At this writing, less than a fortnight has passed since the anniversary of radical Muslims' murders of 3000 American citizens in the Twin Towers.

This mammoth atrocity left indelible imprints on the national consciousness: accounts of victims leaping from skyscrapers to avoid flames; bodies lost forever beneath rubble of stone and metal; and the anguish that haunts survivors, remaining loved ones, and rescuers.

Most Americans would say that giggling about that cataclysm, or rallying to its perpetrators' side, would never be morally appropriate. We don't tell Holocaust jokes, and we don't make light of 9/11.

But decency is not universal.

Devo founder Jerry Casale was wed on this last Sept. 11. At the reception, he and bride Krista Napp posed, beaming, behind a mock-twin towers cake adorned with their faces. Guests were given party favors: fake box cutters with the happy couple's names.

TMZ got photos and posted them, leading to much criticism of Casale and to the musician's inevitable denial. It was a "set-up," he claimed.

Casale's wedding cake-and-boxcutters didn't irreverently plumb for dark humor in some taboo theoretical abstraction. It exploited for disposable, cheap laughs a real-world horror that cost real lives.

But his offense  was soon overshadowed.

In her 9/20 Des Moines Register/Gannett column, "Muslim kid's arrest for clock shows ongoing bias," Rekha Basu cast the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist actions as logical and legitimate products of (wait for it) American intolerance.

After deriding elected officials' identifying of one source of terrorism as "scapegoating," Basu finger-wags: "This is creating a toxic, contagious us-vs-them mentality. Do that long enough, and a population feels under siege. Yet we can't understand why some US-raised and schooled Muslims with privileges occasionally join up with radical Islamists."

In other circumstances, Basu would denounce such victim blaming, Here, she founds her fellow-traveler faith upon it.

Basu's urging that homicidal terrorists' atrocities be indulged illustrates an emerging and ugly anti-justice philosophy. Other recent manifestations include Hillary Clinton's notorious admonition that Americans should "empathize" with their enemies and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's concern that rioters be allowed "room to destroy."

I have a better idea: Let "Never Forget, Mock, or Excuse" forever be America's 9/11 guide.

DC Larson is a science fiction novelist, blogger, and freelance journalist. Previously on the staffs of Rockabilly and Pin Up America magazines, he has contributed writings to American Thinker, Counterpunch, Daily Caller, Huffington Post, OpEdnews.com, and Independent Political Report, among others. Newspaper credits include USA Today and the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He served as Iowa Coordinator for Ralph Nader's 2004 presidential campaign.

His blogs are http://www.AmericanSceneMagazine.blogspot.com, http://www.RetroRiffBooks.blogspot.com, and http://www.DamnationDanceParty.blogspot.com. He may be contacted at dcltrueleft@yahoo/com.