Saturday, September 12, 2009
For Mrs. Smith & Her Compatriots
Irene Smith, who lost her son Leon, a firefighter at Ladder Co. 118 in Brooklyn Heights, lays bare a truth that startles me every year at this time. "Throughout the year, I always feel I'm going fine, but as soon as 9/11 comes around, I feel like I'm back to square one. I feel like it was just like yesterday. The families will never forget -- rain, hail, shine, whatever."
Thankfully, I am not in that same group. My daughter-in-law was not at her desk on the 22nd floor of the South Tower that morning. My grandson, a first grader a few blocks north at P.S. 89 on Warren Street was picked up and evacuated by a family friend. My brother-in-law got clear even though he was caught out in the open when the South Tower came down. I made it through and can sit here eight years later and write this piece. Still, each in our own way, we note the day. Each in our own way feel the weight of our own remembrances.
For me each year brings the determination to stoically face it this time. Each year brings the anger. Each year reopens the unhealed wound. Each year brings the flood of unbearable sorrow and the unstoppable tears.
Here it is, September 12th. The two blazing beacons are gone from the night sky. The tears have dried. The alcohol I consumed last night is sufficiently gone from my system that, with a deep exhalation, I will pick up the chores left undone yesterday. The images of sweet faces and hellish horrors recede into the shadows of my mind to wait upon their next calling forth by a date, by a low flying aircraft, by a page of paper floating by on a beautiful cloudless autumn day.
Never gone.
Never forgotten.
.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Exactly Whose Pants Are On Fire?
I know this wasn't directed at Joe Wilson alone. The speech was in the can well before his "spontaneous" outburst. We could all benefit from heeding the thoughts expressed by President Obama last night, no matter who wrote them.
"You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no ...matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to ...solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves."
One of two things appear to be true. Mr. Wilson may well be a temperate, mature fairly accomplished former aide to Strom Thurmond. It is an unfortunate smear on South Carolinians, the United States Army and it's officer corps that he left the first two qualities on the cloakroom floor - again - last night and chose to instead to behave like an ill bred, uneducated, unprincipled, ill manner lout - for the second time in his seven year congressional career.
In 2002 Wilson called Congressman Bob Filner (D-California) "viscerally anti-American" and charged that he had a "hatred of America". He later offered his mea culpa saying he, "didn't intend to insult his colleague".
On the other hand it far more likely that Mr. Wilson, as an experienced litigator, was merely practicing a rudimentary artifice of that craft. Mr. Wilson was Staff Judge Advocate in the South Carolina Army National Guard assigned to the 218th Mechanized Infantry Brigade until retiring from military service as a Colonel in 2003. As such, he is well aware of the value when seeing the opposition gaining ground to break the flow of the moment by making a statement that though stricken from the record, will not 'unring the bell' in a jury’s mind. It is more than fair to say that the American people were in the jury box in the court of public opinion last night. It beyond belief that a military officer, even a reservist, lacks the discipline to refrain from emotional outbursts.
Be that as it may, it may well be instructive as to the source of all the out poured vitriol when we look over the landscape of the health care debate over the past month or so and see the same feverishly pitched, overly emotionally biased over the top rhetoric. Death panels, red menace, socialistic Nazism, government takeover of citizens rights, government bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor (never mind the insurance company bureaucrat that’s already there) are the red herrings we have all heard ad nauseam all sung to rousing Sousaesque background music replete with waving flags cynically used as cheap props.
It is clear that health care in this country is in dire need of serious reform. That reform will not come from Wall Street which calls the insurer’s tune. It will not come from the Trial Lawyers who benefit from spurious claims over the smallest perceived harm that sucks life's blood leaving behind the necrotic flesh that is the two headed serpent of defensive medicine and the basis for the insurers to jack up malpractice coverage costs. Both drive up costs dramatically. Real reform must come from the laws of the land. Real reform must serve We The People, not those with the deepest pockets who can buy our lives, our liberties and our pursuit of happiness at their whim and at the gain of those who prostitute the sacred trust to attend to, "the people's business" into a quest for personal glory and gain.
What that law should become must be discussed. Name calling should stay in the school yard where the monitors can properly instruct, and correct, the unruly children who make a practice of it. The laws must see to it that at the end of the day, We The People come first and foremost. That is why We The People created the government in the first place.
It is the flag of We The People that our forefathers went to war and died for. It is the flag of We The People that we pledge allegiance to. It is the flag of We The People that I hope to see flying from every window, porch, column, lamp post and antenna tomorrow, Patriot's Day September 11, 2009.
"You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, and the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no ...matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter - that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to ...solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves."
One of two things appear to be true. Mr. Wilson may well be a temperate, mature fairly accomplished former aide to Strom Thurmond. It is an unfortunate smear on South Carolinians, the United States Army and it's officer corps that he left the first two qualities on the cloakroom floor - again - last night and chose to instead to behave like an ill bred, uneducated, unprincipled, ill manner lout - for the second time in his seven year congressional career.
In 2002 Wilson called Congressman Bob Filner (D-California) "viscerally anti-American" and charged that he had a "hatred of America". He later offered his mea culpa saying he, "didn't intend to insult his colleague".
On the other hand it far more likely that Mr. Wilson, as an experienced litigator, was merely practicing a rudimentary artifice of that craft. Mr. Wilson was Staff Judge Advocate in the South Carolina Army National Guard assigned to the 218th Mechanized Infantry Brigade until retiring from military service as a Colonel in 2003. As such, he is well aware of the value when seeing the opposition gaining ground to break the flow of the moment by making a statement that though stricken from the record, will not 'unring the bell' in a jury’s mind. It is more than fair to say that the American people were in the jury box in the court of public opinion last night. It beyond belief that a military officer, even a reservist, lacks the discipline to refrain from emotional outbursts.
Be that as it may, it may well be instructive as to the source of all the out poured vitriol when we look over the landscape of the health care debate over the past month or so and see the same feverishly pitched, overly emotionally biased over the top rhetoric. Death panels, red menace, socialistic Nazism, government takeover of citizens rights, government bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor (never mind the insurance company bureaucrat that’s already there) are the red herrings we have all heard ad nauseam all sung to rousing Sousaesque background music replete with waving flags cynically used as cheap props.
It is clear that health care in this country is in dire need of serious reform. That reform will not come from Wall Street which calls the insurer’s tune. It will not come from the Trial Lawyers who benefit from spurious claims over the smallest perceived harm that sucks life's blood leaving behind the necrotic flesh that is the two headed serpent of defensive medicine and the basis for the insurers to jack up malpractice coverage costs. Both drive up costs dramatically. Real reform must come from the laws of the land. Real reform must serve We The People, not those with the deepest pockets who can buy our lives, our liberties and our pursuit of happiness at their whim and at the gain of those who prostitute the sacred trust to attend to, "the people's business" into a quest for personal glory and gain.
What that law should become must be discussed. Name calling should stay in the school yard where the monitors can properly instruct, and correct, the unruly children who make a practice of it. The laws must see to it that at the end of the day, We The People come first and foremost. That is why We The People created the government in the first place.
It is the flag of We The People that our forefathers went to war and died for. It is the flag of We The People that we pledge allegiance to. It is the flag of We The People that I hope to see flying from every window, porch, column, lamp post and antenna tomorrow, Patriot's Day September 11, 2009.
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