Publicola

"NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2002, as Patriot Day."

Funny, I thought Patriot Day was more appropriately April 19th. You remember that day don't ya? When in 1775 a group of citizens who had formed a militia took up arms to stop the British soldiers from disarming them. The battles that ensued at Lexington & Concord Massachusetts gave the American Revolution a kick start.

But I guess that Bush wouldn't want you to associate armed resistance to government troops with a day of celebration & rememberance. He would rather have you remember a day when citizens who were disarmed by their own government were taken hostage & killed by men armed only with knives.

Also of note on April 19th, 1943 the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising started in earnest. Also look here & here. On that day the Jews who were confined to the ghetto in Warsaw to await their deportation to the extermination camps decided it was better to fight & take a few Nazi's with them than to comply with their own murders. Not exactly an American holiday but it's worthy of mention nontheless.

What is really sad is that in Massachusetts Patriot Day is a state holiday, yet outside Massachusetts it takes second place to the Boston Marathon. Add to that Massachusetts' dismal gun control laws & I conclude that somebody has missed the point.