The anger has faded, but a new fear grows

I remember like it was yesterday my emotions as I saw the World Trade Center collapse. I was working at the time at a financial services company. We had a teleconference scheduled that morning with our colleagues in New Jersey–right across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center. We knew that something bad had happened there–I was hearing the reports of the first “small plane” colliding with the first tower as I pulled into the secure data center where I worked.

The teleconference was cancelled. Instead, somebody found a television, plugged it in, and we watched what was happening in New York from our data center in Kansas City.

The towers came down that beautiful New York September morning.

I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t dismayed, I wasn’t in shock–OK, maybe I was, a bit–but I didn’t wonder “why someone would hate us so much.” I was angry. Livid. Enraged.

I went home, went into my back yard, looked up at the clear Kansas City sky, a sky devoid of any contrails–which is very unusual for Kansas City. There’s almost always at least one contrail visible here in the middle of the country.

The anger has faded. We as a nation decided to strike out–at those directly responsible, and also at those who we thought might also be an equivalent threat. We can debate about whether the latter was a wise decision, but the simple fact remains that we, collectively, decided to do that.

Now, today, we have elected a blatantly socialist President, who backs Central American would-be strongmen against the elected government and lawful courts of Honduras, who consistently appears friendlier with fellow travelers like Hugo Chavez than he is with our strongest ally, the United Kingdom. Who lectures endlessly about “changing the tone” and “lowering the volume” while in the next breath insulting, demeaning, and threatening (“get in their faces”) anyone with the temerity to disagree with his belief that socialism does anything but destroy human lives and the human spirit.

My anger at the barbaric actions of a few crazed Islamic extremists on that fine September morning has faded a bit. It has been replaced by a new fear, one I have never in my entire life experienced. It is a dismaying thing, this fear. When the 9/11 attacks occurred, I never once feared for my country, for my freedom.

I fear for both now.

If you are a supporter of President Obama, and have gotten this far, I beg you to understand this–I am far more frightened of you than I am of some wacko Islamic fringe nutjob hiding in a cave in Afghanistan. All he can do is kill me. What you want to do is turn me into a serf. From where I sit, it looks to me like you want to shackle the productive class in this country in the service of those who produce nothing. This is serfdom. This is slavery.

You, and President Obama, are scaring the hell out of an awful lot of people. Perhaps you should spend this day considering this–considering what you intend to do to your fellow countrymen in the name of “fairness.” You say you are concerned about those among us who have the least, who are at the bottom of the economic ladder. You don’t seem to have any concern for anybody else, though. It seems to me that you believe, without even a second thought, that the money will always come from somewhere–from “the rich” perhaps.

Hell is paved with good intentions. Your good intentions scare the hell out of me.

Liberty–not fairness–is the highest human aspiration, and the most noble of all human virtues. This is worth dying for.