George Rebane
This Sunday, 11 September 2011, Nevada City hosts Constitution Day with a big parade and a day-long celebration of Americana in its streets, parks, and shops. This has been a community tradition since 1967, drawing together local organizations, residents, and visitors who come from far and wide to witness a ‘home town classic’ celebrating our unique nationhood. The day will have additional significance since it also marks the tenth anniversary of the attack on America by coordinated teams of Muslim terrorists. (see Union article)
However, on the same day there is scheduled an alternative venue in half-hour away Penn Valley for those folks who would rather gather in a more Americana-free celebration called ‘MannaFest’ that proclaims ‘Community Unity NOW’. It is advertized “to change Fear into Love & Compassion” with opening prayer and “ceremonies performed by: Maidu Indian Tribe Sierra Center of the Spiritual Living”.
This is the cynical progressive version of community unity that matches the sermons from the other side of their mouths decrying their role in fostering the Great Divide (search RR).
(The discerning reader will note another example of how spirituality and the transcendence of Man is selectively accepted as long as it is laundered of Christian tinges. At other times the secular humanist makes sport of belief systems that reach for something beyond oblivion to inform and comfort our existence. It is indeed the brave new world of yesteryear to which they want us to return – ‘This time we’ll do it right’. Where will they build the new walls to keep us all in?)
[10sep2011 update] Today’s Union in an article by Paul August reveals that the MannaFest ads for community unity were just a come-on for something much more political and serious. What the gathering will really be is the “9/11 Worldwide Peace Festival” sponsored by the Peace Center of Nevada County.
To me this is a most cynical turn of events. Not that we can’t continue having leftwing celebrations for peace; but scheduling such on 11 September 2011, and naming the event after the most dastardly and deadly surprise attack on the United States by a culture that is in a self-declared war on the west – an attack that left the streets of Islam’s cities filled with millions of Muslims screaming with joy, and deliriously celebrating what their fanatical suicidal brethren had accomplished with four hijacked airliners. That all seems to me to be more than over the top and of a piece with the proposal to build the carefully named Cordoba Islamic Community Center and Mosque at Ground Zero.
One wonders the response in 1951 to the Japanese wanting to erect the Tora-Tora-Tora Shinto Temple and Community Center on Ford Island opposite the Arizona Memorial, and the attendance at local ‘December 7th Peace Festivals’.
It looks like this Penn Valley event was always planned for an audience of more than just ‘aging hippies’ as some have advised. We are a changed country indeed.
rebanesruminations.com 
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