What kind of service is it going to be?

Serving one's community is a great thing. I try to do that through my church involvement and involvement with various civic groups. I say this not to brag, because I'm sure even with that, I don't do enough. I like and participate in community service. I just don't want anyone to construe what I say here as being opposed to community service. However I am concerned about the "National Day of Service and Remembrance" on September 11. It is now federal law and we have federal money going to various groups to "promote" service. Good "upstanding" groups like ACORN are involved, but that is really a subject for another blog. I extremely concerned about the emphasis I'm seeing on service and the de-emphasis on the remembrance part. According to many planners their goal is to turn 9/11 into something "positive", "forward-leaning" and "productive". I think that focus is entirely wrong. 9/11 should be a time to focus on patriotism, national security and terrorism. We are in a war with Islamofacist terrorists. These religious fundamentalists want to destroy us and our way of life. 9/11 was a seminal event in that war. We have an administration that seems to think nice language and "talking" to these monsters is the best way to handle the war on terror. They won't even call it a war on terror. Is this day of service just one more attempt to sweep the monstrosities of what has occurred under the rug? We don't want to offend someone by pointing out that in the name of their religion these crazies killed thousands of innocent people on that day.

We already have too many holidays where the meaning of the holiday has been lost. Memorial Day is a perfect example where pitifully small crowds show up at events designed to commemorate those fallen in defense of this country which it was designed for. Instead we as a society have let Memorial Day become a time to open swimming pools, have "great" sales, celebrate the beginning of summer. It took years for that change to occur in our society. Now we are less than 8 years from the event which we are commemorating and we seem to have a government that is actively pursuing the task of trying to wipe out the true meaning of 9/11.

I'm sure it's not what the Obama people had in mind, but I'm tempted to find a tea party to volunteer for on September 11. That might be the best kind of community service I could provide.