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Sisters, Oregon
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The contents of the on-line edition of The Nugget represent a selection among the stories that appear in the weekly print edition.

Opinion

A holiday for patriots?
By Captain Craig F. Eisenbeis, U.S. Coast Guard (Ret.)

In commemorating the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the nation observed the first Patriot's Day -- an entirely appropriate thing to do.

What seems a bit puzzling are the noises some folks are making about having the day proclaimed as a national holiday.

Excuse me? Can you imagine a national holiday for, say, Pearl Harbor Day? One television network conducted a poll on the question. To the public's credit, 60 percent opposed the idea.

The flip side is that, apparently, 40 percent like the idea. Are they that hard up for an extra day off from work?

Holidays are about celebrations. Do we really want to celebrate the sickening success of twisted fanatics?

The best way to behave like Patriots is to carry on in defiance of terrorist goals. If we shut down the country each year in response to the attacks, isn't that what the terrorists were trying to achieve in the first place?

One of the more powerful tributes put together for Patriot's Day was a piece that lasted less than a minute.

The television screen shows a row of typically American Cape Cod-type houses lined up on a typically American street.

The narrator says something to the effect that on September 11, terrorists tried to "change America forever." The screen fades to black.

A moment later the screen comes back to life with the same row of houses, now festooned with flags and bunting. The narrator's tag line says, "They succeeded."

That's the kind of in-your-face observance that a Patriot's Day warrants. America: open for business.

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