The Children of 9/11 Grow Up by Peggy Noonan

OPINION: DECLARATIONSSEPTEMBER 11, 2009
The Children of 9/11 Grow Up
College students talk about how the attack shaped their lives.
By PEGGY NOONAN

It is eight years since 9/11, and here is an unexpected stage of grief: fear that the ache will go away. I don't suppose it ever will, but grieving has gradations, and "horror" becomes "absorbed sadness." Life moves on, and wants to move on, which is painful for those who will not forget and cannot be comforted. Part of the spookiness of life, part of its power to disorient us, is not only that people die, that they slip below the waves, but that the waves close above them so quickly, the sea so quickly looks the same.

I've been thinking about those who were children on 9/11, not little ones who were shielded but those who were 10 and 12, old enough to understand that something dreadful had happened but young enough still to be in childhood. A young man who was 14 the day of the attacks told me recently that there's an unspoken taboo among the young people of New York: They don't talk about it, ever. They don't want to say, "Oh boo hoo, it was awful." They don't want to dwell. They shrug it off when it comes up. They change the subject.

This week, in a conversation with college students at an eastern university, I brought it up. Seven students politely shared some of their memories. I invited them to tell me more the next morning, and was surprised when six of the seven showed up. This is what I learned:

They've been marked by 9/11 more than they know. It was their first moment of historical consciousness. Before that day, they didn't know what history was; after that day, they knew they were in it.

It was a life-splitting event. Before it they were carefree, after they were careful. A 20-year-old junior told me that after 9/11, "a backpack on a subway was no longer a backpack," and a crowded theater was "a source for concern." Every one of them used the word "bubble": the protected bubble of their childhood "popped." And all of them said they spent 9/11 and the days after glued to the television, watching over and over again the footage—the north tower being hit by the plane, the fireball. The video of 9/11 has firmly and ineradicably entered their brains. Which is to say their first visual memory of America, or their first media memory, was of its towers falling down.

I'd never fully realized this: 9/11 was for America's kids exactly what Nov. 22, 1963, was for their parents and uncles and aunts. They were at school. Suddenly there were rumors in the hall and teachers speaking in hushed tones. You passed an open classroom and saw a teacher sobbing. Then the principal came on the public-address system and said something very bad had happened. Shocked parents began to pick kids up. Everyone went home and watched TV all day, and the next.

***
Simon, a 20-year-old college junior, was a 12-year-old seventh-grader at a public school in Baltimore. He said: "It's first-period science, and the teacher next door, who was known to play jokes on other teachers, comes in completely stone-faced and says a plane has hit the World Trade Center, and no one believes him." Simon didn't know what to believe but remembered reading that in 1945 a plane had struck the Empire State Building, and "the building stayed up," so he didn't worry too much.

"At lunch time the vice principal comes up and he explains that two planes had hit the World Trade Center and one had hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center was gone, and I never—when you have your mouth agape it's never for anything important, but I remember having my mouth agape for a minute or two in complete and utter shock. I went to my art period and I remember my art teacher sitting there with her hands on her face just bawling, she was so frightened. My mom picked me up, and I remember walking with her, and I'm saying 'This is Pearl Harbor.'"

Nine-eleven, he felt, changed everything for his generation. "It completely destroyed our sense of invincibility—maybe that's not the right word. I would say it made everything real to a 12-year-old. It showed the world could be a dangerous place when for my generation that was never the case. My generation had no Soviet Union, no war against fascism, we never had any threats. I was born when the Berlin Wall came down. It destroyed the sense of carefree innocence that we had."

***
Juliette, also 20 and a junior, was in eighth grade in Great Falls, Va. "I think the kids were shocked," she said. "The major question was how could this happen, who would do that—like, how does something so crazy happen? What I had is a sense that it was going to be one of those days of which 30 years down the road, people would ask me, What were you doing on that day, where were you on 9/11?—that my children would ask me. And so I set myself to remembering the details."

I told her that it is interesting to me that no great art has yet come from 9/11. The reason may be that adults absorbed what had happened, and because we had absorbed it, we did not have to transmute it into art. Maybe when you are still absorbing, or cannot absorb, that's when art happens. Maybe your generation will do it, I said.

She considered this. "There's always the odds that something much more horrible will happen that will really shake us out of our torpor, that will wake us up," she said.

***
The attack was not only an American event. Robbie, an 18-year-old freshman, was 10 and in primary school in England. "We were near the end of school. There were murmurs from teachers about something happening. I remember going back home, and my mum had both televisions on with different news channels. I remember the tower and the pillar of smoke. The big pillar of smoke was very vivid to me, and my mother trying to explain the seriousness of it. I think 9/11 brought us bang slap into the 21st century. I remember when the millennium came people said 'new time, new world,' but 9/11 was the 'new time, new world.' I understood it was something big, something that changed the world."

Then he told me that after we had talked the previous evening, he'd had a dream. "I was back in my old school in England, and in front of me I could see the city of Bristol, nothing distinct, but big towers, big buildings. And I could see them crumbling and falling. There was a collective fear, not just from myself but amongst everyone in the dream. I remember calling in the dream my mum, and saying 'Are you safe, are you safe?' I think this perhaps shows that after 9/11 . . . as a small child you felt safe, but after 9/11, I don't think I personally will ever feel 100% safe. . . . I think the dream demonstrates—I think the dream contained my hidden feelings, my consciousness."

He remembered after 9/11 those who rose up to fight terrorism. Even as a child he was moved by them. There are always in history so many such people, he said. It is always the great reason for hope.

Obama's closing remarks about Ted Kennedy

We carry on.

Ted Kennedy has gone home now, guided by his faith and by the light of those that he has loved and lost. At last he is with them once more, leaving those of us who grieve his passing with the memories he gave, the good that he did, the dream he kept alive, and a single, enduring image -- the image of a man on a boat, white mane tousled, smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for whatever storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon. May God bless Ted Kennedy, and may he rest in eternal peace.

"Have you seen British Teeth?"

A disturbing look at socialized medicine
By Cal Thomas | Columnist
Published: 8/19/2009 12:01 AM
PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND - For the past month I have watched British media report and comment on the American health care uproar. American cable networks are also available here. The back-and-forth reporting and commentary resembles a replay of the War of 1812, this time with verbal salvos. Conservative American politicians and commentators fire at the British NHS system and the British fire back, sometimes on the same program, repeating the Democrats' mantra of how 47 million Americans are "uninsured" and how medical treatment in the United States depends on how much patients, or their insurance companies, will pay. Here, they say, health care is "free," thanks to taxpayers, a minority of which (i.e. the successful) bears ever-greater amounts of the burden.

A conservative British politician trashes the NHS on Fox News and the BBC carries an excerpt, along with a defense of the NHS by other British politicians, including Tory leader - and prime minister in waiting - David Cameron. In an apparent effort to outflank the critically ill Labour Party, Cameron promises to strengthen the NHS.

The British media are conflicted. They patriotically defend the NHS, while simultaneously acknowledging its serious shortcomings. One example: A recent Daily Mail editorial praised the NHS for its free care and universal availability, but then added, "Our survival rates for breast, prostate, ovarian and lung cancers are among the worst in Europe, despite huge additional expenditures." Free is nice, but best is better.

Beyond the headlines are some disturbing trends within the NHS that ought to serve as a warning to Americans, should they wish to abandon, rather than improve, our current system for treating the sick.

Last week, a London Times story began: "Hospitals Creaking Under the Strain as NHS Vacancies Are Left Unfilled."

The story reported that socialized medicine has created a shortage of doctors, nurses and other clinical staff. As of March 31, a survey found a 5.2 percent vacancy rate in these critical fields, compared to a 3.6 percent vacancy rate a year earlier. A poll conducted by the Royal College of Nurses found that among 8,600 young people, aged 7 to 17, "only 1 in 20 considered nursing to be an attractive career."

Anthony Halperin, a Trustee of the Patients Association, said: "Nursing staff see that there are higher rewards in the private sector while doctors and dentists no longer see medicine as a career for life, or are having their hours cut back by European legislation. All of this has negative outcomes for patients." A man attending a town meeting in America and who opposes the Democrats' reform plan said on Fox News, (and replayed on BBC): "Have you seen British teeth?"

Anyone wishing to revise America's medical system and model it after Britain and Canada ought to thoroughly examine how these health care systems function before plunging into the same pool. A reasonable conclusion is that these systems require long waits and treatments (if you can get them) that are inferior to the U.S., based on government "guidelines" that frequently approve care only if the patient is deemed "worthy of the investment."

As a symbol, Adolf Hitler has been overused, but the philosophy behind the horrors he unleashed can be found in the beliefs of some of those who would use the power of the state to determine who gets help and who doesn't.

The 1933 Sterilization Law was one of Hitler's first acts after taking power. Called "The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring," it required compulsory sterilizations for those deemed by the state to be "racially unsound," including people with disabilities.

As with a journey, so it is with inhumanity: both begin with a single step.

© 2009, Tribune Media Services Inc.

Health Care: the 'right' solution

This is a letter published in the University of Richmond's student newspaper , the Collegian. It was written by one of UR's students. It is great when our young people begin taking positions on critical issues such as this.

I post it for thought and dialogue.


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Letter: Health care: the ‘right’ solution
Published: August 9, 2009, 9:34 pm ET

BY DANIEL COLOSIMO
Richmond College '11

In recent weeks, the debate over health care has grown fierce, but, unfortunately, extremely petty. Whether it is the claim that old people will be euthanized if it is too expensive to keep them alive or that a public option will prevent people from receiving life-saving medical procedures, the lies and smears spread by the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies have muddled the facts about health care reform. Even more unfortunate is the obvious truth that the politics of fear is again finding traction among many conservatives. So let’s look at the facts.
One popular argument against health care reform is the idea that it will decrease medical quality and efficiency, and the “world’s best health care system” will become nothing better than that of a Third World country.
Fact: America’s health care system is already worse than those of some third world countries. According to the World Health Organization, the United States’ health care system ranks 37th in the world, right behind health care systems in Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Costa Rica. So let’s get this straight: the average American family pays more than $400 a month for health insurance. Fifteen percent of the national GDP is spent on health care, but yet as a country, we rank 45th overall in life expectancy and 50 million Americans don’t even have insurance. This is the system Republicans want to maintain? Even more, even if you are insured, insurance companies still only pay about 80 percent of a patient’s costs after premiums and deductibles. Often, “pre-existing conditions” are not covered at all by insurance!
Let’s face it: health insurance companies are blood-sucking vampires that prey on human suffering. Health care and profit simply don’t mix.
With this said, however, the health care reform currently floating around on Capitol Hill really isn’t all that revolutionary. It still allows insurance companies and pharmaceuticals to turn extraordinary profits, it allows every American to choose his or her own doctor and medical options and it does not require any American to purchase insurance from the government or from the private sector against his or her will. The goal of the plan, simply, is to make insurance accessible for those who can’t afford it: small business owners, blue collar workers and the shrinking middle class.
The second popular argument against health care is that it will wreck the U.S. economy and churn up massive deficits.
Fact: if the health care system is not changed, the country will go bankrupt. The current health care system, if left alone, will rise to more than 20 percent of the GDP by the year 2017. The only option is reform, unless, of course, we want deductibles and premiums to continue rising while millions of Americans die from avoidable illnesses. The plan in Congress, albeit expensive, would prevent health care from ever reaching this percentage of GDP, and don’t forget, Americans would actually have health insurance.
Republicans like to turn the health care debate into an draconian dilemma between some people not being insured and the end of capitalism and the American way as we know it. But not all the blame should go to the Republicans; Democrats, elected to an super-majority in the House and the Senate, are folding like a house of cards. And let’s be honest, their opponents on the right are pathetic. If the Democrats can’t cut through the Republican blockage now, when the only counter to reform Republicans have is labeling it as socialism, then I’m afraid true reform will not be right around the corner.
Daniel Colosimo
University of Richmond, 2011

Gates/Crowley scenario--racial profiling or power moves

The scenario between the black professor from Harvard and white police officer from Cambridge might well be racial profiling.

More than that, I think it had to do with power. Both the police officer (Crowley) and the professor in their daily duties are use to being around people who respect them and look up to them. Both are significant others in their environments. Both are powerful individuals

Two good people decided that they couldn't show weakness and had to act. The white officer acted with an unnecessary arrest. The professor with accusations of racial profiling.

Both are fine folks. Both have provided us with an educational opportunity for discussion, thought and growth. Let's use this regrettable situation and have more than a few beers together.

We have come along way as a country and hopefully as individuals in valuing diversity. We have further to go though. Lets do more than having a cold one.........

Obama on Health Care

I am not posting this for or against, just wanted you all to have his recent memo on the subject.
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Dear Friend,

If you’re like most Americans, there’s nothing more important to you about health care than peace of mind.

Given the status quo, that’s understandable. The current system often denies insurance due to pre-existing conditions, charges steep out-of-pocket fees – and sometimes isn’t there at all if you become seriously ill.

It’s time to fix our unsustainable insurance system and create a new foundation for health care security. That means guaranteeing your health care security and stability with eight basic consumer protections:
No discrimination for pre-existing conditions
No exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays
No cost-sharing for preventive care
No dropping of coverage if you become seriously ill
No gender discrimination
No annual or lifetime caps on coverage
Extended coverage for young adults
Guaranteed insurance renewal so long as premiums are paid
Learn more about these consumer protections at Whitehouse.gov.

Over the next month there is going to be an avalanche of misinformation and scare tactics from those seeking to perpetuate the status quo. But we know the cost of doing nothing is too high. Health care costs will double over the next decade, millions more will become uninsured, and state and local governments will go bankrupt.

It’s time to act and reform health insurance, drive down costs and guarantee the health care security and stability of every American family. You can help by putting these core principles of reform in the hands of your friends, your family, and the rest of your social network.

Thank you,
Barack Obama

OBamas e-mail supporting Sotomayor for the Supreme Court

What's your thoughts on this nomination?
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Good Morning,

Yesterday, Judge Sonia Sotomayor made her opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee and moved another step closer to taking a seat on the United States Supreme Court. In case you missed it, watch the video of her opening statement here:

As President, there are few responsibilities more serious or consequential than the naming of a Supreme Court Justice, so I want to take this opportunity to tell you about the qualifications and character that informed my decision to nominate Judge Sotomayor.

Judge Sotomayor's brilliant legal mind is complemented by the practical lessons that can only be learned by applying the law to real world situations.

In the coming days, the hearings will cover an incredible body of work from a judge who has more experience on the federal bench than any incoming Supreme Court Justice in the last 100 years. Judge Sotomayor's professional background spans our judicial system — from her time as a big-city prosecutor and a corporate litigator, to her work as a federal trial judge on the U.S. District Court, and an appellate judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

And then there is Judge Sotomayor's incredible personal story. She grew up in a housing project in the South Bronx — her parents coming to New York from Puerto Rico during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she lost her father, and her mother worked six days a week just to put food on the table. It takes a certain resilience and determination to rise up out of such circumstances, focus, work hard and achieve the American dream.

This character shined through in yesterday's opening statement: Watch the video.

In Judge Sotomayor, our nation will have a Justice who will never forget her humble beginnings, will always apply the rule of law, and will be a protector of the Constitution that made her American dream and the dreams of millions of others possible. As she said so clearly yesterday, Judge Sotomayor's decisions on the bench "have been made not to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice."

In anticipation of today's first round of questioning, I hope you'll share this email widely, because Judge Sotomayor's confirmation is something that affects every American. It's important for these hearings to be about Judge Sotomayor's own record and her capacity for the job — not any political back and forth that some in Washington may use to distract you. What members of the Judiciary Committee, and the American people, will see today is a sharp and fearless jurist who does not let powerful interests bully her into breaking from the rule of law.

Thank you,
Barack Obama