What A Country!

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. —  Thomas Paine | Common Sense | 1776

The vision and guts that wrested this country from the British crown and gave it to the American people was based on the conviction that we can do anything we determine to do. The World Trade Center should become a living memorial to that concept. A recent comment on the Twin Towers Alliance petition defined the current challenge clearly:

I lost my cousin and dear friend in the 9/11 attacks. There is no doubt in my mind that he would’ve wanted them back taller and stronger. It’s been said a million times over but there is good reason for that… anything BUT the new and improved Twin Towers shows the terrorists (and the world) that we aren’t the people we once were when this wonderful country began…
                                                                — Jose Gonzalez |9/11 Families & Close Friends

This is one issue that Democrats and Republicans agree on and care deeply about. If Washington wants to transcend petty politics, this is the place to start. We Americans have every possible resource at our disposal – the only thing we are lacking at Ground Zero is political courage. Bobby Kennedy said in his legendary Johannesburg, South Africa speech that political courage is rarer than valor on the battlefield. But that does not need to defeat us at the World Trade Center, because there is a solution we can all get behind:

It is the entire country’s burden and the entire country’s privilege to build a World Trade Center that we can all be proud of. The current project is both financially and spiritually bankrupt, so whatever gets built will rely upon public funds. It makes no sense for our nation’s response to 9/11 to be limited to what the people of New York and New Jersey can afford. We will therefore ask Congress to purchase the air rights to the site from the two states, giving them badly needed capital, and to then form a public corporation. That will give the people the opportunity to own a share of the property that we are all so heavily invested in emotionally. Until it is fully funded, it would no doubt be the American people’s pleasure to advance whatever Mr. Silverstein needs to go full-steam-ahead on new Twin Towers, so that when 9/11/2011 comes, we will finally have something to cheer about.

Now that the American people have spent the last six months bailing out irresponsible and indefensible mismanagement in key US industries, it would reward the public to finally get the Twin Towers back where they belong. But we are not suggesting a bailout. The federal buyout would relieve New York and New Jersey of the obligation to develop the site and would give them the operating capital they so badly need at this time of deep distress for their states. And it will give the Port Authority the freedom and liquidity to make the most of its core mission by developing a fabulouis true transit hub at Pennsylvania Station.

Then with the states properly out of the picture, the government could issue an IPO and let the people of this nation and even the world buy into making the Twin Towers our Towers at last. Nothing could be more fitting. Nothing could be more logical. Nothing could be more inspiring. Nothing could be more American.