We Will Never Forget

The second week of September is always going to be a tricky one for me.  Every year it involves the celebration of my September 8 wedding anniversary to Joleen, and every year it involves the tragic rememberance of the September 11 nightmare that fell upon our country.  I love the beginning of the week's memory; I loathe the latter one.  As our country reflects on the events of 9/11, the loss of human lives, the assault on our freedoms, our land, our way of life, I remember the actual day like it was yesterday.  I remember that moment of being utterly frozen, unable to process what had really happened.  I can't comprehend how many features I have watched and read over the years on various individuals who we lost that day - various heroes who gave their lives to try and save others - and even various stories of surviving that defy any level of natural belief.  This is a giant story of human loss wrapped inside a giant national story of our country's own freedom, dignity, and purpose.There is a sense in which we lose some of the story by assuming the attacks went to the twin towers merely because of their height and ease of reach ...  The monsters who perpetrated the attacks were not merely thugs with boxcutters, they were not merely hooligans, they were not merely angry disenfranchised terrorists.  They were actually part of a very large, very wealthy, very organized, and very ideological organization.  They were ideologues.  The ideology of Al Qaida loathes the western life, it loathes Judeo-Christian values, and it loathes a culture of American freedom that serves as the domicile for western civilization and Judeo-Christian values to live together.  At the heart of the successful American experiment has been free markets, and at the heart of free markets has been capital markets to drive these free markets.  The twin towers to a large degree but to an even larger degree that entire hub of lower Manhattan that is the site of the ground zero, the trade center complex, the corner of Wall and Broad, and that great entry into the world - our world - is a symbol, and in fact THE symbol, of American capital markets - American free markets - which is to say, American freedom and flourishing.  They did not go after the twin towers because they were tall, they went after them because they were rich.  Because they were aspirational.  Because they were, American.An attack on the aspirational society that is America continues today, and often that attack is from within our own borders, and praise God does not allow the murder of 3,000 people.  It involves instead an assault on freedoms and pursuits that are at the essence of our way of life.  The existential threat continues from outside our borders today as well, embodied in the fanatic Islamic fascist threats we face from Iran to ISIS to Al Qaida.  They no doubt plan to strike again.  We seem, at times, to no doubt be unable or unwilling to stop them.I believe in the aspirational society that is America and I mourn the attack on that society that took place on 9/11.  I say that "we will never forget" because I know that there is a remnant, however diminishing it may be, that indeed will never forget.  My heart goes out today to those who lost loved ones on 9/11.  Howard Lutnick, CEO of Canter Fitzgerald where nearly 700 employees died on 9/11, said today that he now has 51 grown kids of lost Cantor employees working at Cantor - it occured to me that the Kindergarten boy he walked to school the morning of 9/11 must now be starting college.  A lifetime has gone by, or at least an entire childhood.  But today I refuse to forget why the attack happen, the nature and character of the animals that perpetrated the attack, and what it will take to protect the American value system that was itself the reason for the attack.  May we all never forget, and may we vigilantly honor those who were lost - honor them by defending the aspirational society, and advocating a militant protection against the soulless demons who would gladly do this again.