September 11th, 2001 was a very dark day, no doubt about it. There was a bright spot though - United 93, where the 40 passengers and crew attempted to overcome the hijackers. (I put in a 41st in my novel, btw - a sixth flight attendant.) Although they perished when the flight crashed in Pennsylvania, they did their job; the flight, supposedly headed for the Capitol or the White House, never reached its target. Today, only a large crater in Shanksville reminds people of the horrific moments aboard the flight.
One Republican Congressman, a large landowner from North Carolina, isn't so sure. He is standing in the way of erecting a permanent memorial at the crash site, calling it another federal land grab.
Doesn't he realize that the function of the federal Department of the Interior, and the National Park Service, is to commemorate America's natural beauty and historical sites, so that people will remember and preserve? It's bad enough that the NPS is already wiping out "special interest" agenda that it doesn't approve of, such as the role of gays in the civil rights movement. By Congressman Charles Taylor's logic, maybe we should sell Mt. Rushmore, the Civil War battlefields, and other national treasures off to the private sector as well. Excuse me, but if the size of the federal government is an issue, maybe a bloated Department of Defense should be scrutinized; America does NOT need a military that is bigger that the rest of the world's combined (unless unilaterally invading Third World countries counts as "legitimate defense," that is).
Or maybe he does know what the American public isn't supposed to know after all; that the hijackings were staged by the W administration to trigger a fascist dictatorship, and that they are better not to be remembered. After all, the less the public knows, the more likely it is to give in to a dictator.
MSNBC
