Right-wingers cry socialism over 9/11 anniversary plan backed by many in GOP
Published: August 25, 2009
Updated 6 months ago
Right-wing commentators are claiming that the White House is planning to “erase the meaning” of the 9/11 attacks and turn the anniversary into “a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry” — despite the fact that the plan for a National Day of Service on 9/11 had broad bipartisan support.
An article by Matthew Vadum, published Monday in the American Spectator, states that the president’s plan for a National Day of Service, to be celebrated on September 11, would eliminate 9/11 as a political tool for Republicans.
“The plan is to turn a ‘day of fear’ that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left,” writes Vadum. “In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.”
As some commentators have pointed out, Vadum’s article overlooks the fact that the idea to link the 9/11 anniversary to volunteerism was originally promoted by President George W. Bush, and the bill to make it law, passed this spring, had bipartisan support.
Seventy House Republicans and 22 GOP senators voted for the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE) Act, which established the National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11.
“America came together in the aftermath of 9/11, reminding us what it truly means to be part of this great nation,” wrote Republican Congressman Peter King of New York, in a press release supporting the National Day of Service and Remembrance. “By making 9/11 a national day of service, that same spirit of giving will continue in a day of remembrance, unity, and selflessness.”
(Rep. King most recently made news when referred to Michael Jackson as a “pedophile” and a “low-life” shortly after the pop singer’s death. He is also known to have been a long-time supporter of the Irish Republican Army.)
Vadum’s article is “one way to look at it,” responds Marc Ambinder, sarcastically, at his Atlantic blog. “The idea is that the White House wants to take away 9/11’s GOP-helping power and turn it into something more community-organizing friendly, which, we all know, is radical — that 9/11 will turn into Earth Day, a platform to show concern for the environment — or that a positive activity like national service trivializes and obfuscates the true meaning of the day.”
But many conservative bloggers have already jumped at the new talking point.
“Sick,” writes Gateway Pundit. “Barack Obama and the radical Left plan on desecrating 9-11 into a Leftist holiday like they already did to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.”
Writer Michelle Malkin blogged that the National Day of Service “makes perfect sense coming from a president who believes that the root of 9/11 jihadi [sic] stems ‘from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers’.”
At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen challenges Vadum’s assertions about the National Day of Service.
“First, George W. Bush called for community volunteer work on the anniversary of 9/11, and the right didn’t find it controversial,” Benen writes.
“Second, victims’ families have recommended making 9/11 a national day of service for years. Third, Alex Koppelman explained, ‘Check out the official Web site set up for the day: They’re asking people to come up with their own events. So if you don’t want to help out at anti-American places like food banks and community gardens, you can organize your own event.’
The home page of the 9/11 day of service states: “Please take a moment now to post your personal plan to perform a good deed, volunteer or engage in another charitable activity in observance of the newly established September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance. Help create a wonderful legacy that honors the victims and those who rose to service in response to the attacks on America.”
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Our guy said it? YAY!, GREAT idea! … Oh, their guy said it? BOOO! You’re trying to destroy America!
(the above is, unfortunately, literally how the right-wing behaves in virtually all matters. The left-wing, unfortunately, also have people who behave the same way.. what’s the _most_ unfortunate is we don’t have a population who looks at ideas on their own merits and decides if they make sense or not. Of course, a thinking, reasoning public won’t go massively in debt buying crap they don’t need and voting for people based on 30 second sound bites and partisan bullshittery).
Make it a National Holiday and call it the day that the republicans failed Americans again
The failure was bi-partisan. 9-11 implicates them all. So they’d better keep their mouths shut and go along with the charade that some Arabs in a cave plotted and carried out 9-11, or they will be exposed for what they really are.
“The idea is that the White House wants to take away 9/11’s GOP-helping power and turn it into something more community-organizing friendly, which, we all know, is radical — that 9/11 will turn into Earth Day, a platform to show concern for the environment — or that a positive activity like national service trivializes and obfuscates the true meaning of the day.”
Unbelievable. Vadum is the poster boy for both increasing educational funding across the board and mandatory abortions. People like this shouldn’t even be allowed to breed.
I mean, he’s actually suggesting that 9/11 is more important as a tool for republicans to exploit irrational fears to raise money than it is as a starting point for community involvement and civic service.
“a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry” - besides the word ‘leftist’, this has been the case from the moment the planes struck the towers anyway, 5 minutes into the first tower collapsing they weere already drilling it in to our heads that we’d all remember where we were that day, like when JFK died.
“Please take a moment now to post your personal plan to perform a good deed, volunteer or engage in another charitable activity in observance of the newly established September 11 National Day of Service and Remembrance. Help create a wonderful legacy that honors the victims and those who rose to service in response to the attacks on America.” - I’ve got a legacy, I’m going to take a monster dump and then take my 27 tattered little made-in-china American flags that fell off peoples SUV’s over the months following 9/11 around my home and wave them around.
“that honors the victims and those who rose to service in response to the attacks on America” - Yeah, lets honor the troops for volunteering to kill innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan for no good reason, my favorite are the pricks that wrote those nasty messages on the bombs, that’s how I’d do it if I was part of a team of sociopathic half-tarded murderers, I’d write mean messages on bombs, momma always said I wasn’t much of a hero.
Their nerve is just amazing.
“statist idolatry”? This has been their platform since 9/11.Their “meaning” of 9/11 provides endless justification to spend,murder and grab resources in the name of the State while reaping profit for the MIC & global corporations in a non “freemarket” ,non productive manner while waving the flag.
Because of their “meaning”of 9/11,the State has expanded into lives of the citizen more than ever before.(surveillance,”Patriot”act,warner “defense”act,
military commisions act,fusion centers,street cameras,750 billion “defense”budget,torture,10 trillion national debt,”homeland security”……).
This is rich coming from the party of “small Government,fiscal responsibility,free markets and morals.” Hypocrisy,as usual.They hate “big government”,but murdering and torturing for it is O.K.
I guess they are afraid any change from their “meaning” of 9/11.It’s fear based ability to induce and exploit a herd mentality is needed to carry out the PNAC ,AIE,CFR …agenda (which Obama continues).
Unfricking believable!! Right wing knuckle draggin dolts will complain and gripe at ANYTHING!!
They griped about Obama not wearing a suit jacket in the Oval Office, but they didn’t gripe about Bush saying (while in the Oval Office), that the Constitution was just a GD piece of paper.
They griped about Obama asking for spicy mustard on his hamburger instead of regular mustard?? How lame is that?
They griped about Obama not wearing a tie sometimes with his suit, but they never griped about Bush wearing blue jeans and boots.
They griped about Obama’s birth certificate, yet they never cared about McCains birth certificate.
They griped about Scooter Libby’s perjury charge as being political, yet they reveled in Clinton’s perjury charge.
Now they are griping at Obama about using 9/11 as a national day of service, without acknowledging that it was actually Bush’s idea, and that the bill passed with broad bi-partisan support!
Republicans are basically just a-holes that run around griping about anything and everything non-republicans do. They are professional whiners…..Somebody call a whaaaaaambulance.
“…a ‘day of fear’ that helps Republicans… ”
Fear helps republicons. That speaks volumes. Republicons have no truck with reason and logic. They operate by fear; emotion.
This is one of the two major differences between Liberals and republicons: Liberals function based on reason and logic. Republicons function based on emotion.
The other difference is republicons have no sense of empathy, whereas Liberals have a strong sense of empathy. When the republicon’s neighbor is starving, the republicon’s response is a sense of superiority, coziness if you will, that he is doing great relative to his starving neighbor.
The Liberal, on the other hand, is anquishing in his house trying to determine how much of his good fortune he could spare in helping his neighbor without jeapordizing his own family’s well being.
Learn from a *real* capitalist:
WTF ‘McMONEY SHOT’ MEGHAN McCAIN? at
http://www.xanaduxero.blogspot.com
Just when I start to think that conservatives couldn’t possibly get any more stupid,….
What we should remember 9/11 for is the day that a criminal faction of our own U.S. government committed a false flag attack against its own citizens and senselessly and callously murdered 2,973 of them. They then used this as an excuse to invade Afghanistan to secure an oil pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan to India (google TAPI pipeline) and also to later use it as an excuse to invade and occupy Iraq in order to take over a large part of their oil supply and to have a place to build permenent US military bases for future wars. Having done that, we have murdered more than 1.3 million Iraqi’s, created another 4 million refugees forced to flee their homes. We’ve killed tens of thousands of Afghanis and allowed and promoted the increase of their poppy/heroin exporting trade. We are now smart bombing Pakistanis in this bogus war on terrorism.
The evidence is in… ‘Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe’, a peer-reviewed scientific paper has recently been published in the Open Chemical Physics Journal detailing the use of nanothermite to bring down the three buildings in NYC on 9/11 by controlled demolition. We must demand a new, thorough and “independent” 9/11 investigation now for the 9/11 victims, their families and all those lives lost from this prefabricated war on terrorism.
This really isn’t that difficult to understand. Simple science proves the inside job aspect of 9/11. Both WTC towers fell at near ‘freefall acceleration’. Freefall acceleration is described as the time it would take to drop an object a given distance until it reaches the ground with only gravity as the downward force. Ex: the time it would take to drop a baseball off the top of one of the 110 storey World Trade Center buildings until it hit the street below with only air as the resistant force. (About 9.2 seconds.) Therefore, as each tower collapsed, how is it physically possible for them to collapse at this speed with all of the massive steel and concrete support structure below giving NO RESISTANCE? Also, what was the energy force that caused massive multi-ton steel support columns to be ejected laterally outward up to 600 feet embedding them into nearby buildings? What was the energy force that caused all of the concrete to be pulverized into a fine powder covering all of lower Manhattan? The Physics Law of Conservation of Momentum does not allow for this. You can’t have it both ways. If the Official Government Conspiracy Theory claims that the weight of the part of the building above the plane impact area crushed the lower structure how can it also have the energy to eject the steel outward and pulverize the concrete too? Simple answer. It can’t.
It’s simply science. The only way the three WTC buildings could fall at this rate is that the structure columns were being removed (demolished using explosives) as the buildings fell causing no resistance. The laws of physics don’t/can’t lie. Governments and their paid propagandist can and do.
Visit http://www.AE911Truth.org, http://www.PatriotsQuestion911.com, http://www.PilotsFor911Truth.org and FirefightersFor911Truth.org. We need to deman a new 8/11 investigation now!
Anderson Baldwin Carter Choate Clemente Gonzalez Gravel Kaptur Kucinich McKinney Nader Paul Perot Sheehan Ventura
DNC & RNC have sold out the country in order to enrich themselves
“Federal” Reserve
Anthrax
AIPAC
9/11
Make this a day to demand a real and independent investigation of the events of this day. Take to the streets and demand it or it will never happen. Your government has lied to you and will continue to do so as long as you let them.
I used to credit the conservatives I grew up with atleast being down to earth and straight shooters.
These days I tend to think the opposite as dishonesty and ill logic seems to permeate the whole of the rightwing.
Republicans were the party asleep at the helm when the attacks were perpetrated. They ought to be permanently ashamed of themselves-if only for that reason alone. But I won’t hold my breath that one day they’ll develop a sense of shame. It was funny that this poor excuse for a journalist admitted that the Republicans have made a day of fear out of it instead of a day of courage and resolve to never let this country go so horribly unprepared again. But what can you expect from a party that offers nothing but lies, war and greedy self-interest.
National Fear Day…has a nice ring to it. The parades have to run down the streets screaming. Need to clarify if it just celebrates fear of terrorism or all fears in general.
You can feel & see the level of anger & hostility the Conservative propaganda machine has the citizens of this nation in. Many folks are right on the edge.
Be careful out there folks. It isn’t funny.
You gotta love them dead Republicans: a good deed is socialism, or communism, or radicalism. Only purely out and out greed is “good”, so a “good deed” to them is stealing money from somebody, preferably someone who is vulnerable and can’t fight back. When a brand is a brand, it is really a brand! And they’ll supply the fire!
I had no idea that right wingers were interested in managing the celebrations of Martin Luther King day. I wonder what sort of celebrations they have in mind? Mock lynchings? Outdoor gun sales? A “whites only” parade?
I agree cincy911truthguy.
And I don’t care which rational from the GOP or Dems is used to defeat the 9/11 day because I don’t want to mark and observe a day of shame and celebrate a big lie.
” A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy. ”
— Benjamin Disraeli
You’re absolutely right, cincy91, and let’s all remember, that THIS president, the one whom most of the readers at this site are so fond of, is helping to cover up the truth of that event. He is no different than the last guy. The reason the right wingers are so afraid and angry is because they know the “new” guy isn’t looking out for their interests like the “old” guy was. But the reality is that the new guy isn’t looking out for anyone’s interests. Just his own and his masters.
Beware of the next false flag, the shadow government’s next for-profit scheme to damage us further while extracting more money from us–swine flu, and the deliberately contaminated vaccine they are trying to trick us into taking.
I have a much better idea.
HAVE A REAL, COMPREHENSIVE INVESTIGATION.
Why even spin 9/11 any more?
If some people on the so-called ‘left’ want to twist 9/11 into a big call for servitude, it’s as disgraceful as people on the ‘right’ side using it for fear when the decision-makers on both sides are culpable for massive, massive amounts of cover-ups in relation to what actually happened that morning, and by whom.
I hope those wingers have also targeted the movies Whiteout, Sorority Row and I Can Do Bad All By Myself for daring to have a September 11 release date, because clearly the Hollywood Libruls are just trying to turn 9/11 into a Leftist Murder mystery / Horror / Comedy movie release event.
really?! reasons for having a republican party are disappearing by the day.
We’ve already got just one party now. Dems and Repubs only pretend to be on opposite sides, so we’ll think we have a choice.
Yeah, so why not have the GOP disappear and make it official? The US under one party rule! Wouldn’t the puppet masters adore that!
holy cow the repiglacans sure are a bunch of whinny cry babies. Man up guys and quit your whining. Remember, you used to say that to the dems when bush stole his 2 elections, now it is our turn to say it.
Do the republicans have no shame?….they politicized 9/11, used it for political gain, for illegal invasion, for spying, for monetary gain, the murder and torture of innocents, including our own military, to push their right-wing neo-fascist ideology, expand their power, push misconception, propaganda, ignorance, corporate control and greed….incited and unleashed the “crazies” (their base) to intimidate, fuel and flame, the fires of hatred, fear and intolerance, the exact opposite of all things this Democratic Nation stands for, …the Republicans and their (greedy Corporate Masters) are the ones who desecrated 9/11
Right wingers are not going to like it when the real truth about 9/11 comes out and it will…………
The right wing will only like an idea if:
1. It exploits people who are already in an unfortunate position, and…
2. It makes them and their corporate friends obscenely rich.
If not, then anything that resembles public support or other act of community service is rejected.
That’s the Christian way, you know.
Just because something has “broad bi-partisan support” doesn’t mean the public supports it, or even that it’s a good idea. I’m not saying it’s a lousy idea, just suggesting you look at everything politicians do critically.
Don’t be misled by WH propaganda, even when you think you like what they’re doing.
“Statist idolatry” my foot.
The entire Cheney / Bush Co-Presidency was a paen to statist idolatry from the moment the Supreme Court appointed them.
The right wing is playing with fire. They will soon find the growing majority they have so maligned over the years will grow less tolerant of their idiotically calculated maunderings.
When that happens, it won’t be pretty, neither will it be nonviolent. Lobbyists and corporate titans, oligarchs and their bright accountants and attorneys may find there is no place on earth to hide, no security force on earth able to keep them from the knife.
One would hope for a softer transition, but their trajectory makes it increasingly doubtful.
On the upside, those who survive the coming bloodletting will be more cordial, more thoughtful, and more respectful of others, and of the new social contract, than their colleagues whom they are burying.
-dcm
GOP rightwing Republicans = Re-POOP-LICK-ans are at it again!
LIES, DECEPTION, SMEARING, DEMEANING, MISLEADING, CREATING CHAOS, LIES, DECEPTION, SMEARING, DEMEANING, MISLEADING, CREATING CHAOS, they’re a broken record!
Re-POOP-lick-ans try to STUFF THE SAME CRAP
down Americans’ throats over and over and over again. Boring.
Re-POOP-lick-ans are just about THE POOP.
ALL POOP, ALL THE TIME, always the same CRAP.
They’re FRAT-BRATS created by LEE ATWATER, a frat-brat who renounced all the crap he created before dying of brain cancer. He was a pox on society and left a legacy of Re-POOP-lick-an CRAP.
The Republicans never cease to amaze me with their chutzpah. The monstrous happenings on 911 occurred on the watch the Republican GW Bush administration. It is demonstrable that policies and actions as well as in actions by that administration left the barn door open for the 911 attack to occur. Then they have the nerve to use that infamous event to further their ruinous so called War on Terror attacking the wrong targets at the wrong time. The only sure thing about the Bush administration War on Terror is it made a lot of Republican Party backers from the oil and arms industries unbelievable amounts of money as they shed crocodile tears over the killed and injured military personnel.