Does 9/11 Make You Proud?

Then why celebrate it with a new "freedom" holiday?

Robert A. George | September 8, 2005

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The American concept of freedom was conceived in the Declaration of Independence and institutionalized in the Constitution. In drafting those documents, the Founders helped weave the soul of the country. That is something far more essential and enduring than what seems to be the latest manifestation of a baby-boomer generation staple—elevating the cult of the victim into a mawkish perpetual sentimentality.

No one disputes that the present United States could not have existed or thrived without war—the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II in particular. Wars are sad necessities and it is correct to honor those who fight them. Hurricane Katrina demonstrates the importance of having an efficient military in peacetime as well.

But the United States is not its military. It is a constitutional republic, "of the people, by the people and for the people." The republic's revolutionary spirit preceded the actual taking of arms to reject forcibly Old World monarchy. An event that marries commemoration of the civilian dead and adulation for the military would be bad enough merely for the way it muddles both sentiments. But to staple these onto a pre-fabricated "freedom" celebration does an injustice to the true nature and history of American Freedom.