The Day Everything Changed

 

As I write this it is the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia. It is one of those times when you remember exactly what you were doing and where you were when it happened. In my case, I had been hired by what we affectionally called "No Such Agency" (NSA) in April of that year. I had retired from the Air Force the previous September after 20 years and 20 days of service. And, ironically, I had been attending a counter terrorism measures presentation in the main auditorium of the Maryland complex that morning. The presentation dealt with measures that the agency was going to implement to ensure that terrorism targeting, if there were to be any, would not be successful against our property or personnel. I remember coming back to my office and seeing people running about in obvious bewilderment. As we now know, the attacks had taken place early that morning and we were all trying to make sense of what had happened.

"Blessed is the Nation Whose God is the Lord"

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Most of us will recognize these lines as coming from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. The Founding Fathers were well aware of the fact that their revolution, if it was to succeed at all, had to be founded on the ideas of Christianity and Christianity’s God. Although some among them were deists and others were non-believers, the fact is that these were the exception. The great majority of them understood that nothing and no one can overcome whatever obstacles are to be overcome without Divine help.

Socialist Ignorance!

In his book “Animal Farm,” George Orwell tells a fictional story about farm animals who rebel against their farmer. The animals decide that they are being mistreated by the farmer and that their only recourse, if they expect to live good lives, is to throw the farmer out of the farm and run it themselves. Eventually, the pigs rise to the top and make a compact with other humans who provide them with many amenities in exchange for trading with them. Thus, the pigs become a sort of oligarchy within the system that they initially instituted, the original design of which was to make all animals equal and abolish the hierarchy they had previously labored under.