SO NOW IT’S THE 16TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11. Back then, InstaPundit was shiny and new new new. Now it’s not, and some people have been warning of “blogger burnout.” But I’m still here. On prior 9/11 anniversaries, I’ve given shooting lessons to a Marine, I’ve taken the day off from blogging, and I’ve even gone to a Tea Party with Andrew Breitbart.

This year, as in most past years, it’ll be blogging as usual. And here’s a link to my original 9/11 coverage — just scroll on up. At this late date, I don’t have anything new to say on 9/11. But these predictions held up pretty well. Which is too bad.

The picture above is by my cousin-in-law Brad Rubenstein, taken from his apartment that day. You might also want to read this piece by James Lileks.

And here’s a passage from Lee Harris’s Civilization And Its Enemies.

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe.
…
They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the Enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish.

They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the Enemy. And that, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the Enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn’t done enough for — yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part — something that we could correct. And this means that that our first task is that we must try to grasp what the concept of the Enemy really means.

The Enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the Enemy always hates us for a reason — it is his reason, and not ours.

I’ve said all this before, but it bears repeating today. And if I don’t have anything new to say at this late date, well, it’s been a long time.

One thing I guess I didn’t believe 16 years ago is that America would elect such a feckless President in 2008, and stand idly by while he flushed our global position, and security, down a left-wing toilet. But we did, and we’ll be paying the price for a long time.

God bless America. We need it.

STIFF COMPETITION: Are These Residents the Dumbest People in Florida?

BONE HEADED TO KOREA: B-1B takes off from Guam on its way to South Korea.

RELATED: Sarah’s post from The Telegraph: British officials fear Iran secretly helping North Korea obtain nuclear weapons.

SCHADENFREUDEMANIA: Hillary Was So Confident of Victory She Bought Second Home in Chappaqua to Accommodate White House Staff.

As Allahpundit tweets, “It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at this.”

FRANKLIN FOER: The Perils of Monopoly: How Silicon Valley Is Erasing Your Individuality:

Along with Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, these companies are in a race to become our “personal assistant.” They want to wake us in the morning, have their artificial intelligence software guide us through our days and never quite leave our sides. They aspire to become the repository for precious and private items, our calendars and contacts, our photos and documents. They intend for us to turn unthinkingly to them for information and entertainment while they catalogue our intentions and aversions. Google Glass and the Apple Watch prefigure the day when these companies implant their artificial intelligence in our bodies. Brin has mused, “Perhaps in the future, we can attach a little version of Google that you just plug into your brain.”

More than any previous coterie of corporations, the tech monopolies aspire to mold humanity into their desired image of it. They think they have the opportunity to complete the long merger between man and machine — to redirect the trajectory of human evolution.

Nothing creepy about that. They’ve shown themselves to be totally above abusing their power for political reasons.

A BIT OF THE OLD ULTRAVIOLENCE: Several Antifa Members Arrested After Assaulting Police Officers During Portland ‘Protest.’

Portland Stands United Against Hate (PSUAH) held a peaceful assembly and march that started and concluded at Terry Schrunk Plaza.

Additional demonstrators gathered for protests at Waterfront Park and officers located and seized multiple weapons. Groups that gathered at Waterfront Park escalated in behavior, and threw rocks, irritant smoke bombs and other projectiles. As the demonstrators moved west, they continued to throw projectiles at officers. Two police officers sustained minor injuries as a result of today’s protest.

Throughout the afternoon, the Portland Police Bureau provided information and updates on Twitter, including photos of the many weapons and items seized throughout the day.

I’m sure there must be a word for black-clad, masked thugs who use street violence to achieve their political ends.

IRMA HAS NOW WEAKENED TO TROPICAL STORM LEVEL. I haven’t been watching CNN, but folks on Facebook and Twitter say they seem disappointed that it wasn’t the MONSTER SUPERSTORM OF DEATH that they promised. It’s a bad enough storm, but really a fairly ordinary big hurricane, not a MONSTER SUPERSTORM OF DEATH.

Of course, we haven’t faced the GatorNado yet.

JOURNALISM: Don Lemon Praises ‘Chunky’ CNN Reporter Facing Irma Wrath: ‘Nothing Wrong With a Little Curve.’

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

● Why Are Campus 9/11 Memorials Controversial?

—Peter D’Abrosca, Lone Conservative.com, Saturday.

● 9/11 Terrorists Overthrew Naive Notions of Proletarian Revolutionaries: “The 9/11 terrorists did not step out of the pages of Les Misérables. Like most revolutionaries, they stepped out of privileged places…Privileged people imagine themselves as anointed to rule. When the world rejects their ideas, they lash out at the world. Brat-fits on the playground lead to brat-fits on a bigger playground. That happened 16 years ago in Manhattan, near the banks of the Potomac, and in southwestern Pennsylvania.”

—Daniel J. Flynn, the American Spectator, Friday.

ALIVE WITH DISPLEASURE: New York’s Mayor Gives Smokers Another Reason Not to Quit.

Since the electronic cigarette arrived around 2010, the rate of smoking in America has plummeted. Yet progressive do-gooders are now throwing tobacco a lifeline. Last month New York Mayor Bill de Blasio signed new restrictions on e-cigarettes. A limited number of vendors will need licenses to sell them, and vaping will be banned from many apartment common areas. This will only push smokers away from the most promising method for kicking their deadly habit.

In Britain, public-health authorities have encouraged smokers to switch to safer alternatives. E-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine as a vapor, are about 95% less harmful than smoking, according to a 2015 review by England’s health agency. The Royal College of Physicians, Britain’s pre-eminent medical authority, has warned that it would be “irrational and immoral” to discourage smokers from switching.

But the U.S. is doing just that. The Food and Drug Administration has misclassified e-cigarettes as a “tobacco product,” drawn up regulations that could eventually outlaw most products now on the market, and barred e-cig companies from mentioning any health advantages over smoking.

The Left’s war on science is literally killing people.

FROM USA TODAY, A STRONG EDITORIAL IN FAVOR OF BETSY DEVOS’S CHANGES: Campus rape cases don’t deserve second-class justice. “Sexual assaults are serious crimes best handled by the criminal justice system. The most stringent punishment schools can order is expulsion. That can be appropriate for cheating on a term paper, but not for rape. . . . At the same time, when universities employ tribunals or other quasi-judicial systems, they have an obligation to follow due process.”

SOCIAL CAPITAL: Christians Provide More Aid To Hurricane Victims Than FEMA. “Christian non-profit organizations have outdone FEMA and provided the vast majority of the relief aid to victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Faith-based relief groups are responsible for providing nearly 80 percent of the aid delivered thus far to communities with homes devastated by the recent hurricanes, according to USA Today.”

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES AND GUN CONTROLLERS SUCH CESSPITS OF CORRUPTION? One officer left standing after indictments of Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force members.

Baltimore Police Det. John Clewell worked nearly two years on the department’s gun trace task force — an elite unit that raided homes throughout the city searching for firearms in an effort to quell historic rates of violence.

We’re “the ‘make stuff happen’ police,” Clewell told a Northeast Baltimore couple whose apartment he raided in April 2015, according to his own account of the incident in charging documents.

Now Clewell is the only member of the task force who has not been indicted on federal racketeering charges.

The rest of the unit has been accused of robbing suspects, filing false paperwork and committing overtime fraud. Seven members were indicted by a federal grand jury in March; an eighth was indicted in August.

I forget: How many members of Bloomberg’s mayors-against-guns group wound up in jail?

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Remembering 9/11, Hurricane Irma and Much, Much More.

HOWIE CARR: “By now it’s hardly a surprise that so many national Democrats have nothing but contempt for Roman Catholics. But what is surprising is that they no longer even bother to hide their distaste for devout Christians.”

Related: Democratic Party Outreach: Faithful Catholics Need Not Apply.

HMM: Davis Warns of Chaotic Brexit If Lawmakers Block U.K. Bill.

Brexit Secretary David Davis warned U.K. lawmakers that if they block a key piece of domestic legislation on Monday, it may lead to a “chaotic” departure from the European Union.

In a statement ahead of the vote, Davis rejected accusations that the government has launched a power grab with its European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which seeks to copy EU law and enshrine it in domestic legislation. The draft law contains so-called Henry VIII powers that allow ministers to make changes to existing laws, bypassing normal scrutiny by Parliament.

Does Britain want to divorce Brussels, or import its worst features directly to the Cabinet?

SAMANTHA HARRIS: Penn Law Prof. Amy Wax on Her Controversial ‘Return to Cultural Norms’ Editorial: “People believe that the elite academy is destroying our country, and what’s good about it.”

I QUESTION THE PREMISE OF THIS L.A. TIMES HEADLINE: “Berkeley braces for right-wing talk show host Ben Shapiro’s visit.”

As Jazz Shaw writes in response at Hot Air, Shapiro’s talk at Berkeley is “is apparently being treated by the locals as some sort of Category Five Speechstorm…you can’t be too careful in the face of a natural disaster like someone showing to, er… talk. Inside of a venue where only people who are willing to pay for tickets will be able to hear him.”

Stay strong, screaming campus garbage babies! (Classical reference.)

JAMES JEFFREY: The Iran Deal Is on Thin Ice, and Rightly So.

A primary problem with the agreement, in Haley’s view, is that it does nothing to curb Iran’s aggressive regional expansionism. This behavior, which profoundly worries every friendly Middle East leader, kicked into high gear just weeks after the JCPOA was signed in 2015. International agreements, particularly concerning weapons of mass destruction, are obviously important in themselves, but their strategic context should not be ignored. For example, while there has been little genuine angst over the Israeli nuclear weapons program, regional and global concern about Iranian nukes has been profound due to its destabilizing regional policies.

The Obama administration’s behavior stoked Iran’s aggressive regional approach. U.S. officials in the previous administration were slippery on the issue of “linkage” between the agreement and Iran’s disruptive regional agenda. At times, such as a speech Vice President Joseph Biden made at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in April 2015, officials argued that the agreement was simply concerned with nuclear restraints, and Iran’s regional behavior would be dealt with in other ways. But it never was — not in Syria, Yemen, or elsewhere. Rather, the administration’s implicit position appeared best reflected in President Barack Obama’s 2015 interview with the Atlantic, wherein he argued that the long game engendered by the agreement would help return Iran to respectability and calm the region, while also signaling that he was not overly troubled by Iran’s depravations.

He opined that Saudi Arabia had to find a way to “share the neighborhood” with Iran, and that backing U.S. allies in the region too strongly against Iran would only fan the flames of conflict.

But Iran’s behavior is now too dangerous to ignore.

“Now” means “now that it isn’t Obama’s problem anymore.”

LEGACY: Syria Will Stain Obama’s Legacy Forever: The arc of history is long, but it won’t ever judge the president’s Syria policy kindly.

Related: Obama and Hillary’s Middle East Debacles.

MIZZOU, EVERGREEN STATE, OBERLIN, AND NOW PENN LAW SCHOOL: Penn Law Students Try To Ban Amy Wax From Teaching Civil Procedure Due To Her Breakdown Of The Bourgeois Culture Op-Ed. Administrators, you listen to these junior Robespierres at your peril. Far better to give them a stern lecture on the value of free speech, and the importance of lawyers — of all people — being able to deal with ideas they disagree with.

Or, you know, flush your reputation and enrollment in exchange for trying to make people happy who, by their nature, don’t want to be made happy for long.

SO MANY WAYS: How Did Hillary Lose? Let Us Count the Ways.

SALENA ZITO: Democrats give away the Rust Belt by alienating Catholics.

OHIO VALLEY — A clip of Martha Plimpton’s exuberance over the ‘best’ abortion she ever had played out on the television overhead of a gas-station counter somewhere along U.S. Route 422 between Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A woman with a name tag noting her as the manager rolled her eyes and said to no one in particular as she went about stacking the shelves behind the counter, “And they wonder why people don’t vote for Democrats around here anymore.”

Plimpton, 46, is best known for her role in the 1980’s Steven Spielberg classic kid adventure movie “Goonies.” She made her remark in an interview with Dr. Willie Parker at a #ShoutYourAbortion event in Seattle in June.

After saying Seattle was the home of some of her family she went on to cheer what she did in her teens, “I also had my first abortion at the Seattle Planned Parenthood. Yay!”

With equal exuberance, she also revealed her Seattle abortion wasn’t her last.

Actions like Plimpton’s do not help the Democratic cause in achieving power and influence back in Washington, D.C. At least not with Main Street voters.

Nor does it help Democrats win local races either.

“Democrats used to debate the legal right to have one, and that was a point of view that was shared by most voters,” said Michael Wear, a theologically conservative evangelical Christian and Democrat who served in Barack Obama’s faith outreach office in the White House.

“I don’t understand why 14 months before a midterm election why would you push 20 percent of voters who would love to support Democrats out the door? Better yet why would you speak of pro-life Democrats as though they were some extraterrestrial who just landed on earth?” he said.

Because looking down on those voters is one of the chief rewards for being on the left today.

IF YOU’RE A SCIENCE FICTION READER, YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ MY FAREWELL TO A DEAR FRIEND:  Farewell To A Friend: Jerry Pournelle 1933-2017.   Yes, I know it is a problem of having friends older than oneself.  And I would not have given up this friendship for the world.  But I had hoped we had a year or two more.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS AN OPEN SECRET, LIKE THAT THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST IS MANIPULATED:  Exclusive: North Korea ‘secretly helped by Iran to gain nuclear weapons’, British officials fear.