Posted on 08/11/2003 9:16:07 PM PDT by forty_years
Plans are underway to observe the 2nd anniversary of the September 11th atrocities. This time around there will be less ceremony, something simpler and planer. In the squeaky voice of New York City's least illustrious Mayor, [t]his will be the second time that we as friends, as families, and as one community, will gather to remember a tragic day which has become synonymous with not only great sorrow and loss, but also courage and resilience.
O.K., there's no gainsaying these words. But where, in all the possible reactions to an act of war against innocent civilians on our own shore, is the rage? Where is the seething hatred about what was done to us? No, I don't mean the Mayor, or anyone else, should vent bile about the terrorist hi-jackers or wish them eternal barbeque torture in Hell. We don't need to be like the enemy, etc. But if death no longer has its sting, rage has lost all its bite.
I keep thinking that many Americans, and by that I mean most Liberals and the Left (I would exclude the far Left because they do know how to hate), are deeply immersed in a culture of therapy and soft emotions. Heal the wounds. Overcome by self- understanding. Leave behind the anger. Search within yourself for the power of love to overcome all hate and violence. See beyond the carnage and bloodshed to reveal the innocence of all creation. Or, simply get over it.
Well I won't. Since that day I have burned with an anger and hatred that will not die until I am secure that our enemies are not only defeated but utterly destroyed. That may very well mean I'll die hating the enemy since their destruction will likely occur after I'm gone. No, I don't walk around with an evil scowl on my face and bark hateful remarks at old ladies and children. I laugh, I dance, I have good times. I live my life even more fully now since 9/11. But hate I do. And holding a grudge? You bet.
There is something effeminate about a culture that emphasizes healing and, in the Mayor's words, to see 9/11 as a day on which we turn toward the future. No, Mr. Mayor. Not true. The future I look forward to with respect to 9/11 is the destruction of our enemies. Period. I'm already there, in the future, way ahead of you about feeling good about life after 9/11. I don't need therapy from you.
Part of the decadence of what I call "feel-good" culture comes from the growing number of people, who mostly live in intensely urban centers like New York, who feel no allegiance or loyalty to the land of their birth and upbringing. Patriotism, which they confuse with nationalism, is not only alien to them, it is a source of embarrassment. They are set of individuals who, instead, belong to an international class of consumers and fellow-travelers. Even if they don't travel they might feel more solidarity with the Palestinians, with whom they will have virtually nothing in common, than the families who lost loved ones on 9/11. By this I don't mean one should hate the Palestinians, but I would argue for some heart-felt rage on behalf of our own, including immigrants, who died on our soil that day.
Unfortunately, this class of people is growing and will become more palpably the enemy from within, a disturbingly powerful class of individuals who, unknowingly and with perhaps the best of intentions, undermine the great traditions of the West. John Fonte calls them the "transnational progressives," who dismiss the nation state as outmoded and favor international institutions such as the United Nations as the ultimate arbiter of justice. There is no allegiance to one's homeland and its traditions. Similarly, the rights of the individual, hallowed in the West, are undermined by a growing allegiance to the group. In short, identity politics.
To insist on the pain only and not the rage, to intone solemn words about the future of hope, to speak of healing in the face of mass-murder having occurred only two years ago while the nation is still in deep peril, is to steal the real emotion that is appropriate for what happened on 9/11: damn and tireless rage. Yes there are sorrow and tears. But where is the anger that our nation has been deeply violated and wounded? Where is the call of honor to exact justice for what happened to us?
Nowhere to be found. When you belong to the world as enshrined in John Lennon's sickeningly saccharine song "Imagine," whose monument to the permanently stunted adolescent hope of world peace is set in stone not far off from where he died by the gunfire of a mad man, can you, then, imagine a world where people must care for their own, first, before they venture on some pretense that they actually care about others whose land and culture and history and customs are utterly foreign?
How do I want to observe 9/11? I want to see plenty of firemen and policemen march in their pre-dawn processions of last year, which will not be happening this year. Why not, Mr. Mayor?
Another thing. The media refuses to show footage of the airplanes crashing into the buildings. Refuses to show people falling to their death. Why?
Because our therapeutic culture of refined sensitivities, which in reality have numbed a large sector of our native population beyond the ability to truly feel, has forbidden we watch those images. We supposedly can't handle them. They're too graphic. Too grotesque.
I say bring them on to remember why we fight and why we must destroy the enemy.
No, I don't mean the Mayor, or anyone else, should vent bile about the terrorist hi-jackers or wish them eternal barbeque torture in Hell. We don't need to be like the enemy, etc.
We don't become "like" or "unlike" the enemy based on 'how we fight' or 'how we feel.' We are unlike the enemy in WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR. We could slam airplanes into Mecca and we would not be "like" the enemy. First, we'd be retaliating, not initiating, and second, we'd be fighting to protect the world from a totalitarian ideology that has plunged 1 billion people already into poverty and fanaticism. JMHO.
Except for Palestinians, of course.
Again, thanks for posting this.
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