For The Powers Of Heaven Shall Be Shaken

A photo of New York firefighter Edward James Day is placed on his name at the 9/11 memorial reflecting pool. Photo credit:  Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images

I spent the day yesterday wiping my eyes and grinding my teeth as I sifted through photographs of the heartbreaking swiftness and cruelty of 9/11. Sixteen years have passed and the sorrow still runs deep.

Thousands of 9/11 victims' relatives, survivors, rescuers and others are expected to gather today at the World Trade Center to remember the deadliest terror attack on American soil. 

“A solitary candle, a flag, a tear, these are the tokens of our renewal,” was how Tony Snow began his “Parting Thoughts” segment on Fox News Sunday on September 16, 2001.

He barely made it through while reading the words he had written down in the minutes before the show aired that day:

"The United States had a spirit before it had a name─one of faith and freedom, of ambition tempered by piety. We once were a nation of neighbors and friends, we are again today. We once were a nation of hardship-tested dreamers─we are again today. We once were a nation under God─and we are again today. Our enemies attacked one nation, they will encounter another, for they underestimated us. Today in our grief and in our rage, our determination and hope, we've summoned what's best and noblest in us. We are again Americans."

Are we Americans again?

A decade and a half later a horde of savages spread around the world and skulking here among us are still bent on our destruction.

Hate-filled celebrities used their Twitter accounts to compose death wishes for supporters of President Trump during hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  Democrats of every stripe hang by a fraying thread of hope they can successfully impeach the man who embarrassed their party and utterly humiliated their deeply flawed and corrupt candidate for president.

During Irma’s destruction, looters ransacked evacuated homes and businesses.  For weeks before the arrival of the cataclysmic weather that struck Texas and Florida we’ve seen extremists trying to destroy America from within.

Today we are concerned with remembering our darkest day and we will weep for what was taken from us.  Tomorrow we will move on. 

But what are we moving towards?  America is being destroyed from within as much as from without. What the nation has become, through death by fire, bravado, war, forgetfulness, treason, and vulgar asininity could not have been prophesied on September 10th, 2001.

We will never be able to undo the pain of that day or the barbarity that is unequaled in our history.  I will lower Old Glory to half-staff at sunrise and raise her again at sunset as a tribute to those whose names were added to The Lamb’s Book of Life and pray for a more gracious and civilized America.  

The Spirit Of America

Photo credit:  Ethan Miller/Las Vegas Sun

Edmund Burke once said, “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill.  Our antagonist is our helper.”  Burke lived during the 18th Century and is remembered primarily for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionary War and the thirteen colonies that were struggling to break free of the British Empire.

Today, America wrestles with the filthy heresy of Islam and the Muslims who wish to do us harm.

On September 12, 2001 the spirit of America awoke from its slumber.  The American flag began to fly everywhere we looked to show defiance against the terrorists.  The sight of Old Glory was a rallying cry for a wounded nation.

NBC’s Tom Brokaw commented, “Almost as soon as the Twin Towers came down the flags went up.  They began to grow in every crevice of America.  Someone said the sight of them is like countless bandages of patriotism covering a nation’s wounds.”

Around 5:00 PM on September 11, 2001 Daniel Williams, a NYFD firefighter saw the American flag attached to a yacht that was docked on the Hudson River and grabbed it. On his walk back to Ground Zero, Williams was joined by fellow firefighters George Johnson and William “Billy” Eisengrein.  The three spotted a flagpole about 20 feet above street level and climbed up to raise the flag as photographer Thomas E. Franklin captured the image.

The image captured by Franklin, a staff photographer for The Record in Bergen County, N.J., was quickly picked up by national newspapers, magazines and television networks. Many felt it was reminiscent of Joe Rosenthal’s imageof the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima during World War II.

A picture that was snapped on September 12, 2001 by Las Vegas Sun photographer Ethan Miller captured the image of a little 3-year-old girl sitting on her dad’s shoulders at a candlelight vigil at the Thomas & Mack Center.  Miller struggled to get the picture he knew would be “special.”

"There was that one moment when she lifted her other hand and then the flag unfurled—I got one frame off as she did that, and that was the photo. The little girl looked up at the same time that she raised her hand and her eyes caught the light.  All of these sad adults were around her, and she looked so innocent" as she lifted her eyes skyward as if “beseeching the help of a higher power,” said Miller.

The hope of a nation was captured in that moment.  The picture of little Alana Milawski is without a doubt my favorite iconic image of September 11th.

We don’t see flags flying from porches or lining the streets of America like we did 13 years ago.  Seeing that picture again has inspired me to do something I should have done years ago. Tomorrow I will buy a 20-foot in-ground flagpole complete with eagle ornament.  I’ve already called my handyman to arrange for its installation. 

Maybe I can inspire my neighbors to fly Old Glory too.  I think I’ll visit my neighborhood Walmart and purchase a handful of flag pole sets and pass them out.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the demand for flags would soar again to bolster a nation’s morale and the sight of flags once again began to grow in every crevice of America?

I Still Remember

In one his finest pieces, Gerard Vanderleun expresses so forcefully what I, and countless other Americans, feel this morning:

[SNIP]

We were soon to know the nature of the new hell and we were all thrust into it without repeal. The days turned to months and the months turned to years and now we have turned around and a decade is gone. What might have been ours, for good or ill, in that decade was forever stolen from us. Stolen from us not—never doubt this—by one man alone, but by a host of savages and throwbacks spread around the world and here among us and dedicated to our destruction. A host that will use any means necessary to destroy this nation while this nation "serves justice" up in spoonfuls and creates "Rules of Engagement" with which to hamper those who would defend it with their very lives. 

What the nation has become, through death by fire, bravado, war, forgetfulness, treason, and blunt stupidity could not have been foretold on September 10, but here we are—a lurching ship of state captained by a malicious hater of the American soil. That same captain, maddened by his own stunted heritage, will today disgrace the soil of Ground Zero. It is a difficult reality that has been dealt by the hands of fate; one that is still being played out.

[SNIP]

Now over a decade has passed, "a low dishonest decade," since the day after September 10 and the thing that looked like a man, the monster that set the events of the 11th in motion, has been expunged from the Book of Life. Too easily and too quickly for my tastes but my tastes in these matters are rooted in Scots' blood, and that blood demands punishments too severe to write down here or to hold in the mind for long. 

Some would say that his death with a bullet to the brain and then the use of the body as food for crabs and worm on the bottom of the ocean means "Debt paid" and "War over" and "Victory." Let that be to them as it will be, but my blood says that it is not paid, not over and not a victory. 

My blood says that all of those in his line need to be expunged, and that all of those who emulate and revere his manner of thinking need to be expunged, and all of those in his part of the gene pool need to be drained away and destroyed, root and branch. My blood says, "Carthago delenda est." 

From what little I know of history, what little I know of our enemies, I know in the marrow of my bones that there will come a terrible day in which that final judgment will be rendered and that final act shall be done. And as it was on the day after September 10, I remain relentlessly for this reckoning; a reckoning that is still to come, but like September 11 itself, certain to arrive.

We stood aghast at the horror before us.  Twelve years on, the memory still sears the soul; ushers forth great tears and sorrow.  One announcer covering the news said, “America, offer a prayer.”

It was against that background of works and days that the doors of history swung open and we all walked through them forgetting to ask, "What fresh hell is this?"