Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame was the pilot aboard American Airlines Flight 77 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon, said the renaming of the tower is one more example that the nation is forgetting 9/11.
“If we can’t say the word freedom out loud, God help us,” she said.
“I understand the decision from a marketing point of view. But it saddens me that it’s no longer economically viable to declare who we are.”
The issue of the name change — toward which the PA has been shifting for more than a year — came up at a news conference after the agency signed a lease with its first major tenant.
A Chinese firm, Vantone Industrial Co., will lease six floors. A four-page press release for the lease signing included the name “Freedom Tower” twice — only in parentheses.
The only other tenants so far are the federal and state governments.
“Freedom Tower” was coined by then-Gov. George Pataki, who oversaw the initial designs for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center and wanted a tower to rise a symbolic 1,776 feet at a time of heightened patriotism.
Pataki yesterday bristled at the name change.
“The Freedom Tower is not simply another piece of real estate and not just a name for marketing purposes. In design and name, it is symbolic of our commitment to rise above the attacks of Sept. 11,” he said.
Forgetting 9/11, Forgetting Freedom
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March 31, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Who is more free: the one who says he’s free, or the one who really is? China could name a building “Freedom Tower”, would it make their people free? It’s just a name. Business is business, cold and heartless.
March 31, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Guess who else doesn’t want us to use the word “Freedom”? …
CAIR’S ADVICE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA:
10 TERMS NOT TO USE WITH MUSLIMS
March 31, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Yeah, that was a pretty dumb article. But I’m pretty sure it was from the Christian Science Monitor, not CAIR.
March 31, 2009 at 11:36 pm
1. I don’t give much credibility to a blog that consistently refers to President Obama as President Hussein.
2. Not that I give any credit to the blog you posted about the usage of the word freedom, but more generally, obviously when you travel the world you adapt your speeches. If he went to China and started talking about democracy or to Israel and started talking about Hitler, you can be sure he would get a boot in the ass and a nice crisis on his hands. It’s called diplomacy.
April 1, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Perhaps a good analogy is the way many conservatives now react to the word “hope”. It’s not that you’re actually anti-hope, but rather that you associate the word strongly with someone whose policies you dislike. So it is with many Muslims and “freedom”. It’s not that they’re anti-freedom (of course there are some who are, but those aren’t the ones we can really be diplomatic with anyway), but it’s hard not to have a visceral reaction given their relationship to the penultimate guy in this graphic.
April 1, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for the link Jonah. It’s very interesting.
But as to your issues with George W. Bush and “freedom”, do you have issues with the other Presidents who mentioned it multiple times? Like Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, etc.? Or, how about George Washington and other early Presidents who used the synonymous word “liberty”?
April 1, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Of course the context was not quite the same in the times of Reagan, Jefferson and Washington. I’m sure you can understand that.
April 1, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I have no problem with the word, of course. And if you think that Muslims dislike Bush because of the word “freedom”, I think it’s much more likely that they dislike the word “freedom” because of Bush.
April 1, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Both the communists and the Islamic fascists are against religious freedom for Jews and Christians. And they are working together through the “57 state” OIC and the United Nations.
April 1, 2009 at 10:05 pm
There is no freedom in a totalitarian state.
How do we preserve freedom?
Listen to another quote from a Democratic President:
We would have done well to heed that warning. Instead, we have allowed the proper fundamental moral background to be attacked, and now, 59 years later, we are getting closer and closer to a totalitarian government.
Yes, it’s important to talk about freedom. I rather like how many times Bush spoke of freedom, not just for us, but for people around the world.
But now we have a “Present” of the United States, a “Communist in Chief”, who thinks the American Revolution was not about freedom from tyranny, but rather about “bring[ing] an Empire to its knees”.
April 1, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Red, if you’re still around, have you thought about my idea in the top thread?
April 1, 2009 at 10:51 pm
Curiosity got the best of me and I came back to check comments. I really shouldn’t be even taking the time to do that.
Not interested at this time.
April 2, 2009 at 8:44 am
That’s too bad. Perhaps when you have more free time you’ll give it a chance.