That September Morn

Terrorists crashed planes into my country the same year that I came of legal age. The horrific tragedy of September 11 shook me from my childhood illusions of security; the same might be said for the nation as a whole.

Back then my mindset inhabited a world apart. When word-of-mouth reached me that a plane had collided with a skyscraper in New York City, I instantly imagined a small biplane flown by an amateur pilot capable of such error. A commercial jet? Obviously some sort of technical malfunction. The idea of enemies with hate in their hearts purposely flying a plane into a building to kill thousands of innocent civilians -- I simply could not naturally countenance such a revelation.

Even if it was the truth.

A good friend, now in the U.S. Army, mentioned that it had possibly been an attack by Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization, Al Qaeda. If those names had even registered with me before, I had only the foggiest notions of who they were.

Not until five hours after the attack did my paradigm shift sufficiently to comprehend the enormity of the day. I spent that Tuesday at a rural camp in central Texas. There was no need to cancel the pre-planned school retreat; my classmates and I were arguably safer there than in the city. As the powerless population elsewhere sat glued to their televisions, we breathed free and buffered from the terror in our remote and isolated location.

I can vividly remember the surprise I felt at my chemistry teacher not only finding a television cart, but also wheeling it out with a working cable connection during lunch. I ate on the other side of the cafeteria, avoiding the gravity of information I would inevitably receive as well as the throng engrossed by visions of smoke billowing from a burning skyscraper. Finally, after throwing away remnants of my meal, I allowed myself to be exposed to the news.

The sight of the second plane's dark outline disappearing into the back of the tower hit me deep in my bowels like the force of the impact itself. As the front face of the building flashed into a fireball, my soul thrummed in the same bass reverberatory reaction as when a monster in a horror film is first revealed to the camera. In that moment, evil of the sort I thought confined to fiction became real and present in my world. In that moment, I first understood the terror that we faced.

In that moment, I shed the innocence made possible by a father's protection and became a man in a dangerous world. My mind steeled to face the future. The conventional wisdom for the entirety of my life thus far -- to cooperate with hijackers in order to limit casualties -- immediately became ludicrous and incredible; no American would ever sit quietly during an attempt to seize a plane again. Not from the moment the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. The heroes of Flight 93 proved that.

The attack awakened us to our weaknesses; as a nation we poured into churches and chapels for prayer vigils. The attack burned away dross to reveal our strength; as a nation we rallied together, unified, proud of our fire fighters and civilian heroes, proud to be American. The world looked on in awe and surprise at our sudden resolve. We would not back down from such a despicable foe. We would not be ashamed. Patriotism surged, with flags growing in every front yard, on every car bumper, and through every business window. The attack had the opposite effect of terror.

At least, as I saw the flags and the prayer and the patriotism, I thought these truths for me reflected on all of my fellow Americans as well.

But though an airplane cabin became from that point the least safe location in America for a terrorist, we stood by as the government who could not originally protect us banned fingernail clippers and drinking water. We exchanged vigilance in our communities for a meaningless color system of threat levels. We allowed elitists to decree that images from that day should no longer be televised, lest we continue to hold anger for the Muslim terrorists that attacked us. We tolerated fellow Americans rationalizing the cowardly, indefensible acts of terrorism as something the States had brought onto themselves. We squabbled over where and how the government should protect us abroad, all the while quiet as it seeped into our privacy to protect us at home.

Nearly a decade ago, Muslim terrorists hijacked planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacking our liberty and shattering our illusion of security. Eight years later, I wonder whether the American people, in response, bought a new illusion of security at the price of liberty. I wonder whether what the terrorists could never take from us through violence we released freely on our own.

Still, I remember the unity felt with my fellow Americans as we steeled ourselves against a despicable foe. I remember the humility of mourning and of woundedness as a nation. And I hope that America will not fall into a dream of security under government, but will forever remain the land of the free and the home of the brave, so that future generations might sing another verse of the "Star-Spangled Banner":

O say did you see, on that September morn,
When crav'n strikes from the air stopped the globe in its turning?
When through smoke-blackened skies, people looked on forlorn
And, in terror, we watched as the towers fell burning?
But! In Pennsylvanian field, in firemen heroes revealed,
We proved to the world that free men don't yield;
And from ev'ry man's door a sea of star-spangled banners waved
In the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Hillside History Lesson

With acknowledgment to M. Stanton Evans and in submission to the 07/03/09 Friday Challenge.

As the hot July sun sank below the horizon, three figures searched for the perfect spot on the immense hillside to celebrate the Fourth in their family’s own peculiar manner. “We’re running out of time,” announced Lauren, the smallest, but also the eldest and mother of the other two. “I want a clear view of the beginning of your dad’s show.”

“It’s not like it’s anything we haven’t seen before, Mom,” replied her daughter, Amy. At seventeen she was already taller than her mother and more athletically built. She tossed her head to shake off the gnats buzzing in her face, sending her long pony-tail swishing back and forth. She looked up as her younger brother, T, came bounding up, his curly locks bouncing with each step.

“I’ve found the perfect spot,” he exclaimed, his face shining. T had turned fifteen the month before, and though adolescence had sharpened his features, he still looked more like thirteen. “Follow me!”

A few moments later the three of them were lying on the hillside, casually watching the townscape below.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“So,” spoke Lauren, glancing at her children, “which of you two can tell me the significance and history of this date?”

“It’s the…um, two hundred and sixty-third anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence,” answered T.

“Actually, it wasn’t signed until about a month later, but it was adopted by Congress on the Fourth of July,” corrected Amy.

“Yeah, yeah, nit-pick the meaningless details,” muttered her brother.

“Okay, then, forgetting the details,” smiled their mother, “why don’t y’all give me a rundown on the theme of freedom leading through the Declaration to today?”

Amy raised an eyebrow at her mother. “Geez, Mom, do we gotta do this now?”

“The moment’s meaningless if you can’t tell me how we got here,” Lauren answered.

“How detailed are we talking?” T asked, one hand idly picking at the grass on the ground next to him.

“Oh, I think the nature of the evening warrants a simple synopsis,” replied his mother. “Just hit the highlights, starting with the source of liberty.”

“I always thought that was Uncle Jon and Aunt Mary,” joked T in reference to his cousin Libby. His mother and sister laughed, their eyes sparkling like the stars in the darkening dusk above.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

“Okay,” smirked Amy, “then I suppose I’ll start it off by saying the notion of free governments was born and nourished in the Middle Ages, made possible by the concept of a law above even the kings as put forth by Christianity—at that time expressed through the Catholic Church.”

“Right,” Lauren nodded, “but a philosophy and a practical output are two different things. What restricted the power of the kings, aside from the Church?”

“It always comes down to the money,” declared T with all the hardened certainty of a young teenage boy. “The feudal system meant that each baron had the means of defending his property, and this decentralized power system meant the kings in Britain had to seek the lords’ consent to levy taxes.”

“As solidified in the Magna Carta after the squabble with King John,” nodded Amy. “A great poster document for British constitutionalism. So when the king wanted to get money, he’d have to call together the barons and ask permission, and they’d always demand guarantees and safeguards of rights in exchange for the taxes. Hey, is that soda?!”

“In self-cooling cans,” grinned her mother in reply. She tossed one to each of her children. T cheered at the rare treat. Thrice the soothing sound of depressurization cut into the symphony of chirping insects, and to the three on the hillside the heavy twilight heat lifted lightly away as they drank the refreshingly cold beverages.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

“Okay, so,” began T after a long draught on his Coke, “the essence of British constitutionalism was that no individual or group could hold unchecked power over others. Even the king derived his authority and ability to levy taxes from the consent of his subjects.”

“Not that kings liked that,” interjected Amy. “And the Renaissance harkened them back to the days of Rome when ‘whatever pleases the king has the force of law.’ So that’s how you get issues like Charles I, but the Brits kept managing to conserve their tradition of freedom—like the Petition of Right in 1628 they made King Charles sign.”

“And around that time you had the burgeoning middle class that the king wanted to tax,” T broke back in, “so you had the development of the House of Commons and the widespread debate of limiting tyrannical power with representative government.”

“And people from that era are the ones who settled in the American colonies,” continued Amy. “And I’d even—”

Amy’s words caught in her throat as all three were nearly blinded by the first burst of light. A few moments later the sound of the charge—more felt than heard—swept over them. Lauren couldn’t help but reminisce of the fireworks displays she had seen as a young woman as she watched the subsequent flashes of light dance across the faces of her two teenage children.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

“So what caused the Founding Fathers to declare independence from the nation that had birthed free government?” asked Lauren during a lull in the explosive bursts of fire and light.

“Each of the colonies was established with a charter signed to the British Crown,” answered T. “They conducted their own legislatures and levied their own taxes. So when Parliament left the British tradition and began wielding supreme authority in England and tried to exert that authority over the colonies, they rebelled.”

He paused as a loud boom arrested his attention, green and orange lighting up the night sky.

“The colonies rebelled, all of a sudden, just like that?” their mom pressed.

“Nah,” drawled T. “Parliament did all sorts of stuff and the Americans kept seeking solutions, patient despite three major tax bills, draconian restraints on trade, cases being tried without juries, and the king suspending the colonial legislatures. They didn’t even officially rebel until the Brits started sending troops to hold down possible insurrections.”

“But then,” said Amy, continuing her brother’s thought, “after war broke out, they finally realized that the only way they would be able to preserve their traditional and valued system of free government was separation from the radical authoritarian British Parliament, to whom they never had any contractual obligation in the first place!”

A series of pops continued for so long that it made T grin at his sister. “That guy’s store of munitions for the day must be as long as my arm.”

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

T gathered up the empty cans, crushed them, and put the aluminum in his rucksack, continuing his recitation of history the whole while. “Then in 1787 you get the United States of America. All goes well until the federal government, ever-consolidating its power, particularly in the twentieth century, starts ignoring the Constitution, levying all sorts of taxes, and behaving like a supreme authority—just like eighteenth century’s British Parliament!”

“So then you get people like Grand-Dad,” nodded Amy, “who worked hard in politics to restore the US to its British constitutionalist roots. But by that time, the nation was split, because enough people had been miseducated as to where freedom came from. About forty percent wanted to see the nation ‘progress’ into a new form of statist government, and they weren’t up for returning to the old traditions of limited government.”

She paused at a series of bright flashes and bangs on the near side of the town. These were smaller than the much more massive pyrotechnics display they had watched earlier. Amy’s speech slowed as she tried to pick out through the distance and the dark the individuals responsible for the new ruckus. “Then…the statists enacted several radical changes at the beginning of the millennium, ignoring the people’s protests and disapproval. On July 4, 2015, the People’s Convention declared Washington, D.C., empty of power much in the same way the British once declared the throne of King James II vacant. Fortunately, the military was favorable to the dissidents, so violence was mostly limited to riots scattered across the nation. Because half the nation still favored the statist regime.”

“So on July 4, 2016,” concluded her brother, “The Separation of States was signed in order to allow both peoples to from their own government, with those dedicated to constitutionalism and limited government making up the newly-formed Independent States of America.” He frowned for a moment. “The major fireworks have been over for a while now; Dad should have joined back up with us by now.”

Flashes and pops and bangs clamored up from the town below.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Lauren pulled herself up from the ground, drawing her diminutive but lithe body into a crouch such that at a distance she would be indifferentiable from a rock on the hill. “And after the Separation of States?” she asked, hoping the question would distract her son from his concerns regarding her husbands whereabouts.

“After that,” Amy responded distractedly, her eyes staring intently into the gloom below, “the ISA and the USA lived in relative peace, though a lot of ire was directed at both nations because the separation ultimately defaulted on the loans the US had borrowed from the world, sparking off a depression and worldwide famine even bigger than what they had just come out of. About this time much of Europe fell to Islam, and the religion was flourishing in the USA, which…” She trailed off.

“Which brings us to today,” her brother finished for her. “Where we’ve got two ISAs, the Muslims having taken over those poor statist bastards and declared jihad on us free Independents.”

“A perfect summary! Good job, both of you,” Lauren commended her children. She was proud of their discipline in educating themselves and remembering the lessons of history she and her husband had been careful to teach them. She flinched at a sudden series of crackling pops at the bottom of the hill. “Do either of you see your father down there?” she asked, now worried herself.

“Got ‘im,” murmured Amy, looking through her scope. “Uh oh, a couple mooeys on his tail. Just a sec.” She took careful aim and then fired a shot with her long-range rifle.

“Nice one!” remarked T, looking through his own sights. By the time he had finished the exclamatory praise, his sister had already killed the second mujahid on her father’s tail.

Shortly, the family was rejoined by their dad, whom the enemy had taken to calling al-Qat’ Tariq—the Bandit. He squeezed his son, Texas, on the arm in greeting. He smiled and kissed his daughter, America, on the forehead. Then he caught Lauren up in his arms and gave her a short but passionate kiss. “A heck of a way to celebrate the Fourth of July, eh, gang? Now let’s get up and over the hill before the jihadis figure out which way the guy who blew up their weapon cache went.”

The four fled over the hill into the darkness of night. Behind them, the Islamic munitions town burned, hot flames glowing like the torch of Liberty.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Moderation of the Community

Reading this interesting article set my world-building engine into overdrive. This is a small side-story in that universe written for The Friday Challenge.

Tucked away in a corner of the econet, far removed from the national cities, ringed by protective swathes of Nifforest interspersed with Dronelands and Nephilim Wastes, lies an obscure chain of mountains. There a narrow, unobtrusive path winds its way through treacherous passes until it suddenly opens upon the verdant Vale of Cyterra. At the expansive valley’s further end, atop a ridge halfway up the great mount that overlooks Cyterra, stands a temple remodeled from a former biogenetics plant. Within the temple lies a grand hall with a raised dais. In the hall, Cyterrans and three outsiders kneel before Kythara, the goddess of fertility.

The fore of the outsiders hastily pushes himself up from the ground, his greasy brown locks swaying as he shrugs off the Cyterran hands that had kowtowed him before their goddess. He spits.

“I told you, I ain’t gonna bow before any other human. I am a free man!” He glares defiantly at the goddess reclining on her celestial devan. “Who made you Queen of the Econet, huh?” Behind him, his companions likewise rise rebelliously to leer at the sufficiently comely woman.

A Cyterran interjects on the behalf of his deity. “Without the goddess, the Vale would lie desolate as the surrounding lands, and all would starve.”

“Gracious Kythara blesses the seeds that they might grow and kisses the flowers that they might produce fruit,” speaks another.

“She opens the wombs of our women so that they might conceive,” nods a man.

The outsider with the greasy locks snorts. He raises his hands to gesture about the grand hall. “What is this, an old Cytex Systems plant? So you’re, what, a former lab technician turned community admin? What sort of command system do you use to make these people so gullible?”

“You’ve caused quite a stir in my community,” murmurs Kythara softly, ignoring the questions. Her brown eyes appraise the outsiders. “Who are you? What do you want? Why have you disrupted the peace of Cyterra?”

“I’m Phynx,” the man thumbs toward himself. “My buddies Drodabbabob and Klizz and I know more about the econet than ten of your Cyterrans put together.”

“All your base are belong to us,” adds the big man behind him with a sardonic smile.

“Ah,” remarks the goddess. “Renegade Five Channers here to trouble the people for their own amusement or gain.”

“You filthy whore!” exclaims the third man to the shock of the Cyterrans. “You know nothing of us! You’re probably so busy up here spreading your legs for fertility rites that if your drones hadn’t dragged us up here you’d still be bumping uglies.”

“Shut up, Klizz,” hisses Phynx. “Don’t insult your host—not when she’s stripped you of your pistols.” He grins up at Kythara. “Please forgive my excitable friend.”

Kythara swings out her legs to sit upright on the cushion. “On the contrary, I knew the moment you stepped foot in my valley. And now I’ve seen your nature for myself. I zealously protect this community.” She stands. “You will leave the Vale of Cyterra immediately.”

“Like hell we will!” growls Klizz. “Have you seen what’s outside this little paradise, or were you too busy humping to come up for air?”

“Rude as he is, Klizz is right on this one,” intercedes Phynx. “The econet is a free place.”

“I shall speak slowly, so as to be sure that you understand. You will leave today,” enunciates Kythara.

Phynx spits. He glares at Kythara. “You’re despicable. Holding the germination codes over these people’s heads, just so you can parade yourself about like a fertility goddess.”

“That means you’re a whore,” explains Klizz.

“And how would you have it?” asks the goddess. “Without me, these people would die.”

“Pshaw!” cries Phynx. “Dro here is a wizard. I’m sure he could crack the Cytex seeds and I know the nanopros offer no challenge to him. In fact, I ordered him to dismantle your firewalls and hack your zombies’ wifi ports.” He glances over his shoulder. “You done yet, Dro?”

“I’ve set her up the bomb, Phynx,” nods Drodabbabob.

Phynx grins smugly at Kythara. “There’s gonna be a change in the pantheon for the Cyterrans.”

Kythara suddenly doubles over, her body shaking. She then rises with tinkling laughter and extends her arms over her worshippers. “The people of Cyterra serve me out of gratitude for my blessings. I removed their diodes long ago.”

Phynx turns his wide eyes to Drodabbabob. After a few moments, the wizard gives a frustrated nod: “Empty pings.”

“I guess we’d better go then,” mutters Phynx. He motions for his compatriots to move toward the door. But as he begins to leave, his forearm compartment opens, dropping a throwing knife into his hand. In a single, swift motion the Channer pivots to arc the blade toward Kythara.

The knife never reaches the goddess. A massive organo-hydraulic arm drops from the ceiling and snatches it mid-flight. The temple shakes as several tons of metal land on the ground between the dais and the outsiders.

Kythara glowers imperiously from behind the mechanical monster. “I was merciful before, but you have shown yourselves to be a threat to this community. I hereby permanently ban you from the Vale of Cyterra.”

Phynx spits. “Fine, you crazy cat lady, we’re leaving already.”

The goddess shakes her head. “You misunderstand. You are permanently banned. Moderator?”

A synthesized voice speaks from the mass of metal. “Yes, my goddess?”

“Kill these three trolls.”