Back in the nineteen nineties a company I did business with invited me to visit their labs in New Jersey, I gladly accepted. I landed at the Newark Airport a few miles outside of New York city. My host from Celanese met me at the airport. Jack was a native New Joisey guy. He loved the state and the area. Since I arrived in the mid-afternoon, he asked if I would like to tour New York City. I smilingly agreed. Jack drove me through the tunnel and around Manhattan Island. Being a Catholic, Jack asked us if I wanted to take a closer look at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. I eagerly accepted the offer. He pulled into a parking garage a half a block away from the church. The car was half off the street into the garage when he screeched the car to a halt.
“What’s wrong,” I asked? “
“Look at the prices.”
High above the garage door was a sign with the price list, parking for one half of an hour cost $20.
“How about if I let you off in front of the Cathedral and I’ll drive around the block until you have seen enough,” he said. “Those prices are too high even for me.”
Later that evening we dined in a restaurant atop the World Trade Center. I sat next to the window and looked down upon the Statue of Liberty. She was barely discernible from the height. For me, this was a huge thrill because it was the very first and only time I saw the Statue of Liberty in real-life. She looks so tiny from so high, but I could make out all her features and because it was near dusk I saw her torch burning brightly.
Years later, I was getting ready to visit my wife in the ICU at Christ Hospital when the phone rang. I picked it up to hear my son say, “Dad turn on the TV to channel 7, now.”
“Why?’
“A plane crashed into the World Trade Center,” he said, “do it before they take it off.”
I did as he asked and went into shock. A WTC tower was a blaze, and spewing huge volumes of black smoke against a sunny blue sky.
We talked about it for a while wondering how an accident of this magnitude could happen on such a crystal clear day. Then, we watched in horror as a another passenger jet crash into the second tower. That is when we realized that these were not accidents but deliberate attacks on our country.
My rage toward Muslims peaked after that attack. What did we do to these guys to deserve such an attack? Why do they hate us so? Frankly, twelve years later, I still don’t understand their problem. All I know is that we could not deliver enough hurt to satisfy my needs.
Slowly the story came out, and President Bush began explaining the problems he had with identifying a true enemy. He was ready to fight, but we didn’t know who to fight against. The enemy was not a discrete entity like it has been for centuries, it is a man on the street. He could be our neighbor or the nice guy running the restaurant in town. Congress struggled with the problem. The Commander-in-Chief needed new authority to go after the invisible enemy. Congress came up with the Patriot Act. We heard what it allowed the president to do, but no one really liked it because many of its features are in direct violation of the Constitution. Yet, we all wanted to hunt down the attackers and put them out of business. Congress passed the bill in spite of the violations. The argument that convinced me to accept this flawed law was that it would not be used against US citizens. The country allowed the Patriot act to pass although under great duress.
Another reaction to the attack invented the Department of Homeland Security. It seems our many bureaucratic departments like the CIA, FBI, State Department, and the Immigration never shared information and as such there were big holes in our security. It was my understanding the HLS came into existence to be the clearing house where all the departments that could not or would not share would funnel information and HLS would connect all the bad guys.
Today, I sit here wondering how in the hell do we get out of this mess? The first thing we should do is repeal the Patriot Act and go back to using the Constitution as the bulwark of all new laws. The second thing we must do is dismantle the Department Of Homeland Security. Why?
1. The Patriot Act has evolved into giving the Commander-in-Chief powers to indiscriminately kill US citizens whom he suspects are involved in acts of terror. That could be me folks. All he has to do is declare that he doesn’t like one of my posts and I’ll be hunted down by a drone and blasted into eternity by a rocket.
2. HLS has to go because they are preparing for war against the citizens of the USA. Why else would they be stock piling ammunition? Right now they have enough bullets to conduct a 30 year-long war that uses the same amount of bullets as the military did in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a lot of target practice by a bunch of bureaucrats. What the heck is that all about?
Recently, a friend called me a conspiratorialist (one who believes in government conspiracies) because of my extreme views on stuff about our can-do-no-wrong president. I am also considered a racist because I pick on a half black president. I do pick on him, and I do believe the government is conducting clandestine plots to transform America from a Constitutional Republic into a Dictatorship. If President “O” and his minions didn’t give me so many reasons of concern I wouldn’t be thinking this way at all.
Filed under: Cartoons, Conservative, family, Government | Tagged: Constitutional Republic, Department Of Homeland Security, Drones, muslim, New York City, Obama, Patriot Act, Statue of Liberty, United States, World Trade Center | Leave a comment »
