Yes I remember

Listen to Dave Ross Commentary: Yes I remember

I talked to the firefighters. I very unprofessionally teared up when one of them told me be was going to go down in that hole as many times as it took to find his buddy. In fact he expected to get a radio call any moment saying hey — how about you bring us some pizza.

That was four days after it happened.

I’ll remember the dusty piles of unsold newspapers dated September 11th — the last time a newspaper bearing that date would carry no mention of the events of that day.

So I will remember. But I am not going to wallow in it.

Because I know why the bad guys sent two planes to New York that day. And why they TRIED to send two planes to Washington.

The first was to bring out the TV cameras; the second was to create the image they wanted burned into our minds.

The point of terrorism is not to kill people. Terrorists in fact kill very few people.

The point of terrorism is to terrify people. And they know that if the spectacle if big enough we will help them do it by playing it over and over and re-terrifying ourselves again and again.

— To the point that 32% of Americans now feel that they or their families could be terrorist victims, even though the actual chance is about the same as being hit by a comet.

That’s why I say that — just as terrorists want to make us feel irrationally afraid, we should fight back by making ourselves feel irrationally secure.

So yes, I appreciate the airport checkpoints — even though they rarely catch an actual terrorist — because I feel as if they could. You want consumer confidence? Go to an airport. Just beyond those checkpoints… are some of the healthiest retail malls the world.

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