9/11

It's hard even to know how to remember this day. We didn't do anything formal here, no community services or anything, but we did talk about it. The kids don't remember--David wasn't even born and the girls were 3 and 4. Matt and I read this earlier this evening, though, and I thought it was worth thinking about:

"... the only reason 'a box-cutter can bring down a tower' is because on September 11 our defenses against such a threat were exclusively the province of the state. If nineteen punks with box-cutters had tried to pull some stunt in the parking lot of a sports bar, they'd have been beaten to a pulp. The airline cabin, however, is the most advanced model of the modern social-democratic state, the sky-high version of the wildest dreams of big government; it's Massachusetts in cloud-cuckoo land. So on September 11 on those first three flights the cabin crews followed all those Federal Aviation Administration guidelines from the seventies.

By the time the fourth plane got into trouble, the passengers knew the government wasn't up there with them. And, within ninety minutes of the first flight hitting the tower, the heroes of Flight 93 had figured out what was going on and came up with a way to stop it...On the fourth plane, they didn't follow the seventies hijack rituals. On Flight 93, they used their cell phones, discovered that FAA regulations weren't going to save them, and then acted as free men, rising up against the terrorists and, at the cost of their own lives, preventing that flight from carrying on to its target in Washington. On a morning when big government failed, the only good news came from private individuals.

For thirty years, passengers surrendered more and more rights for the illusion of security, and, as a result, thousands died. On the fourth plane, Todd Beamer and others reclaimed those rights and demonstrated that they could exercise them more efficiently than government. The Cult of Regulation failed, but the great American virtues of self-reliance and innovation saved the lives of thousands: 'Let's roll!' as Mr. Beamer told his fellow passengers.


That's been my basic rule of thumb since September 11: anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing, not just for the war on terror, but for the national character in a more general sense."

--Mark Steyn, America Alone



I hope it never happens again, but fear it will. The state, federal, and volunteer emergency management people assume it will; it's just a matter of time. God have mercy on us, and God bless the USA.