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Well. Five years. It has gone so fast. Yet, as we look at the countless critical events and crisis moments since this morning in 2001, it has been like a slow motion horror.

Recalling these terrible moments is for me to relive the feelings of falling into the abyss of fear, of the unknown and the unknowable.

Yet in spite of the facts that we know, it is the distortions and myths that poison the soul of our nation.

Today’s National Post story on a Can-west News poll is chilling: 20% of Canadians believe that the events were orchestrated not by al-Qaeda but by Americans looking for a pretext for war in Iraq . As a measure of how lost our schools and public institutions have become in their anti-Americanism and political correctness, more that 26% of youths aged 18-34 believe in this conspiracy madness. Worse still is that 53% of those polled believe the attacks were “a very specific violent reaction to foreign policies of the US government.

We can thank N. Chomsky and his running dogs for this intellectual inversion. As I have said many times before our Canadian political correctness and ability to see and embrace all views no matter how antithetical they are to our own values and interests will be our downfall. Ultimately, to stand for everyone’s ‘values’ is to stand for none.

For proof of the source and fuel for this kind of uber political correctness and self-loathing look no further than the NDP party as a whole and its leader specifically.

Breathtakingly, he believes we can begin negotiations with the Taliban. Following his twisted mindset, evidently 92% of the 1500 delegates at the Quebec City convention this weekend endorsed what will be one of five platform points for the NDP – pull Canadian Forces out of Afghanistan by February 2007.

One of the tragic outcomes of 9/11/06 that is emerging into view is this: even at the highest levels of political leadership (and we see this globally), reasoned debate using a more or less agreed set of facts, has disappeared in favour of emotion and opinion. It is I think evidence of the searing and personal nature of the events of this date and the aftermath that has brought us to this dark place.

Last night my wife printed out a couple of pages of images from the Twin Towers attack – images that were beautiful, tragic, heroic and inspiring – done as she said to remember that amongst the dead were at least 24 Canadians. She did them for our son (he is ten) to take to school to share with his teacher and classmates.

<a href=http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/sep11/cdncasualties.html”target”=_blank”> This link</a> provides the names of those who perished.

He was reluctant. I suggested he could just give them to the teacher saying that perhaps they could be put up on the class bulletin board. He was still clearly uneasy. When, after a few more tries I asked what was bothering him, he replied,” I don’t think our teacher likes Mr. Bush”.

I could have cried.

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