It's been a great couple of weeks for people who believe America is on its way to tearing its national fabric into a million little racial, religious, ethnic and socioeconomic pieces.

We've witnessed the horrific slaughter down in Fort Hood, Texas, in which an American-born Muslim army doctor killed 13 soldiers.

Meanwhile, over in Connecticut, the father of a 9/11 victim is protesting his town's decision to erect a memorial to his deceased son. What could possibly be the objection?

Peter Gadiel, whose 23 year-old son worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, has argued that any memorial to his son should also mention that the victims of 9/11 were "murdered by Muslim terrorists."

The town does not want to put these words on the memorials. And this got Fox provocateur Bill O'Reilly's Irish up.

On a recent "Culture Warrior" segment on his show, O'Reilly slammed town officials for being too sensitive.

"If I were an American Muslim family, and I'm law abiding and a loyal American, that doesn't bother me," O'Reilly said.

Then the ever-Hibernian O'Reilly said, "I'm an Irish guy, the IRA killed a lot of civilians … if somebody says the IRA killed a lot of people I don't have a beef."

Amazing. You know, people such as O'Reilly have often proclaimed that certain people think too much about religious and ethnic differences. They like to say that such thinking splits us apart, when deep down we are all American, we are all human.

But, okay, if O'Reilly the Irishman suddenly believes in the supreme importance of religious and ethnic distinctions, I wonder what would actually happen if, in Belfast or London or anywhere else there are memorials to the those lost in the Troubles, an effort was made to point out the religion and ethnicity of the killers and killed.

That would really contribute to the healing, wouldn't it?

Funny, many Irish Americans managed to hold anti-IRA views without setting their beliefs in stone.

Meanwhile, one wonders what O'Reilly would say if some demagogue in Iraq or Afghanistan stood up and said that the grave marker of every person killed by U.S. soldiers, or security forces supported by Americans, stated that fact.

O'Reilly would call this guy an America-hater who was trying to stoke the flames of anti-Americanism. And he'd be right.

So, what's really going on here?

Mr. Gadiel, who lost his son, has a right to grieve anyway he wants. He is entitled to his belief that Muslim terrorism needs to be exposed.

But public memorials are not the forum for such issues. Forget whether or not such a statement would offend Muslims. It sets a dangerous precedent.

Such memorials, at their best, should capture the solemnity of the person or event being memorialized, but also our culture's ability to come to some sort of consensus.

There's nothing wrong with argument or debate. What is wrong is O'Reilly using his Irish heritage to make a really questionable comparison so that he can stay ahead of the curve when it comes to competing with his fellow Fox talking heads Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

There was one more shocking incident in recent weeks which didn't nearly get as much attention as I thought it would. Late last month, federal agents killed the imam of a Detroit mosque, Luqman Ameen Abdullah.

Federal court papers described the imam as a separatist Muslim intent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

His son, a well known actor and comedian, believes the FBI is engaging in a witch hunt.

The son's name is Omar Regan, a surname nearly as Irish as, well, O'Reilly.

Now, I don't know if Regan's mother is Irish or if that's just some stage name.

Some used to believe that was the glory of America, that your identity could shift and change and you would still be judged by the content of your character.

There are plenty of bad people out there. But we're going to lose this ongoing culture war if we lose sight of the people, and instead dwell on their religion or ethnicity or whatever.

It was thinking like that which nearly led to the Irish being run out of this country 150 years ago.