Reflections on 911

Crusher

[crusher]

Last Tuesday I was scheduled to take off, as my wife was out of town and I stayed home with my daughters, whom we are home schooling this year. Between a number of activities, I knew nothing of the morning's events before I turned on the radio in my basement workshop around 10:30. Simultaneously, phone calls began flying about as friends were calling and being called, checking on the whereabouts of loved ones and friends who work in the Pentagon. Miraculously none of our friends were harmed, even though we know three persons who frequent the area destroyed, including one friend who was home sick and saw flames leaping out the window of his office.

My shock was accentuated throughout the day, as I learned the details of the barbarity in New York, and the news that an acquaintance of mine was on the plane that struck the Pentagon. We have all almost certainly lost someone we knew in New York, we just don't know who yet.

I think it is fair to say I was in shock until this morning. As I said to my wife, I feel myself getting sadder as time goes by, not the other way around.

The dam broke this morning, as I was home alone varnishing a new kitchen cart. My wife and daughters had gone up to a Red Cross fund raising car wash they had organized last night, so I was working quietly in the basement watching the news. As the memorial for my acquaintance was on t.v. I was momentarily irked by the fact that my hand was shaking as I brushed on the varnish, and I wondered why the little shop was filled with a gasping sound. It took a few moments for me to realize that my problems with the brush and the weird noise were because I was weeping uncontrollably, sobbing out loud as I have not done as an adult, just as I am doing right now as I record this note.

I weep for those who have died and those left behind, I weep for this nation, for I fear it no longer has the stomach nor character necessary for survival in a dangerous world. We have become fat and lazy, debauched and narcissistic. Any nation where Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton are held up as luminaries is a weakened, decrepit, self-indulgent place. Prevailing in our war against this evil is in doubt in my mind, because our libertine culture has become so relativistic that ideals such as virtue, good and evil, and liberty are not discussed nor practiced in polite circles while virtues of probity, responsibility, honesty, and faithfulness are derided as being "judgmental" and reflect being "out of touch." To quote CS Lewis, " We ridicule patriots, and wonder why we have traitors in our midst."

Damn, do Peter, Dan, and Tom and their fellow blow-dried-air-heads really reflect who we are? If so, then we, like they, are vile and loathsome.

I weep because we have allowed ourselves to be placed in such peril: we said nothing when the malevolent bedwetters in positions of leadership eviscerated the institutions that protect us. I weep for a culture that allows hatred of liberty and prosperity to be promulgated and fostered and subsidized and treated as legitimate through indoctrination camps in Berkeley, Madison, Ithaca, Boulder and other havens of trotskyite collectivist academics, that allows and encourages such impulses to become public policy. I weep for a nation so foolish that it refuses to hold to account those public figures who despise the values and practices that made us the greatest secular entity this planet has ever seen. And finally I weep for a people that will sacrifice liberty for the illusion of safety.

"Those who surrender liberty for temporary safety deserve neither" - Benjamin Franklin

In order for us to survive as a nation, we must treat the monsters who did it as we treat infections. Half measures are not adequate. If you stop taking antibiotics before your infection is eradicated, it comes back strengthened and virulent. To deal with the infection of terrorism, we must eradicate its practitioners and sympathizers. On Tuesday we witnessed the results of half measures, of failing to deal definitively with Saddam in the Gulf War, in failing to deal with Bin Laden and his ilk ever since, of failing to stand up to the Tiananmen murderers.

I can only hope that enough of us are not only willing to die for our place, our way of life, and our liberty, but we are also willing to kill for them as well. Because that's what it's going to take.

When this chapter of history is over, literally millions of people will have died. The only unknown is who they are. Ours, or theirs?

From the Belly of the Beast

Crusher 9/15/01

[Hank Kerchief]

I'm afraid you are right, crusher. I have very little confidence this country has the stomach for doing what needs to be done, or even if what is left of this nation is worth saving.

Whenever I see some kid on a bycycle with a helmet on, I know the adults they belong to are training another mamby-pamby who'll cry if anyone says anything "mean" to him and who'll run from the first thing that might cause a little pain or trouble. (If someone had told me I had to wear a helmet when I rode my bycycle as kid, I never would have ridden it again.)

What's to save in a country consisting of sissies with the "love-everybody" morals of whores.

Hank

[easy1]

I am afraid you are not right Crusher!!!

you sure can talk and you sure can use the words well

but you are not functioning under any kind of significantly enlightened awareness which holds certain truths to be self evident!!!

Put your BS back into Your PC and go home.