state of Israel. The Imams’ ready answer is, “Nobody reads those books.” And nobody in Nazi Germany read Mein Kampf. It was an Open Tent for a Closed Religion.

One might expect Jethro and Bubba, and maybe George Utley, to fall for this Open Tent nonsense but for the great-grandchildren of tight-fisted, flinty-eyed Yankee Sea Captains to swallow, hook-line-and-sinker the Wahhabe line is distressing. Sure, the Open Tent was to promote curiosity and cultural understanding but it pays to read the fine print before signing a contract. All the political correctness in Amherst wouldn’t have kept Atefeh Rajabi from the hangman’s noose. Cultural diversity didn’t prevent Brian O’Connor from being severely beaten in Riyadh—it was the reverse, it was the cause of the beating.

The folks in New England have lost their moral compass. They no longer know what it is to be an American. The Sea Captains knew and were willing to chance going down to the sea with their ships—tight-fisted, flinty-eyed, superior to their descendants, they were men and women, American men and women and proud of it. Political correctness is not a religion, multiculturalism is not a philosophy; they are recipes for disaster. People who believe they are no better than anyone else, are not only not better than anyone else, they are not as good as most and on the way to extinction.