Thoughts About 9/11 {2009}

September 16, 2009

I’m back from vacation and caught up on the news of the week and (surprise surprise) I have something to say about what happened on 9/11.

President Obama, in my humble opinion, had a real chance to still the spirit of America on September 11th and he ruined it by declaring a ‘National Day of Service’. Obama (who didn’t even go to New York City) calling for a nation day of community service (which in and of itself I don’t think is all the bad an idea, though why citizens should have to serve on the command of the government is a little unsettling) on 9/11 is in poor taste.

To add insult to injury; Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, reduced the remembrance of those who lost their lives during those horrific attacks to a call for the rest of us to help stop the spread of the H1N1 flu virus.

This year, Americans across the country will honor the victims and heroes of the 9/11 tragedy by serving their neighbors and communities as part of the first-ever federally recognized September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance. Service projects marking the eight-year anniversary of September 11, 2001, will take place in all 50 states, ranging from food drives and home repairs to neighborhood cleanups and disaster preparation activities. Attached is the President and First Lady’s Call to Service.

In the spirit of service, we’re asking for your help to stop the spread of the H1N1 virus by forwarding the “5 Things You Need to Know About The Flu” (attached) to at least 10 of your family members and friends – and ask them to forward the attachment, too. Sending this information to as many people as possible is a simple way you can help prevent illness across the country this fall.

So there you have it. Pass this email along and for all intents and purposes your act of service has shown reverence to the fallen. Just be sure to think of those people jumping from the World Trade Center as a last hope that they might be saved when you click that forward email button.

You know, there has been a lot of comparison trying to be made between President Obama and our nation’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. I’ll make another comparison. Here is Obama’s 9/11 remembrance speech followed by the Gettysburg address. Both speeches were given in remembrance of lives lost on American soil and the spirit of one doesn’t come anywhere near the spirit of the other. (Emphasis mine)

Obama’s:

On this first National Day of Service and Remembrance, we can summon once more that ordinary goodness of America to serve our communities, to strengthen our country, and to better our world. Let us renew our common purpose, let us remember how we came together as one nation, as one people, as Americans, united not only in our grief but in our resolve to stand with one another, to stand up for the country we all love.

This may be the greatest lesson of this day, the strongest rebuke to those who attacked us, the highest tribute to those taken from us, that such sense of purpose not need be a fleeting moment, it can be a lasting virtue. But through their own lives and through you, the loved ones that they left behind, the men and women who lost their lives eight years ago today leave a legacy that still shines brightly in the darkness and it calls on all of us to be strong and firm and united. That is our calling today and in all the Septembers still to come.

Lincoln’s:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

To supplement of any inspiration I might have taken away from President Obama, here are the two quotes I always think of when I remember 9/11: