September 11 2001- No matter what you think of the current government administration or who is your candidate for the upcoming elections - 9/11/01 - is something that appears to still be fresh in our minds - I am not a New Yorker , I was not at the Pentagon, I did not happen to be one of the ones in Pennsylvania that tried to fight back, I was a High School Junior, Skipping school that morning to do the things I usually did when I Skipped School. We were confused as the first plane hit and thought it was really strange - we just happened to be near a T.V to watch the Second Plane crash into the other Tower, at that point everyone knew it was no accident.
To this day people still speculate and look for someone to exert their inner grief and pain out on - the current wars we have fought and are continuing to fight some have found solace in, others have found more pain and heartache. - Some conjure Conspiracy theories and others just want to go blindly into battle.
As is most apparent in this nation the more things change.. the more they stay the same. The outcry in the post 9/11 world in 2001 was amazing, the unity, the support, the charity and the love, it was something everyone as a nation could feel and pour their heart, soul, and prayers out to. Six years later we have very little of those emotions left - America as it is , continues on the path of self indulgence - we have failed to learn from the grief and emotions - we are in the midst of massive consumerism, morality and ethics took no lesson from the love and compassion that was poured out , Today the big stories are - "How little of clothes are required to board a flight", "Bisexual Dating After school Special!", "Britney Spears is too fat, too old and too slow!" "Will Mattel make Enough Toys for Christmas?" - Is this what we should be proud of - is this what are troops are dying for?
The Culture of Death continues in this country every day, We want to Kill our babies in the American Holocaust of Abortion, Kill our Children by sending them to war, and Kill our elderly because they cost too much to keep them alive. What is exactly the message we are passing on to future generations? As a young man raising a family where exactly is a safe haven for our children to be children? It's not terrorists from another country that I am frightened of today, its the terrorists that pour out of my television and Computer every day infecting my family with false ideals of Materialism, liberalism, Sex, and Death that the Devil will spin as the "American way"
Would we know how much the modern world has abused freedom, then cast a glance at the two false theories of Liberalism and Totalitarianism?
Liberalism defines freedom as the right to do whatever you please, and that is the way freedom is understood by 90% of young Americans educated in non-religious institutions. If freedom means that, it means anarchy.
Freedom thus becomes a physical power, not a moral power; an absence of law instead of a respect for it; a right without a corresponding duty; a license without responsibility.
Totalitarianism on the other hand defines freedom as a duty to do what you must. If freedom means that, it means tyranny.
Freedom thus becomes a duty without a right, and comes into being only when the individual will identifies itself with the will of the dictator.
Under this system there is no will but the class will or the national will or the race will. The person no longer exists.
Let loose false concepts of freedom like that in the world and you cannot stop war. The first abuse of freedom which identifies it with absence of law or self-expression, creates war through conflicting egotisms; the second abuse of freedom which identifies it with the will of the dictator, begets war through force and violence.
That is not the kind of freedom God gave us; that is the way we distorted it.
True freedom does not man the right to do whatever you I, not the duty to do whatever you must; but it means the right to do whatever you ought- and oughtness implies law, responsibility, purpose. In other words freedom in inseparable from the God of Love Who made us.
Servant of God Fulton Sheen
