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Libertarians: Theft Makes a Poor Memorial

By Susan Hogarth on June 12, 2009 1:01 PM

The latest release from the Center for Libertarian Press Information

Libertarians call on the U.S. Government to forgo the threatened seizure of hundreds of acres of privately owned land for a memorial in western Pennsylvania near Shanksville, where Flight 93 crashed in 2001. They further ask the Park Service to reconsider spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on an extensive memorial, and to instead finance any memorial completely through volunteer contributions.

“The Park Service has had nearly a decade to work with local landowners, and NOW they decide that it’s imperative to get the land within the next week,” said Rachel Hawkridge, representative to the Libertarian Party’s National Committee. “Besides the fact that there can be no ‘fair market value’ in a forced transaction, we have the underlying issue that ALL of the tax money spent on the memorial has been taken by force or the threat of force. If folks want a memorial, they will be happy to contribute to one – and it will be the exact size that people want it to be. The idea that the Park Service can propose commemorating the self-sacrifice of 40 individuals with the forced sacrifice of the efforts of other individuals indicates to me that the terrorists have, in some small way, won part of the battle already.”

Libertarians also decry the purchase of nearly 1,000 acres of land from a coal-mining company, with proceeds to be (according to the Park Service) “placed in a trust fund to operate and maintain in perpetuity the treatment of mine water from a sediment pond on a reclaimed surface mine.” To Lee Wrights, representative to the Libertarian Party’s National Committee, “this seems like a not-very-subtle way of getting the taxpayers to pay for post-mining remediation. A great deal for PBS Coals; a terrible deal for Americans who have more pressing personal financial needs than bailing out big businesses.”

Susan Hogarth

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18 Comments

  2. faeriejems June 17, 2009

    I would urge everyone to go to some of the 911 Truth websites with an open mind, and you’ll be shocked at what you learn. There is tons of physical evidence AGAINST the official conspiracy theory (you know, 19 terrorists with boxcutters.) I might suggest Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth as a place to start.

  3. Mik Robertson June 15, 2009

    I like the part about voluntary funding of the memorial, but I don’t see the problem in using proceeds from the sale of land to fund acid mine drainage mitigation. Essentially the coal company donated the land, which is hardly “bailing out big businesses”.

  4. Susan Hogarth June 15, 2009

    Steven @ #9 – thanks for your comments and suggestions. A few points in reply:

    “…propose commemorating the self-sacrifice of 40 individuals with …”

    I would have stricken the word “self” from this reference.

    But that is what the builders of the memorial are commemorating. The point of the release was not to question the event that is being commemorated, but the method by which the commemoration is supposed to happen.

    I also agree with RC @ 5, the coal discussion doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the release.

    I’m not sure that’s what Bob was saying – my take was that Bob suggested that the paragraph needed to be better integrated, not that it didn’t belong. But I appreciate the feedback; you could be right about that.

    I also question the timing of this release. Is it really topical at this time?

    I think so.

    http://www.nps.gov/flni/parkmgmt/partnermessages.htm

    But more important, it NEEDS to be brought to attention. It’s good for statements and releases to follow the news cycle, but sometimes, you need to comment outside of the ‘top ten’ news stories to bring attention to something. Otherwise news and commentary and politics simply becomes a huge echo chamber:

    ‘Why didn’t we comment on this?’ ‘It’s not news.’ ‘Why isn’t it news?’ ‘No one commented on it!’

    Looking around, I saw Doug Bandow at Cato published a ‘Wow, it’s great that the gov’t is backing off on ED in PA’, but it referred back to an editorial from June **5**, right before the Par Service issued an ultimatum. Something funny is going on here, especially with the coal mine purchase…

  5. Gary Chartier June 15, 2009

    Paulie, I have no settled view of just what occurred on 9/11, and I certainly have no positive theory to promote. I think you’re right tht the practical effects of demonstrating complicity by political elites in the events of 9/11 might be minimal as regards confirmed anti-statists and passionate critics of US elites. But it does seem to me that showing that there was elite involvement in those horrific events would tend to undermine the legitimacy not only of individual figures but also of the system as a whole in the eyes of ordinary people otherwise inclined to endorse “bad apples” accounts.

  6. paulie June 13, 2009

    Here’s a great article I read today in the paper. I think the LP should be pointing out the hypocrisy and cowardice of the Democrats in failing to bring the Bush-Cheney gang to justice and in continuing their evil policies since Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al. have been in office.

    If LPHQ fails to call the Democrats to task, perhaps we could see something on this from the state parties, presidential candidate(s), CLIPR, etc.

    What’s up with Dick Cheney?
    ShareThis
    By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
    McClatchy Newspapers
    Published: Friday, Jun. 5, 2009 – 6:48 am

    If former vice president Darth Cheney had been arrested for any of his multiple felonies, he might remember the most important of the Miranda rights that the arresting officer would have read to him: You have the right to remain silent.

    These days, you can’t turn on your television without finding Cheney’s doughboy face on the screen, alternately repeating old lies, mouthing new lies or defiantly confessing to yet another criminal act.

    It’s enough to make me yearn for the old Dick Cheney, the one who ventured out of his “undisclosed location” behind a locked door in the vice presidential residence on Washington’s Observatory Circle only to make a speech at some buttoned-down military base.

    Most of his unindicted co-conspirators – George W. Bush, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and their assorted consiglieri and mouthpieces, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo, William Haynes II – have mostly had the good sense to keep their mouths shut.

    So what’s up with Cheney?

    The things he’s been saying are easily checked against his previous public utterances and a growing encyclopedia of investigations and shown to be bald-faced lies. Check out the story (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/68643.html) by two of my colleagues at McClatchy Newspapers, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel.

    It almost begs the question: How can you tell Dick Cheney is lying? His lips are moving.

    Then, this past week, he went and broke new ground by telling the truth for once. After seven years of insisting otherwise, the voice from the Dark Side finally admitted what most of us knew all along: There was no meaningful link between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda’s attack on 9/11.

    Back when Cheney was insisting otherwise, telling that whopper over and over, he was working overtime to drag America into an unnecessary war in the wrong place, at the wrong time, against the wrong people.

    Now he confesses that he was lying about that one little thing in his eagerness to take our country into a war of choice that so far has cost the lives more than 4,200 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were caught in the middle when Cheney and his friends loosed the dogs of war on them, and has already cost American taxpayers a trillion or so dollars and another billion dollars a month.

    Obviously, then, this is a man who needs all the national airtime he can get to continue defending the indefensible, attempting to rewrite the sorry history of an administration that’s already been consigned to richly deserved oblivion, and confessing to international war crimes and serial violations of our law, international law and God’s law.

    Cheney already has confessed that he approved of and helped formulate the White House-run operation that collected and promoted bogus intelligence from Iraqi exiles and unleashed illegal torture and abuse on suspected terrorists. He also said he still believes that detaining innocent people without trial and waterboarding terrorists produced good information, and that the end justifies the means.

    It’s fairly obvious that if he or many of the others named above ever set foot outside the United States, they’re likely to end up like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet or worse.

    That begs the question of why men such as Cheney and his friends are still able to thumb their noses at the law, public opinion and our Constitution with impunity here at home, in the land of the free and home of the brave?

    That question comes to my mind every time I see President Barack Obama sharing the airwaves with Cheney; every time I see congressional leaders who have the power to investigate the criminal behavior of these men; every time I hear Dick Cheney on the Sunday news shows or the evening news.

    I hear testimony that one of the al-Qaeda high-value targets who was subjected to waterboarding more than 80 times in less than a month was tortured after he’d already given up everything he knew under normal, legal interrogation.

    I also hear testimony that the highest-ranking terrorist we ever got our hands on was subjected to waterboarding eight times a day for a grand total of 183 sessions of near drowning, near-death.

    While Cheney proclaims that such actions helped keep us safe from terrorist attacks, there are others, who were either present in the room or read the transcripts, who say we got nothing of actionable value. Nothing worth a pitcher of warm spit.

    If Dick Cheney has so much that he wants to confess, then why doesn’t somebody on Capitol Hill subpoena him to testify under oath before an investigating committee or a truth commission. Or maybe we need a special prosecutor who can put him in a chair in front of a grand jury.

    Enough already.

    ABOUT THE WRITER

    Joseph L. Galloway is a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers and a former senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers; he is co-author of the national best-seller “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young.” Readers may write to him at: P.O. Box 399, Bayside, Texas 78340.

  7. Paulie June 13, 2009

    @8-11:

    Why all the focus on which of several possible conspiracies carried out the crimes of 9/11?

    The policy prescription is the same regardless: get US troops and money out of the middle east, and restore all civil liberties that have been “temporarily” taken away in the name of the terror war, drug war, and all wars. Bring the US regime criminals behind these wars of aggression and violations of human rights to justice. Bring US troops and government aid home from all over the world, and stop going abroad in search of enemies (or seeking domestic enemies, for that matter). And so forth.

    What changes if the US regime criminals carried out a false flag terror operation, paid someone else to do it, purposely looked the other way, or merely were “fortunate” and exploited it to their advantage? Is there a single policy that we should back, or not back, based on the answer to this question?

  8. Erik Geib June 13, 2009

    Those accounts can easily be dismissed.

    Often in tragic ‘first report’ scenarios there is a lot of misinformation, thanks to people thinking they saw what most makes sense to them. This doesn’t necessarily mean they saw anything of that variety at all.

  9. Clay Allison June 13, 2009

    I take it that this is the “change” we were supposed to look forward to?

  10. Steven R Linnabary June 13, 2009

    …propose commemorating the self-sacrifice of 40 individuals with …

    I would have stricken the word “self” from this reference. The early reports of this incident had several eye witnesses state that the aircraft suffered a midair disintegration after being followed closely by a military looking jet. Of course, military officials now deny this, but we can’t be sure that the folks on board actually did sacrifice themselves. FWIW, I do not consider myself a “truther”.

    I also agree with RC @ 5, the coal discussion doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the release.

    I also question the timing of this release. Is it really topical at this time?

    PEACE

  11. Galileo Galilei June 13, 2009

    Another more compelling reason to oppose this:

    “9/11 was not only an inside job, it was funded by the U.S. taxpayer!”

  13. Susan Hogarth June 12, 2009

    Bless you, Capozzi. Want a job? 😉

  14. robert capozzi June 12, 2009

    nice content and tone.

    “on the on the” in first sentence needs fixing.

    I’d suggest an overaching summary ‘graph up front. the coal discussion feels like an afterthought.

  15. Michael Seebeck June 12, 2009

    A+

  16. Susan Hogarth Post author | June 12, 2009

    Erik,

    Would you like to contribute to the effort? We can always use good writers and thinkers.

  17. Erik Geib June 12, 2009

    Well done, CLPI.

  18. Kimberly Wilder June 12, 2009

    Great story. Shocking abuses of government.

    Thanks for posting it.

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