 begin pgp signed message hash shaNUMBER say amen somebody what the wsj said appended below the wtc as constructed was a confiscatory government boondoggle expropriated from the original pre construction property owners at the behest of a third generation trust fund aristocrat for the good of the city and owned by an authority looking for something else to do after it and its coach hounds in organized labor and organized crime had killed what was the largest port in the world s richest nation now of course it s about to get worse the sins of NUMBER years ago have been compounded at the hands of two kinds of literally irrational fanatics first those in religion and now those in government as a result a large part of NUMBER million square feet of once perfectly usable office space devoted at least ostensibly to commerce will be granted away in a potlatch that only government and special interest communities or stakeholders or whatever the cryptosocialist psycho rabble call themselves this week can organize to such perfection all this in probably the only city in the country that was founded by a business explicitly for the purpose of commerce not religious fanaticism not colonial expansion in a monarch s name commerce if they really wanted to make a point to the superstitious luddites who collapsed those buildings using probably the only sharp objects on a plane full of government disarmed passengers the so called authority should disband itself and sell its property off to the highest bidder and let the market the cure to all luddism foreign and domestic government and superstitious decide if the new private owner wants to sell or give away a space for a memorial fine they could sell tickets and donate the money to the families of the dead and injured probably great for marketing the property at least during the lifetime of anyone who remembers the event and of course if the new owner wants to build something twice as tall or with twice as much space than the original NUMBER million square feet splendid whatever the market will bear in these days of increasingly ubiquitous trans national geodesic internetworks of strong financial cryptography and of exponentially decreasing transaction costs in formerly monolithic industries economics and freedom can and will prevail over both superstition and statism it s probably too much to hope for an actual market in lower manhattan mega real estate to prevail this early in the game but it s going to happen sooner or later and whenever it does that will be a fitting memorial to those who died at the world trade center cheers rah URL the wall street journal september NUMBER NUMBER review outlook a living memorial as we write these words we can look down from our offices into the six story crater where the twin towers once stood like everyone else we want that site to be rebuilt in a way that honors those who died a year ago but we also think the best memorial to those who perished would be a living one the site of the world trade center calls forth many emotions especially today anger grief and respect for the many acts of heroism that took place there but underlying it all is the memory of the enormous vitality that distinguished the towers before they were attacked and was a large reason they were targeted the best expression of the spirit of new york and of those who died would be to once again see thousands of people from dozens of countries working meeting shopping eating that is engaged in the sort of productive work and play that used to take place there osama bin laden should not be allowed to have turned it into a cemetery but restoring this memory is not what the discussion in new york has been about so far no one is talking seriously about the vigorous rebuilding of downtown manhattan which lost NUMBER NUMBER jobs when the trade center fell instead the discussion centers on the size and scale of the memorial and on satisfying every political interest now clamoring for a piece of the action new york s political leadership and its financial and media elites are squandering a historic chance to rebuild a better more prosperous city this is in part the fault of the commission tasked with figuring out what to do with the site in consultation with new york governor george pataki who is thinking primarily about his own november re election the commission made the decision to focus first on the memorial the manhattan institute s steve malanga argues that the commission would have been better off setting aside a limited space for the memorial getting on with the rebuilding and then returning to the memorial this is in essence what the pentagon has so successfully done rebuild immediately and set aside two acres for an outdoor memorial a design for which has yet to be decided a big part of the problem in new york is that the city s anti development activists know an opening when they see one they want the world trade center site and even some surrounding areas transformed into an enormous park these political advocates have had plenty of practice at turning proposed development projects in new york into a nightmare of delay and litigation and the world trade center site is now getting the same treatment worse they are cynically using some bereaved family members to advance their own anti development agenda in the name of honoring the dead one family group even called a press conference to reject as disrespectful a proposed train line under the site we are not experts in designing war memorials but we re confident that a gigantic park in the heart of the world s financial center isn t the appropriate choice for those who died a year ago the great cities of europe and japan devastated in world war ii have all rebuilt and with memorials that are integrated into modern urban life perhaps the most powerful is found in rotterdam the dutch port city reduced to rubble by german bombing where survivors erected a statue of a man with a hole where his heart used to be in this country the practice has been for the names of war dead to be inscribed on the walls of institutions with which they were affiliated if you walk into nassau hall at princeton university you ll find the names of NUMBER alumni who died in the revolutionary war the war of NUMBER the civil war the spanish american war world war i world war ii korea and southeast asia no one thinks it disrespectful to the dead that the life of the university goes on around the walls containing their names in new york now it would help if political leaders looked beyond the emotional tug of the victims and their families to the city s future rudolph giuliani now that he s out office wants the entire NUMBER acres devoted to the memorial governor pataki has called for no structures on the footprints which being in the center of the site would severely curtail options mayor michael bloomberg initially raised his voice in favor of commercial development but was bloodied by the press and has since ducked for cover maybe things will be different after this anniversary is past maybe those responsible for the world trade center site will start thinking more about the next NUMBER or NUMBER years than the past NUMBER months the best way to honor the dead is by reviving normal life and commerce begin pgp signature version pgp NUMBER NUMBER iqa awubpxNUMBERzdNUMBERpxhNUMBERjfNUMBERohaeqiNUMBERaacgvNUMBERmtbNUMBERvktprjNUMBERmjqtNUMBERoyzyifzusanNUMBER fgnkontnaNUMBER smloNUMBERtbNUMBERxybcNUMBER NUMBERaz end pgp signature r a hettinga mailto rah ibuc com the internet bearer underwriting corporation URL NUMBER farquhar street boston ma NUMBER usa however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity predicting the end of the world has not been found agreeable to experience edward gibbon decline and fall of the roman empire 