Pollyanna lament

“Why not a 9/10 movement?’ asks Ed Quillen.

Because:

• We live in a universe where time moves forward, and
• The Islamic cult who attacked America on 9/11 is still at war with us, and
• The war will continue until they stop fighting us, and
• They are command by their god to fight us to the death, and
• Many who sympathize with the Islamic cult currently at war with America freely live among us, and
• America has become an armed camp because would-be terrorists living among us seek opportunities to spread terror, and
• etc.

Quillen’s Pollyanna lament is a nice bit of nostalgia, and it’s completely unhelpful, like much of what comes out of his brand of politics.  If the left really wanted things to be as they were on 9/10, they would fight the long war and its Islamic philosophy as if they meant to end it.  They would stop enabling it in America.

RE:

Quillen: Confessions of a 9/10 American

By Ed Quillen
The Denver Post
Posted: 09/12/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

As memorable dates go, Sept. 12 is not high on the list. It is the 1818 birthday of Richard Gatling, inventor of the machine gun; the date of Winston Churchill’s 1908 marriage to Clementine Hozier; and a legal holiday in Maryland: Defenders Day, to honor the 1814 repulse of a British army with designs on Baltimore in the War of 1812.

But it’s also the day after Sept. 11, when al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four jetliners in 2001 and killed nearly 3,000 Americans. There’s a movement, in the words of founder Glenn Beck, “to bring us all back to the place we were on Sept. 12, 2001 . . . we were not obsessed with red states, blue states or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the values and principles of the greatest nation ever created.”

Beck offers a list of nine principles and 12 values; the principles have been distilled by Beck from “28 powerful principles” upon which “the Founding Fathers built this country.” I checked the list and did not see “protection of slaveholders’ property” or “removal of indigenous peoples” among the principles, but that was likely just an oversight.

This 9/12 is also the scheduled date of a “Taxpayer March on Washington,” where the attendees “will be focused on one message — Take America Back in 2010.” From what I read, they want to “take back” a lot of things, like Social Security, Medicare and the 14th Amendment.

There are also year-round “912 groups,” which appear to have Tea Party connections. They were out in abundance this year, especially at our state Republican convention. There they gave Dan Maes top line on the primary ballot for governor. The Maes campaign has worked out pretty well — at least for Democrats.

But why is this a 9/12 movement? What does this have to do with the America of nine years ago? If there has to be such a crusade, why not a 9/10 movement?
Consider that in 2000, the federal government was running at a surplus, and respected economists predicted that the entire federal deficit could be eliminated within a decade.

Surely that prospect should attract support from all those modern deficit hawks who resist restoring the tax code to what it was then.

The unemployment rate had risen to about 4.7 percent that September, from a low of less than 4 percent a year earlier. Even so, the national economy appeared to be in good shape. The dot-com bubble had burst in March of 2000, but the crash really affected only one sector; it did not cause house prices to collapse, nor did it lead to the failure of major banks and investment houses.

The United States was generally at peace with the world. There had been the 1999 intervention in Kosovo, and al-Qaeda terrorists had attacked: the World Trade Center parking-garage bomb in 1993, truck bombs hitting U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi in 1998, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole at a Yemini port in 2000. So all was not serene, but there were no major shooting wars, either.

Our public discourse on Sept. 10, 2001, did not include “mama grizzlies,” “underwater mortgages,” “Tea Party patriots,” “Koran burning,” “USA Patriot Act,” “warrantless wiretaps,” “extraordinary rendition” or “birthers.”

I have to confess that I was rather fond of relative peace and prosperity. It was nice to live in a country where I didn’t have to take off my shoes before boarding an airplane, and where the Bill of Rights was not controversial.

So if we have to draw a line between ” 9/10 Americans” and ” 9/12 Americans,” put me on the 9/10 side. There’s no way to roll the calendar back, of course, but if one must fantasize about it, why stop at 9/12?

Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.