David McElroy

Despite being the biggest economic and military superpower of the world, the United States was defeated 10 years ago today by a bunch of guys with box cutters and a simple plan.

It didn’t have to be that way. As bad as the attacks 10 years ago were, the real defeat has come in the U.S. response over the years. The initial losses were devastating, but they were nothing compared to the self-inflicted wounds that came from politicians using the attacks as an excuse to take more power for themselves — and scared Americans have allowed it to happen with little complaint.

Everybody in the world is doing a retrospective on the anniversary today, so I’m going to try not to belabor the same things everybody else is already saying. But I do want to make five points.

First, the ultimate blame for the attacks 10 years ago today rests solely with the people who planned it, enabled it and carried it out. They have ultimate responsibility for having murdered thousands of innocent people that day. As we look to the historical causes and to the bumbling response of the U.S. government, it’s important to remember that those men consciously chose to do something very evil. It’s also important to remember the many thousands of people who died — people who never asked to be caught up in a political dispute that they didn’t create.

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Have you met the new neighbors? They’re the ones who moved in next door with the 12-foot-tall rock concert speakers and the complete set of electric guitars and amps that make your bedroom windows rattle when they fire up each day at 5 a.m.

It wasn’t so bad when they were just papering the front of the house with old heavy metal posters, but things really turned odd when they set up the firing range in the side yard — where she does drunken target shooting with automatic weapons and he does nude interpretive dance with a parrot riding on his curly head. Cool, huh?

Isn’t this what paradise looks like for libertarians and anarchists? Don’t we want people to be able to do anything they want, just as long as they stay on their side of the property line? Well, yes and no. Let’s separate fact from hyperbole.

Most people assume that libertarians and anarchists want to live in a world with no rules. For some percentage of freedom lovers, that’s true. They don’t really care what anybody else does, just as long as they keep the weirdness on their own property. These folks don’t mind living in ugly, junky neighborhoods with people who have all sorts of weirdness going on in full view.

I’ve known quite a few people who claim to feel this way. I’m not one of them.

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A politician who goes out of his way to ignore the innocence of a man he’s about to execute gets nothing but contempt from me. The bloodthirsty supporters of the politician who cheer the idea that he’s an executioner — pointedly ignoring evidence that an innocent man was executed — deserve the same contempt. Meet Rick Perry and his supporters.

Todd Willingham was a troubled man from a troubled background in Texas. He drank too much. He had been known to hit his wife. He had a string of minor run-ins with the law. But when his house burned, he lost the only things that he had seemed to care about — his three children.

Fire investigators concluded that the fire must have been arson, based on guesses and assumptions. Willingham didn’t have any insurance, so there was no financial motive. Still, he was charged with murdering his three children.

At trial, prosecutors claimed he killed his kids simply because they were getting int he way of his drinking and partying, but there was no evidence of that. The only credible evidence against him was that two fire investigators said the fire was arson.

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