9/11 - Six Years Later

If there's one function of the government that everyone agrees on, it's national defense. There's disagreement about whether it's the government's job to educate, to provide charity, to subsidize pornography, to create a fraudulent retirement scheme, to fund the "World Toilet Summit," to grow tobacco, to determine the proper size of holes in swiss cheese, and a whole lot of other ways the government thinks it knows how we should run our own businesses, but everyone agrees that the government's job is to protect us from attacks by foreigners.

On September 11, 2001, the government failed Job Number One.

We're told that a bunch of guys from Saudi Arabia hijacked four planes and rammed them into buildings, killing nearly 3,000 Amercans.

We spend billions of dollars on radar systems to track unidentified aircraft. We spend billions of dollars on fighter jets to intercept attackers. For what? Where were they six years ago today?

The government told us that they would punish their accomplices, but the government didn't look in Saudi Arabia, it invaded Iraq. The masterminds of the plot were said to be in Afghanistan, but our government allowed them to escape to Pakistan, which is where the hijackers got their money. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are said by our government to be our "allies," while Iraq, from whence none of the hijackers came, has been destroyed.

If you hired an exterminator to prevent termites, only to find that after hiring them your house became infested with termites, wouldn't you fire the exterminators? If they told you that you needed to pay them more money, and give them complete control over how you use your house, wouldn't you call the police? If they bombed your neighbor's house for no reason, wouldn't you not only fire them, but call an attorney to see about a lawsuit for damages?

But Americans have been willing to pay more money to the government, and surrender their liberties to the government. Nearly a majority of Americans believe that Saddam planned 9/11, and a majority of the hijackers came from Iraq. None did. After failing in its core responsibility, Americans now trust the government more than ever, as evidenced by the breadth and depth of control of their lives they yield to the government.

The terrorists undoubtedly had no illusions that they would, by their actions on 9/11, transform America into an Islamic Caliphate. Nor did they think of undoing "The Spirit of '76," and destroying what Jefferson, Washington, Sam Adams and John Hancock rought for. The terrorists had no such long-range vision, but were simply taking pot-shot vengeance on America for U.S. incursions into Muslim nations.

But I think the terrorists (or the government that created them) did in fact play a key role in destroying America and the Spirit of '76. September 11, 2001, may well be the most important date in American history. More important even than the birth of the U.S. on July 4, 1776. That birth has been swallowed up in death. If America's Founding Fathers could see America today, they would weep, and mourn the death of the America they fathered.