Sunday, September 10, 2006

Thoughts on 9-11

As I have said before I am a teacher. I teach Social Studies to 8th graders. One of my fellow Social Studies teachers and I had a conversation on Friday about what we were going to do on Monday to commemorate 9-11. Now I respect this woman. Five years ago she organized some students who raised money, and bought trees and plaques to commemorate the Twin Towers and United 93. (However nothing was done to commemorate, and no mention was made of, the attack on the Pentagon, and I don't think that was an accident. I wish I had noticed that at the time, I would have spoken up)

However, she had mixed emotions about doing anything on Monday, because she didn't want to support in any way, those who would "use the anniversary of 9-11 to justify going around the world and bombing people". She talked about doing a presentation on an organization in NYC comprised of victims of terrorism around the world who promote a peaceful response to terror.

The whole time she was doing this, I was thinking, "how nice that you have the luxury to indulge your ideology, and present it to your students."

Because I feel exactly the opposite. I want my students to understand the horror of what was done. I want them to realize that there are people on this planet who want them dead because of who they are, how they live, and what they think. In five years many of these kids will be in the service defending us.

My last thought Friday morning was: Doesn't this otherwise intelligent woman understand that these monsters would come here and cut her head off in a heartbeat, and not feel a thing about it? And sadly I realized that she doesn't. Not really. And neither does most of the left in America today.

Frankly that scares me more than the terrorists themselves.

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