Citizens for Principled Government

The spirit and principle of sacred remembrance is vital to the preservation of our freedom and our moral heritage. If we are not careful, days that are dedicated and set apart for commemoration of that which is truly most important and memorable can lose their true meaning over time. For example, we speak of the “world’s greatest generation” and those who literally and in the most vivid and intimate ways experienced World War II first hand. They witnessed the combined forces of good and evil at war among all nations. As Winston Churchill stated, “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization”…. “and victory would enable the world to “move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.” Following that glorious victory, a grateful America returned home and by official act of Congress, soon added the words, “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Also, under then President (formerly General) Dwight Eisenhower, “IN GOD WE TRUST” became our official national motto.

Today, we are similarly reminded of the tragedy and the heroes of 9/11 that have so profoundly influenced us as a nation. When attacked, America united in a spirit of deep patriotism and determined resolve in support of our leaders, our armed forces and our Country.  It was, indeed, a defining moment of “moral clarity” for our generation.   As William Bennett has written,

“In the wake of September 11, the doubts and questions that had only recently plagued Americans about their Nation seemed to fade into insignificance.  Good was distinguished from evil, truth from falsehood.  We were firm, dedicated, unified.  It was, in short, a moment of moral clarity – a moment when we began to rediscover ourselves as one people even as we began to gird for battle with a not yet fully defined foe.” (Why We Fight – Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, p. 10).

The War on Terror did not just begin on September 11th, 2001. It was preceded by the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the bombing of the U.S. Barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the suicide assaults on two American Embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the USS Cole at Yemen in 2000.

Remembering 09/11/01

Eleven years ago today, hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower and thundered into the 95th-102nd floors. 76 passengers, 9 flight attendants, 2 pilots and the 5 hijackers all perished in the crash. 1 hour and 40 minutes later, the entire North Tower collapsed after the initial impact.

The South Tower was hit by hijacked American Airlines Flight 175 (the 86th-92nd floors). 51 passengers, 7 flight attendants, 2 pilots and the five hijackers all died in the crash.  The South Tower collapsed 56 minutes after impact.

Hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 (believed to be headed for the White House or the Capitol) was bravely diverted by the passengers. 45 were killed when the plane crashed in a remote field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. 184 people were killed when a fourth plane crashed into the Pentagon. The victims there included 55 military personnel.  Overall, the 9/11 death toll was 2,993 and 24 remain listed as missing.

As Pearl Harbor marked the World War II generation, 9/11 is forever etched in the minds and hearts of the current generation as a similar and tragic “day of infamy”.  It has stirred and inspired our nation with a renewed appreciation for the price and meaning and blessing of freedom.  From a wonderful book, Heroes, Fifty Stories of the American Spirit by Lenore Skomal, we are reminded of the more than 400 New York firefighters, paramedics and police officers who were killed in the line of duty as they gave their lives in the valiant rescue and firefighting attempts that saved thousands.  Here are some samples of the heart wrenching accounts and personal sacrifice of those closest to the fall of the Twin Towers when the unthinkable happened:

Heroes of 9/11

Terrence Hatton was Captain of Rescue 1.  He was one of the first fire fighters to respond to the call for help on the morning of September 11th.  He rushed in to bring people out of the swaying infernos.  He was carried out several weeks later, cradled in the arms of his fellow firefighters.  His remains were uncovered in the five-story pile of rubble.  He was found alongside another fire fighter from his unit, the two of them bringing the number of dead from the Rescue 1 Team to eleven out of its twenty-six total firefighters.  The bodies of the two fallen men were draped in the red, white and blue of the American Flag. As they were carried out, rescue workers and firefighters removed their dust-covered helmets from their heads and saluted their fallen comrades.

Hatton had already demonstrated his bravery on numerous prior occasions. He was decorated 19 times in his 21-year career for bravery and successful rescues.  His wife, Petrone, told all her friends and family how much she loved him and was proud to be his wife.  Shortly after September 11th, she learned that her husband had left her with a lasting gift – a child.  She was pregnant and would bring their new little baby into this world made better by the bravery and sacrifice of the baby’s father.

Captain John Perry did not fit the profile of a New York City Police Officer.  He was a lawyer and a very articulate advocate who spoke five languages.  September 11th was to be his last day on the beat.  The 38-year old cop had taken the day off from the 40th precinct in the Bronx to turn in his retirement papers.  He planned to start his own law practice.  Instead, like so many other police officers that day, he bolted out of police headquarters when he heard that a plane had smashed into one of the Twin Towers.  He wanted to help.  It would be his last act.  When the North Tower fell, he was buried inside.

Port Authority Police Officer George Howard was off-duty September 11th.  He had planned to enjoy it. He was sitting in front of his computer at home in Hicksville, N.Y., when he heard that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane.  He didn’t think twice.  It didn’t matter that it was his day off.  Instinct took over.  He left his home, sped to his post at Kennedy Airport and hopped a rescue truck headed for lower Manhattan. He made it to the Twin Towers moments before the second tower collapsed.  A giant slab of metal took his life.  His body was found in front of the place where the Towers once stood.  “He didn’t have to go, but he did anyway,” said the Port Authority Chaplain.  “George gave his life saving others, not only on September 11th.  He spent a lifetime saving others.”  Days after the disaster, George’s mother, Arlene Howard, presented her son’s badge to President Bush when he met with relatives of missing cops and firefighters.

It is anyone’s guess how many people could have gotten out of the Twin Towers safely but gave their lives to save others.  Bruce Eagleson was one of them.  A Vice President of Westfield America, with offices in the South Tower, Eagleson was in charge of eleven employees.  When the plane struck the tower, his employees were his first concern.  He focused on making sure all of them escaped.  Witnesses said he kept going back to the building, to the other offices, to make sure that as many people as he could find were evacuated.  He was last seen returning to his office to get two-way radios.  He thought it would help if they could communicate with each other as they descended the stairwells.

Alayne Gentul, a Mountainside, N.J. mother of two was another lifesaver.  She was the Human Resources Director for Fiduciary Trust Company.  She would have turned 45 on October 4, 2001.  She was the kind of person people turned to for direction.  That morning, the 700 employees who worked with her on the 90-97th floors in the South Tower of the World Trade Center looked to her once again.  At that point, confusion reigned.  The Fiduciary Trust employees didn’t know what to do.  Nora Haldon remembers standing at the door leading to the 90th floor.  She asked Alayne, “What do you want us to do?”  Alayne responded, “Nora, everyone should go downstairs in an orderly way.  Go now.”

Alayne held the door open as the other employees filed through it.  Haldon remembers how calm Alayne was.  Then Alayne went upstairs.  She knew that the technical support employees on the 97th floor were busy backing up all electronic records of client accounts, trades and money transfers.  People who knew Alayne well weren’t surprised at all that she went upstairs to evacuate the others.  “It was her nature to always put other people first”, said her friend, Allison Katz, a manager in her Department.

Alayne called her husband, Jeff, from the 97th floor.  She told them that she found 8 employees huddled there and holding wet clothes over their mouths.  Smoke was pouring in through the vents.  They didn’t’ know what was happening.  Had the fire spread from the other Tower? Were they better off staying or leaving?  “I’m not sure we can get out,” she told her husband.  He was the Dean of Students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.  He stayed on the phone with his wife and called out for his colleagues to help.  Someone called the 9/11 operators to let them know Alayne and others were trapped on the 97th floor.  The South Tower security guard recommended that they try to leave the building.  Another gave advice on how to trip the sprinkler system but his advice didn’t work.  The group decided to try to evacuate.  They were running out of time.

Alayne told her husband she was scared.  She let him know how much she loved him and asked him to tell the same to her two sons, Alex, 12, and Robby, 8.  They were the lights of her life.  She would leave home at 6:30 every morning so she could return in time to put dinner on the table for her family at a reasonable hour.  She “did for them” on the weekends, biking with them and playing their favorite games.

While they were on the phone, Jack Gentul said he heard a large explosion.  He later assumed it was American Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 757 that slammed into the South Tower below the floors where the Fiduciary Trust Company had its offices.  He knew he had to let his wife go after they expressed their love for each other, over and over again.  He later told the newspaper that it was the hardest thing he had ever done in his entire life.  He paced his office, prayed fervently that his wife and her colleagues would safely make it out alive.

Nora Haldon was about a block away from the South Tower when the second plane hit.  She looked back when she heard the explosion.  “I knew Alayne would still be there,” said Haldon.  “As long as there were still people upstairs, she wouldn’t come out.  That was just Alayne.”  She knew Alayne would never make it out now.  This very special woman – who taught Sunday School to little children for nine years at Community Church in Mountain Lakes, N.J. was soon gone.  However, because of her, at least 40 other families did not suffer the pain and loss that her family did.

Eleven Years Later . . .

It has now been eleven years since that momentous morning when the news flashed all around the world of the evil act of terrorism committed against the United States of America.   Saddam Hussein is gone.  Osama Bin Laden is gone. Iraq has a Constitution and more than 13 million people have exercised the right to vote in their liberated Country.  From President George W. Bush’s message to the American people:

“It is my hope that in the months and years ahead, life will return almost to normal.  We’ll go back to our lives and routines and that is good.  Even grief recedes with time and grace.  But our resolve must not pass.  Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened.  We’ll remember the moment when the news came – where we were and what we were doing.  Some will remember the image of a fire, or a story of rescue.  Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever . . .

Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war and we know that God is not neutral between them. ….  In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America.”

Home of the Brave

Our national motto, “IN GOD WE TRUST” must never be forgotten or neglected.  It must be an enduring reality in our blessed nation.  9/11 will always be a day to remember and honor the freedom and bravery of America and the memory of the heroes of 9/11.

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Dear Friends,

Christmas is such a beautiful time of year when good will abounds and mankind is truly at his best.  There is so much in the world that is beautiful and stirs our souls with continuing appreciation for all we have been given.  However, there is also sorrow and hardship.  Brave and loving parents shield their children from the worries of life.  They will likely never know until they are much older the pressures and heavy responsibilities their parents quietly carried within as they brought their family together to share in all the joyful and tender feelings of the Christmas season.

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The spirit and tradition of Thanksgiving holiday in America is rooted in our nation’s miraculous victory in the great American Revolution.  George Washington expressed his fervent hope that Americans would never forget God’s role in that great battle.  In his first address as President, he said, “I am sure there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs, than those of the United States and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them.”  

No one was a more direct and frequent witness of the hand of Providence in the birth of our Nation than Washington who is rightfully hailed as the “Father of our Country”.  He repeatedly assured his countrymen that God had intervened to rescue and preserve what he called “the sacred Cause of Freedom”.  Unlike today, public expressions and demonstrations of faith in God and the Bible were routine for the Continental Congress.  Throughout the War for Independence, they regularly called for national days of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer” and days of “public thanksgiving and prayer.” Throughout colonial America, there was a pervasive, deeply held belief that the Higher Law of God as revealed in the Bible takes precedence over the laws of man whenever the two conflict.

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PART I

CHRISTMAS 1776

Christmas 1776 was a crucial turning point in America’s war for independence.  It brought a most heroic and unexpected victory on the heels of humiliating retreat from New York through New Jersey.  Few people recall that bleak moment in December, 1776 when the very existence of the American cause of liberty was so severely threatened.  The Declaration of Independence was only six months old.  Thomas Paine’s immortal words describe this critical period as the “American Crisis”.  He said: “These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The magnificent courage exhibited by Washington and his men on Christmas 1776 must never be forgotten. It was truly a miracle and a sign of further blessings yet to come. The significance of that Christmas night along the Delaware River was perhaps best expressed almost five years later in a Virginia town near the Chesapeake Bay.  The occasion was a victory dinner after America’s final victory at Yorktown.  As was the custom in those days, the victorious General Washington had just proposed a toast to the defeated British General Lord Cornwallis (the same man who five years before drove Washington and his rapidly diminishing troops from New York and on through New Jersey and across the Delaware to the safety of the Pennsylvania shore). The British General looked squarely into the eyes of the man who had been his skilled and determined opponent for more than half a decade.  Who, better than Cornwallis, could accurately assess the strategies and abilities of America’s Commander-in-Chief?   All awaited Cornwallis’ answer to the toast offered by General Washington.  Surely, it would refer to Washington’s decisive victory in the just concluded battle of Yorktown.  Instead, however, Cornwallis said: “When the illustrious part which your Excellency has born and the long and arduous contest becomes a matter of history, fame will gather your brightest laurels from the banks of the Delaware rather than those of the Chesapeake.”

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PART III

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM DECADES OF FEDERAL CONTROL OF STATE EDUCATION?

What do we have to show for all the Federal “assistance” (control) in public education? Between 1973 and 2004, when Federal spending on education more than quadrupled, test scores remained either flat or increased by only 1% among American seventeen year olds. Money alone is obviously not the answer to our quest for education excellence. Idaho and Utah (with large families and large per household education spending but low per pupil government spending) do very well among national test scores. The District of Columbia, however, with the nation’s highest per pupil expenditure (over $15,000 per pupil) scores dead last in student achievement.

Obviously, there are other factors including the stability of home life and the culture in which young people grow up that affect their overall well being, the quality of their education and, ultimately, their education performance. The Utah public school system is regarded as the most efficient in the country. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently gave Utah an “A” for return on investment and ranked our state as the highest in the country in that category.

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PART I

Add the college student loan program to Washington’s latest takeover of private enterprise. In yet another government “makeover” or “change” that is supposed to give new “hope” to America, the runaway train engineered by Obama, Reid and Pelosi (all liberal democrats) has again through congressional slight of hand found a way to pass radical “reform” legislation. This is again done without debate or prior committee review and input to screen and protect against such abuse of power.

Remember the wit and wisdom of Ronald Reagan who said, “The scariest words in the English language are, ‘Hello, I’m from the government and I am here to help you.” For decades, the Federal student loan program has respected the role of private banks and other financial institutions in making low interest loans with deferred repayment schedules to help young people finance a college education and improve their station in life. The government’s only role in these “student loans” has been to provide back up in the form of guarantees. Lenders are then willing to make such loans and apply a relaxed set of qualifications for those who are just getting started on their chosen career path.

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PART V

“RUNNING ON EMPTY”

Peter G. Peterson is a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.  He critiqued the state of the national debt and congressional budgeting process in his book, Running on Empty. He calls for a comprehensive long-term budget for the next 50 years and not just one year at a time.  He calls for Congress to enact long term cost control reforms in all its current major programs.  He emphasizes the need to use the “accrual accounting” method that is so common in the private sector.  It tracks long term liabilities but “Congress pretends never to have heard of it.” (    ).  They are allowed to ignore some unfunded retirement obligations and leave over a trillion dollars off of its annual deficit calculations.  This is part of the illusory accounting methods that make government less than transparent.

Peterson also calls for a “generational impact statement” that calculates and discloses the long-term effects of any new spending or tax bill.  He notes that “what often makes marriage couples stop fighting is a good look at their kids.  Americans need to ask [their] leaders . . . to do the same – to look at our kids.”  (p. 224-225).  He further adds:

“Citizenship means looking out for one’s neighbors and giving a hand to those less fortunate. But it also means understanding the big issues of one’s time, seeing past the hype and spin, and working together to hold political leaders accountable.  Your time is coming, and when it does, your generation, like every generation, will get the government it deserves.  If it is distracted by pseudo-issues and gridlocked by special interest, it will be because too few of you paid attention and made your voices heard.

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PART III

“THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP GOVERNMENT FROM GROWING IS TO QUIT FEEDING IT” — Ronald Reagan

Today’s majority in Washington are willing to use deficit spending and the national debt to avoid tough decisions, which are often unpopular.  Resorting to more borrowing instead of making difficult but necessary budget cutting decisions provides the short-term cover and avoidance of political unpopularity that seems to be forever on their mind. The current uprising among the people, however, is beginning to blow that cover.  That is a positive development with great potential if it can be channeled into the corrective measures we sorely need at this time.

President Ronald Reagan said, “The only way to keep government from growing is to quit feeding it.” He pushed for the power of an executive “line item veto,” which he was able to use as Governor of California. When the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they tried to create and adopt such an added check and balance on Federal spending but the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that action.  Thus, today, we are left with outrageous “earmarks” (such as $200 million for an indoor tropical rain forest in Iowa) and the clever and less than transparent insertion of unrelated items into various Bills. This is shrewdly done to ensure passage and avoid a principled debate on the individual merits of such proposals.  (President Obama and the Democrat majority did that again recently to further their “sexual orientation” agenda.  They inserted unrelated “hate crimes” legislation into the military defense budget.  See prior post on this site in the archives, November 12, 2009).

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PART I

1 Year and Counting

After a year in office and a record increase of $1.4 trillion dollars in deficit spending, the President now tells us that our nation is experiencing a “deficit of trust” in our national government. This is strikingly similar to former President Jimmy Carter’s description of the “malaise” he saw among the people but somehow could not understand or remedy.  Fortunately, Ronald Reagan soon followed.  He ushered in the return to conservative principles and reduced taxes. This soon spawned a soaring and lasting economic recovery.  “Malaise” gave way to “Morning in America.”  It will happen again if the people reject the flawed assumptions and government dependency offered by the current Democrat majority in Washington.  We must reclaim the vision and wisdom of former times and apply the lessons of liberty and principled government, which they provide.

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