What Is The Freedom Center?

Ever since the Freedom Center was announced as one of the cultural tenants of Ground Zero, observers have been asking exactly what the center is. So far, we’ve been told mainly what it isn’t: “It will not be a palace of pro-American propaganda… or a place for sentimentally commemorating victims of the Sept. 11 terrorists.” But the center’s organizing principal – “looking at different parts of the world transitioning from tyranny to freedom” – sounds an awful lot like American flag-waving, and the center’s developer is a longtime friend of President Bush.