9/11 + 10

It's only a couple hours after midnight and I've already seen numerous shows about 9/11/01, the day the USA was attacked by a bunch of slobbering rabid maniacs who are much better off dead.

Apparently 9/11 has been so thoroughly covered over the last decade, and perhaps some of the shock and numbness has worn off, but this year the media is carrying some very interesting stories about the actual people who died in the WTC, the Pentagon, and Flight 93, instead of just reporting the details of what happened.

A quote: "We shall never stop war, whatever machinery we may devise, until we have learned to think always, with a desperate urgency and an utter self-identification, of single human beings."

That's from Victor Gollancz, who was a British pubisher and rather left-leaning.

Something I learned while writing a novel about the US Civil War, is that it's not enough to believe you are right about something, you also have to take into account the consequences of your actions as you promote your views. This character in my novel was all anti-slavery and totally fired up about the Civil War, and without once backing off that view, was compelled to face the cost of that view in terms of horribly mangled soldiers and the possibility of losing the USA all together.

Some things are worth fighting and dying for, if that's their price. Personally, I'd rather be dead than live as a slave -- to a plantation boss or a government that has overstepped its bounds and is ruining my personal liberty, forcing me to work 14 hours a day to pay taxes or have my old and obsolete property confiscated. And I totally despise those who want to push me into a situation where I'm forced to defend myself. Every goddamn day. Every goddamn day.

We all have the right to be wrong, but we don't have the right to impose our views on others, make them pay for our "morality," or whatever, whether that "morality" is based on the Koran or on Karl Marx and Das Kapital.

You have to always consider that although whatever you believe in is documented and clearly demonstrable, somebody else might happily accept a lot of irratioinal hooey and will fight you if you try to make them give it up. I figure people can believe whatever they want, as long as they don't expect me to pay for it -- or to join them in supporting it. We are not "all in this together." We live in separate skins.

You know, the Founding Fathers taught "toleration" as strenuously as they promoted individual liberty. Like Thomas Jefferson, who would tolerate almost anything that "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." I think he'd be horrified at the notion of "political correctness."

But getting back to 9/11, if I've left it... We forget that the families at home waited for days and even longer in many cases to find out whether or not their spouse, parent, sibling, friend was dead or alive. Heard stories over the last couple days from NY firefighters who were the lone survivors of their squads. The guilt must be overwhelming.

What amazes me is that in such a shocking (and I mean like medical shock) situation, so many people stopped to help other people, looked around for others to help, went back into the buildings to help others. And some of them perished. Private citizens, too, not only those trained for rescue operations.

I don't believe "selflessness" is a good thing. You can't help others unless you are in a better situation than they are. But this all happened on Wall Street, you know? Two giant towers housing one of the planet's most intense concentrations of "greed" and "fat cats." That's what made them targets, isn't it? Living the American Dream? Freedom and its result, prosperity.

And finding out more about exactly who these people were, as individuals, just emphasizes the tragedy of that day.

Save the Republic.