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Introduction
On September 11th 2001, 9/11, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists seized 4 commercial airliners with the demonic intent of savaging America by crashing 2 airliners into the Twin Towers, 1 into the Pentagon and 1 into the Capitol area, perhaps even the White House itself. Citizen passengers and crew heroically prevented the latter.
That is the subject of today’s 10 minute episode
Continuing
On Flight 93 that fateful, evil-filled day, there was no debate about personal responsibility and who was supposed to do what. There was no nutso group making the case that terrorism centered in the Middle East was somehow created by American foreign policy. Passengers on Flight 93 discovered that the Saudi terrorists who had hijacked their flight were part of a larger group that had already attacked key US targets. It became clear that the flight they were on was to be yet another fuel bomb, intended to crash into a major target, complete with the 33 passengers and 7 crew. The 4 terrorists did not care about their lives, the lives of the others on the flight, or the lives of those at their target. Somehow, somehow, their version of Islam not only allowed but rewarded suicide bombing on a major scale. Their brothers and sisters who strapped explosives to their bodies and detonated them on Israeli school busses were playing in the minor leagues.
In 1775, Two hundred and twenty-six years before 9/11, 70 armed citizen soldiers, Minutemen, so named because they could be ready in a minute, faced off against the vaunted British Army Regulars in a skirmish that started the Revolutionary War. “The shot heard around the world,” was fired by an unknown combatant. A shot that has reverberated through history. These citizen soldiers, much scorned by the British as mere militia, were almost completely untrained in the art of soldiering. They were armed with the same muskets they used to feed their families and ward off threats from marauding animals and criminal humans. They got together in a loose formation to prevent the Regulars from seizing the weapons and ammunition stored at Concord, MA. Remember, in 1775, both the armed citizens and the Regulars were British. The British citizens were using guns to protect their access to firearms from British authority. Is that a heads up, a warning, about events that will confront us again in the future? The main point here is that untrained citizens, the original well-regulated militia, rallied to do the right thing for their country, a country under attack.
The country was also under attack on 9/11. The courageous women and men on board Flight 93 stopped terrorists from reaching their final destination. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when the hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside outside of Shanksville. Flight 93 did not arrive at the hijackers’ intended target–the U.S. Capitol–because of the selfless and courageous actions of the passengers and crew.
Our country is under attack again today from people and groups with weapons far more dangerous than fuel-filled commercial airliners or British Regulars with muskets, bayonets and cannons.
Lies.
The core lie is that America is not only systemically racist, but that our country was formed in 1776, at great risk to the lives and personal freedoms of the Founders, in order to preserve slavery. The lie continues by claiming that slavery was the vital underpinning to the nation’s economy, and that is why we were willing to go to war to preserve it. The 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory are mainstays of this terrible lie. The lie that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery is far more evil than terrorists flying 4 or 400 commercial airliners into populated targets. A nation can recover from major disasters, like, well, the Civil War and COVID. It cannot recover from the kind of internal cancer spread by lies like this one.
Similar and related lies attacking our country include:
1. Tossing aside the need to include equally funded charter schools and vouchers in the educational options we offer K-12 parents and their children.
2. Pretending that the 1% of blacks killed by cops are far more important than the 99% of the blacks killed by other blacks as well as in different scenarios.
3. Screaming about racism against people of color, including Asians, while working to restrict or even punish Asian academic successes.
4. Acting as if welfare programs that destroy families and create generational poverty are somehow more loving than Bill Clinton’s Welfare to Work programs.
5. Implementing Open Border policies while pretending to want–or even have–secure national borders.
This list could go on for several episodes, but you get the idea. The point is that any of these issues, pick one or add one of your own, could be where you step up and prevent the disaster, confront and defeat the lie. What cause resonates with you? School Choice? Secure borders leading to a rational immigation policy? Actually dealing with race issues instead of exaggerating them for personal and political gain? Do you have different issues and policies that are important to you? If so, what are they? Please speak up. Emulate and honor the Minutemen and the passengers and crew on Flight 93 with your actions.
The point of this episode is not simply to preserve the memory of the horror and heroism of Flight 93, but to preserve and encourage the spirit of the citizen passengers and crew. What is your Flight 93 cause, and what are your plans?
Specific to Flight 93, The Friends of Flight 93 National Memorial, the official non-profit partner to the Flight 93 National Memorial, wants to leverage the attention brought by the coming anniversary of 9/11 to encourage conversations about heroism and bravery all across the United States. Nominations can be submitted by visiting www.Flight93Friends.org.
Where do you stand? What are you going to do? Remember, it does not matter where you stand if you don’t do anything.
As always, whatever you do, do it in love. Without love, anything we do is empty. 1 Corinthians 16:14
Contact
As we get ready to wrap up, please do respond in the episodes with comments or questions about this episode or anything that comes to mind, or connect with me on Twitter, @willluden, Facebook, facebook.com/will.luden, and LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/willluden/. And you can subscribe on your favorite device through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Will Luden, coming to you from 7,200’ in Colorado Springs.
