How to Honor the True Spirit of 9/11
First, ignore Rush Limbaugh
The latest outbreak of phony outrage began when the president, following a tradition established by George W. Bush, announced that he and the first lady would mark the upcoming anniversary as a "National Day of Service and Remembrance" and urged Americans to "come together, in their communities and neighborhoods, to honor the victims of 9/11 and to reaffirm the strength of our nation with acts of service and charity."
To Rush Limbaugh and assorted lesser cogs in the right-wing noise machine, that was a deeply controversial statement and an attempt to "politicize" the event—as if the White House had ordered everybody to put on blue caps, join a local Obama for America chapter and then build a solar house for the poor.
Yes, according to the furious wingers, Obama's attempt to inspire volunteerism was in fact a barely disguised appeal to "serve the state," as well as an un-American distraction from what should be, in their minds, a more militaristic commemoration. But leaving aside their usual bizarre theories about the president and his motives, this pseudo-controversy shows how little these so-called conservatives understand about what really happened on 9/11, in New York and then across the country. On that day and the days that followed, we saw a demonstration of the highest American values, which are apparently no longer comprehensible to the denizens of the right-wing swamp.
Honor Generosity, Not Divisiveness
Our traditions of volunteerism and community have distinguished this republic ever since its earliest years—as Alexis de Tocqueville explained back in the 1830s, when he wrote the two volumes known as Democracy in America. In that classic work, he described the uniquely American style of voluntary association and how it made a free society possible. He was no radical, by the way, and would have ridiculed the stupid notion that a presidential call to voluntary service equals socialism.
But it isn't really necessary to consult Tocqueville, who admittedly was a Frenchman, on the American virtue of volunteerism.
Just ask Tim Zagat, publisher of the famous Zagat restaurant guides and New York civic activist, who is issuing a remarkable book, titled 9/11: Stories of Courage, Heroism and Generosity. In the participants' own words, it chronicles the outpouring of citizen action of every sort that sprang up in response to the attacks. These are the amazing true stories of the construction workers who left their work sites and marched down to ground zero, unbidden and en masse, to join the search-and-rescue effort; of the restaurateurs who emptied their refrigerators, brought tons of food down to the site and fed everyone working there; of the sanitation workers, teachers, phone technicians and thousands of others who stepped forward to help the city revive itself; and of Americans from across the country who joined them. There was the guy in a wheelchair who rolled himself miles from his home in Harlem to bring down a bag of sandwiches. There was the urban search-and-rescue team that came up from San Juan, Puerto Rico, with their dogs to spend hour upon hour hunting through the piles of debris. And there were those who had lost loved ones in earlier disasters coming to help the bereaved of 9/11 cope with tragedy.
So many thousands showed up from everywhere to help that the authorities had to turn the city's main convention venue, the Javits Center, into a special site dedicated to organizing the volunteers according to skills and capabilities. Recalling that enormous outpouring of support from "people of all persuasions, backgrounds and beliefs," former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani says, "I saw it; I lived it; and am humbled by the heartwarming, remarkable response that demonstrated the resilience of America."
That resilient spirit is perhaps what the president hopes to summon, at a time of trouble that should evoke the cooperation, sacrifice and wisdom we saw in New York after that awful autumn morning in 2001. What a disgrace that his political opponents would reject that call, seeking instead to poison the occasion with ideological ranting and partisan rancor. This is how they dishonor the memory of the dead—and they have the gall to call it patriotism.
© 2011 Creators.com
Of course I'm going beyond volunteerism regarding 9-11, but that's what's on our minds.
Where "volunteerism" is evil (in some readers eyes) is when it is used on environmental issues, on protest issues, on labor issues, on political issues, anything that tries to get around the concept that money equals access to the lawmakers and bureaucrats.
Okay, so we want volunteerism where it saves money... who's money? What about volunteers to take care of the needy (or lazy), better than private or taxpayer funded workers taking care of "the lazy" or "the incompetent", isn't that so? And how do the volunteers eat and survive the elements? Unemployed people do not make good "volunteers".
Obama's jobs program spoken the other night before the Packer game (if you chose to watch the handful of channels that chose to broadcast the speech). There was a reason the Republicans wanted it in direct competition to the Packers, they know where Wisconsin's citizens true loyalties lie, and Wisconsin, which voted Obama in 2008, needs to be shut-down until they "get their mind right".
Obama is talking nation-wide "make-work" as Livingston repeatedly calls it, that's what FDR's programs in the 30's actually were. All those jobs programs that actually helped private business in the decades that followed. National Parks was a reason Americans might want to buy cars to go see them. Cars that also made it more desirable to build suburbs with lots of housing starts that spurred private business even more. That was supposed to be done by "volunteers" merely kept on room and board from "liberal-socialist" families only, not future taxpayers!
There's a reason they "long-term unemployed" do not have a job, private business has worked long and hard to get certain people moved off the private workforce, these are the folk that they have chosen to whip back into submission or at least starve to death if they are too stubborn to submit to the wealth establishments plans for "owners rights, no workers rights".
There's a reason that education is deemed a failure, for it created a few generations of union sympathizers and believers in evolution or global warming. This is where science has failed. Where it was supposed to create new, high-profit products, it also taught us that pollutants do leak from Texas nuclear waste sights into interstate aquifers, and that the water actually moves around underground... to our drinking wells. Remember, out-of-sight is out-of-mind, and wasn't supposed to be exposed by Erin Brockovich types.