GOING UP PAST NINE-ELEVEN. Ole Perfesser Instapundit told such people as listen to him twice to go see this thing by Sarah Hoyt about 9/11. So I figured it would get eventually to where it got to:

On the one hand, part of me wants to laugh at the terrorists. They thought they could break us. They thought they could scare us. They underestimated both the size of our territory and the mettle of my people. 

And part of me thinks of the psychological twisting that has taken place since then: people who blame their own country for the actions of barbarians; people who kowtow to the barbarians and claim to be multiculturalists because that sounds so much better than vile cowards; people who think that a country the size of ours, as wealthy as we are should do nothing to deter attackers because we’d be protected by our halo of purity and goodness...

And I thought as I read it: So, somebody's still doing this -- using 9/11 as a long stick to beat people who didn't have anything to do with it, but whom they never liked. It brought me back to 2001, and the many years thereafter when this was a popular shtick -- the decadent left and the fifth column and all that.

And today: Not so much. Nobody calls himself a warblogger these days; nobody thinks "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" is a foreign policy statement. Even the excitable Jim Lileks is subdued, having abandoned his former dreams of annihilation for mysticism ("Now, as ever, we live between the sharp notes. Gather them all together, and you have the melody of the centuries"), like a former Weatherman who, when it all came down, went up the country and today raises watermelons and gets stoned and talks to Gaia.

In their ratholes and caves, some holdouts still practice the dark craft, but their former sympathizers have ceased to follow, occupying themselves instead with Clint Eastwood's chair and other Western novelties.

And Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Whattaya know: In the long run, freedom works.

UPDATE. Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner:

9/11 bumped by gay flag, Michelle money plea on Obama site

September 11th turned out to be just another day on the Obama-Biden campaign website: A fundraising memo from first lady Michelle Obama, a pitch for gay rights including a rainbow-colored American flag, and a campaign picture under the headline "Photo of the day--September 11th, 2012."

Oh, there were two tweets to commemorate the 9/11 attacks, but finding them was hard.

By comparison, the Romney-Ryan campaign features two blog entries, one from Mitt Romney and the other from Paul Ryan, and a 9/11 news release. The Romney campaign homepage featured a tweet and Facebook note about 9/11.

Two blog entries, a tweet and a Facebook note! Never forget!

Now Romney's burnishing his foreign policy cred by blaming Obama for the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. My sources tell me his next step will be to accuse the President of not wearing big enough flag pins.

It's enough to make a fella miss Quemoy and Matsu.

UPDATE 2. It's redundant at this point to say comments are great, but here's a taste: Big Bad Bald Bastard tells our subjects, "To paraphrase Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction, 'You've lost your 9/11 privileges";  KC45s examines Lileks' poeticisms and remarks, "Finally, we know who writes Sting's lyrics"; and Fats Durston redoes St. Crispin's Day:

...Then shall their names,Familiar in the mouth as freeper handles--
Jonah the Whale, D'Souza and Douchehat,
Erick son of Erick, Juggs and Ace--...
But we in it shall be remembered--
We few, we fappy few, we band of botherers... 

Nice.