Pinging the Mark Steyn Ping List.
On or off, please FReepmail me.
Cheers,
knewshound
knewshounds blog
Posted on 02/13/2009 12:01:24 PM PST by Tolik
The "war on terror" went away with George W. Bush, but there's still a postscript here and there to be attended to. If you're one of the dwindling band of Americans interested in the Flight 93 memorial, this exchange with the presiding honchos of the "Circle of Embrace" (formerly the "Crescent of Embrace") makes for glum reading:
“In your depiction, who is breaking the circle?”
“The passengers and crew,” said [Memorial Project Manager] Reinbold.
“But the circle is a symbol of peace,” Rawls continued. “Who broke the peace? It was the TERRORISTS who broke the peace on 9/11.”
Reinbold countered that that the circle is also a Druid symbol, and a Christian symbol.
“But it is still a symbol of peace,” said Rawls, especially as the Memorial Project is using it, with the circle being broken on 9/11, “so who breaks it?”
“It was the passengers and crew,” [Deputy Superintendent] Newlin repeated, elaborating that: “They are the one’s who brought the plane down.”
“You don’t think it was the terrorists who broke the peace?” Rawls asked.
“They TRIED to break the peace,” said Newlin, “but they failed.”
“Really?” asked Rawls: “They failed to break the peace? What about the 40 murdered heroes?” But Reinbold and Newlin were done talking.
I've no idea whether the conversation is accurate in all its particulars: It seems perversely obtuse, even for the midwives of this wretched memorial. But let's not get into the weeds of what the "circle" means. To wind up chasing these guys through the circles in their circles and the wheels within their wheels is to lose sight of why "Let's roll!" wound up as a Crescent roll. There shouldn't be any limpid circle of effete hand-wringing in the first place. It's not what this thing was about. As James Lileks wrote here a couple of years back:
If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.
9/11 was Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid on the same morning—Flight 93 serving as the latter. If the stone eagles aren't an option, I'd rather see Todd Beamer, Thomas Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, and the other forgotten heroes of 93 in the pose from that Incredibles poster below with "LET'S ROLL!" chiseled in ka-powie Marvel Comics Jack Kirby lettering. Their story is one of action, not limp enfeebled passivity. Which says more about America today? What those guys did? Or how our culture chooses to memorialize them?
Anybody got an architect’s drawing of this obamination?
We are weak...civilization is always held up by the fittest..survival of the fittest. The definition of fittest changes...at first it was “most physical”...then it was “highest intellectual”..and now it’s the “strongest-willed” And who exactly fits that description now? Not us. But you know who.
Maybe we can meet together there some day, when my family goes up to Cumberland for a vacation. Preferably this year!
This whole WTC rebuilding fiasco has shown just how weak-willed we've become as a people. If we'd been like this after the Pearl Harbor raid we might still be to this day "debating" the best way to rebuild that facility and take the fight to the enemy.
Mr. Newlin is wrong. It was Ziad Jarrah, the hijacking pilot, who decided to bring the plane down in Pennsylvania, as evidenced by audiotapes.
Toynbee speaks about Challenge and Response. Civilizations grow greater or die according to it's responses to challenges.
I will tell you this, friend.....we will keep drinking from this bitter cup until we get so low that we will be sick of ourselves and our children begin hating us....then and only then, I predict, will America rise up and settle historical scores...and if we are to be truly healed it must start with the traitors of the sixties....you will know this nation is regaining it's health when obscenities like this memorial are destroyed by the government and traitors like Jane Fonda, if still alive, will be tried as a traitor, convicted, and hung, and the media applauds!
And if we never regain that strength of righteous hatred that we had after Pearl Harbor we will be finished and deserve it.
Interesting times, indeed.
Why don’t a bunch of people get together and make a human cross, and memorialize the occasion with some aerial photographs?
I’m tired of being chastised.
You post once a month and now come here and say “Shame on freepers”.
First of all, it’s FReepers.
Second, you have no clue what we each have done.
I’m part of the Smackdown list, attempting to take down terrorist videos on YouTube,
I’m on the Digg list trying to get conservative values into the “New Media”
I’m Twittering and writting Congress critters. At this point, I don’t really care about the Shanksville Memorial. I have bigger things to think about than this crap. It won’t matter at all what you think when the Marxists take over and you chastise us for letting this happen?
What have YOU done?
Thanks!
All I want to know is when is Mark going to sub for Rush again? He is a bit torrent seeder of wit and witticisms
There is a tune that goes-— “Don’t doubt yourself babe”
“I don’t really care about the Shanksville Memorial.”
33 replies and one flametard. Gee, I feel so rebutted and chastised. Thank you for taking time away from washing the dishes, single-handedly sealing the border and writing the constitution on the head of a pin.
Go back to the DU, nimrod.
>>There is a tune that goes-— “Don’t doubt yourself babe”<<
I’m sorry if I offended you. Seriously.
It’s just that I’ve seen tons of these “FReepers should be ashamed of not doing enough.” When it seems like we are the ONLY ones who are acting on the theft of our freedom and liberty.
How many of us are military or family of?
How many actually lost loved ones on 9/11?
How many have given time, sweat and tears to TRY to make the country better?
I’m weary of FReepers slamming FReepers, stating that we do nothing. We do a lot. The DC people are heroes and none of us deserve to be chastised for inaction.
Again, sorry.
Steyn is always right on target with his comments.
“Which says more about America today? What those guys did? Or how our culture chooses to memorialize them?”
There really are Two Americas today. There are what I think of as “real people” — the people who live more or less normally, raise their families, try to get or keep a reasonable job, love their country and their families passionately, and are ready to “roll” when that awful occasion presents itself...
And then there are the Chattering Classes. The ones who parse everything so much that there’s nothing left when they get through — no love, no resolve, no heroism. The Chattering Classes have corralled our media, they have captured our schools, they have a lock on what is considered “art” — and I guess they have a lock on what is an appropriate memorial, as well.
We must take our country back. Peacefully, quietly, but we must take it back.
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