The Invisible Hand

Patriot Day?

President Bush has suggested that September 11th be called Patriot Day.

Now I’ve always found decent qualities to admire in George Bush but a command of language is not one of them. Making things worse is the buzzing hive of bureaucracy that tends to drown out more imaginative thinking in Washington, D.C.

Patriot Day is the sort of blandly meaningless title that appeals to the drones who come up with pseudo-stirring titles for legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act which could have about as much to do with school buses as with education for all I know.

These are the same people who came up with the stupefying “Department of Homeland Security” – an agency who’s very name seems to contradict its meaning

It’s no surprise that the most inspiring names to come out of the federal government are the computer-generated ones they assign to military operations – Urgent Fury, Desert Storm, Infinite Justice.

I have a quick solution to the current eloquence shortage that plagues our nation's leaders. President Bush should immediately scrap Patriot Day and reassign the now obscure Flag Day to September 11.

Really, who even knows when Flag Day is anymore? Yet people will be displaying flags on September 11 for years to come. Why not jump in front of this parade and call it what it is?

As for Homeland Security . . . just call it the Department of Defense and rename DoD the Department of War. That would clarify and allocate functions rather than obfuscate them right from the beginning.

Just words, you say? And I suppose your mother was "just a mother."