Twenty-Five Years Later

There's not much I can say that hasn't been said before. After a fun weekend with friends during which we watched Kansas State put a well-deserved whuppin' on USC, we decided to spend a few days in Palm Springs. We knew immediately we were under attack when the second plane hit the South Tower. 

I had scheduled an early morning tennis match and I didn't know how to cancel, so I went. It was then that I heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon and Flight 93. When I returned to our room, I learned that all flights had been grounded. I told Kathleen, "start packing, we are going to drive to Wichita. There's no way they will have the airlines unscrambled in time for our flight back in 48 hours." I called Hertz while I went to a gas station and to purchase a car charger for my cell phone. We made the best of the drive back. 

The bravery and self-sacrifice of our first responders, the passengers of Flight 93, and countless others showed the best of America. That said...

Nothing good has come from 9-11. The George Bush Administration handled it all wrong. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security and, especially, the TSA ushered in the "compulsion society." We went from "the land of the free" to the land of the compulsory. Think about it:

• Invasive airport searches where they touch and view your "junk."
• Absurd rules like taking your shoes off. 
• Militarized police all over the country. No more "protect and serve."
• Shutting down the economy over COVID.
• "Speech codes" at public institutions like universities. 
• Compulsory masks that accomplished nothing. Outdoors?!
• Forced vaccinations of a drug of highly questionable efficacy.  
• Communities (Dearborn, Michigan, for example) where Sharia Law competes with the actual laws of the United States. 
• Now, Flock cameras that get 71% of their alleged job (reading license plates) wrong. Guaranteed: some innocent person/people will die because of this. There have already been documented close calls. We are already north of 70 felony police prosecutions of misuse of the cameras -- and, those are just the ones we know about. 

Our freedoms are precious. We are giving them up far too easily and our politicians -- whose jobs are to "protect and defend" the Constitution are failing us -- badly. 

Wish I had simple answers and advice. I don't. It is going to take a while to get back to where we always should have been. And, unfortunately, that outcome is far from assured.