The Legacy of 9/11, 25 Years Later

In high school, I visited New York City briefly during a student trip. While we were there, we did as many of the obligatory touristy things as we could — we saw an off-Broadway show, we walked around the City, we went to the top of the Empire State Building. Then, we went to the top of the World Trade Center, where we “enjoyed” a very bleh, overpriced hamburger at the Top of the World restaurant.

I distinctly remember the tour guide telling our group that we didn’t have to worry about a plane crashing into the building, because the Towers had been specifically designed to withstand just such an accident. The architects had kept that possibility in mind when designing the Towers, and the weight of the building was born by the central support structure. An airplane that crashed into the Towers would pierce the outer steel skin and be caught there — making a big mess, but not threatening the building itself.

But then September 11, 2001 happened.

Ask anyone 40-ish and above where they were on 9/11, and they’ll be able to tell you. No, you won’t have to specify ‘which’ 9/11 — they’ll know, because there’s only one 9/11 that matters.

I was driving to work when the first tower fell, and by the time I got in, the second tower had been hit. One of my coworkers found a small TV from somewhere, and with a creative use of aluminum foil on the antenna, we were able to get enough reception to see the news feed.

We didn’t get a lot of work done that day.

Now, a quarter of a century later, where are we? How did 9/11 change us as a nation? What have we learned? And finally, what is the legacy of 9/11?

I would argue that we are worse off than we were on September 10 twenty five years ago. We’re not stronger. We’re not safer. We’re not richer. We’re certainly not more free, by any measure you care to name. And, I’m not alone in this.

The legacy of 9/11 is buckets of blood and trillions in treasure spent fighting Forever Wars against a philosophical concept. We might as well have declared war against unicorns as against “terror,“ for all the good it’s done us. Oh, there have been temporary lulls between attacks — but terrorist attacks against Americans, or on American soil, were rare birds before 9/11. Now, with thousands upon thousands of military-age illegals having swarmed across the border during the Biden regime, it’s likely only a matter of time before we have more. That is, if we haven’t already — there have been a number of incidents these last few years, especially wildfires and food warehouse fires, that make me wonder.

Sadly, I think we’re likely to see many more attacks on our soil in the weeks and months to come, and there won’t be any question about where they came from.

And in terms of our freedoms? 9/11 gave us the Patriot Act, and Homeland Security, and the TSA (the last I heard, they’d managed to catch exactly zero terrorists)…but we’re always assured that “oh, yeah, we stopped 8 zillion attacks last year but we can’t tell you about them because…blah blah blah.”

Uh huh. Suuuure you did. And the vaccines are safe and effective, too.

But, the Patriot Act opened the floodgates for the rise of the public/private security state that has led us inexorably to Flock and Axon and Palantir and LG TVs and SignalTrace and…and…and…with the rush to build hyperscale data centers to process all that data into actionable pre-crime info to keep us all on our “best behavior” all the time — or else.

Welcome to 1984, citizens!

And whatever you do, don’t question the Official Narrative(™) of 9/11. Don’t listen to those crazy conspiracy nuts at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Don’t listen to former FDNY Captain Richard Patterson about the hinky stuff that happened in and around Building 7. Certainly don’t pay any attention to anything coming out of the turningthetide911.org NYC meeting September 10-13, featuring Roger Waters and a host of other experts and luminaries.

And whatever you do, do NOT watch this old video from the Corbett Report about 9/11 — because it will make you a BAD AMERICAN who questions your government, that we all know would NEVER deceive you! Now wear your mask and take your booster jab, citizen. Move along, nothing to see here.

Dr. Bill Chitwood is the Managing Editor of ALPolitics.com. He is the author, under his nom de guerre Doc Contrarian, of Beyond MAGA: From Trump campaign slogan to political movement to restoring the Republic. He identifies as Conservatarian Contrarian and a staunch Constitutional Originalist. He enjoys being called a First Amendment Nazi — mainly because he is.

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