[Note: I apologize for misspelling Michelle Malkin's name in the post title -- but now that it's been archived and that trackback pings have been sent, etc., changing it would create a 404 ... so it'll just have to stay that way]
Michelle Malkin, Secretary General of the Perpetual War and Internment for Furriners Party, offers a curiously (or maybe not so curiously) collectivist take on the World Trade Center in her Jewish World Review column, excerpted here on her blog:
"Do we really want Ground Zero to be the playground of anti-war financiers, moral equivalence peddlers, and Guantanamo Bay alarmists? As Burlingame told me yesterday, 'Ground Zero belongs to all the American people. ...'"
Well, no. Absent some kind of voluntary, clearly articulated agreement between all involved parties vesting something in a well-defined common holding (which is not what's been done with the World Trade Center ground), saying that something belongs to everyone is tantamount to saying that it belongs to no one -- that it's jump ball, folks, and whichever gang of politicians and patronage parasites comes down with it gets to dribble it up the court in any direction they like.
The dust hadn't cleared after 9/11 before "public/private partnerships" and "community development corporations" started proliferating, each with the goal of acquiring (through force if necessary) and controlling Ground Zero. Is it any surprise that it's still all about politics? If so, it shouldn't be.
Now, if I had it my way -- i.e. if I had the wherewithal and the money to buy the site and build whatever I liked there, I'd do the following (as I wrote here and here:
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I'd prefer to see the towers rebuilt in a manner nearly identical to the originals, except for one additional floor on the top of each, an extra elevator that goes only to that floor -- open to the public, of course -- and an additional public restroom on the first floor.
The top floors would have wide viewing windows from which visitors could gaze upon New York. The walls would be marbled, with the names of those who died in each tower etched into the marble of the room in that tower.
In the center of each room would be a marble monolith with an inscription something like the following:
On September 11th, 2001, evil men committed a wanton and evil act of destruction and murder on this site. We choose to remember them -- and their victims -- in the manner whereby they deserve to be remembered. This room is a memorial to the innocents who died here. These rebuilt towers are our declaration that we will never quail before evil, bow before death or submit to terror.
On the first floor, the new public restrooms would include urinals and stools with the names and photographs of the hijackers affixed in the manner best facilitating their own tribute; and contractors would be hired to produce Quran-motif toilet paper and a pork-enzyme based drip cleaning solution which would be released with each flush to keep the images of Mohammed Atta and Co. all sparkly.
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Come to think of it, if given the opportunity I might move Koenig's "The Sphere" -- created as a "tribute to world peace" -- back [from Battery Park] to its original spot at the WTC site, in its current damaged condition -- and then once Osama bin Laden has been killed, cremated, and his ashes mixed with pork offal and buried beneath it, restore it.
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... but I'm not operating under the illusion that I own the place. The politicians own it, which is why, as the New York Times reports, we get abominations like this:
"The vacant property, less than half an acre on the south side of Liberty Street, has been owned by the Milstein real estate family since 1978. Though small, it would play a pivotal role in the new trade center complex as the western half of the new Liberty Park, under which will be a vehicle ramp and security checkpoint .... Absent negotiations, the state could have acquired the Milsteins' property through eminent domain. It had already taken formal steps to do so." [Emphases mine]
Instead of trying to bilk us into trading liberty for security, the state of New York will simply call the latter the former ... and steal whatever they "have" to steal to make it happen. Anyone who's surprised at this shouldn't be. The closing of the Statue of Liberty, and then re-opening her just so that, if one cares to submit to wand-rape, one may be permitted to peep up her skirts, should have been a clue.
If Malkin et al are offended by George Soros's plans for the World Trade Center complex, fine -- but if so, they should have fought to leave, or get, the ground in private hands instead of handing it over to the bureaucrats as a playground in the first place. All this commie talk about the place belonging to "the American people" is so much bovine feces.
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Technorati tags: Ground Zero, Politics, Michelle Malkin
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