From: "Good Soldier Svejk" <goodsoldiersvejk-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: Defend America. Buy Toothbrushes.
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 22:22:10 +0100


> Rally Around the Economy, as Well as the Flag
>
> Friday, September 14, 2001
> By Scott Norvell
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34378,00.html
>
> If there is one glimmer of good flickering in the darkness that has been
> this week in America, it has been the way Americans are pulling together.
>
>
> Donations of blood and money are pouring in. Flowers and food are
appearing
> anonymously on the steps of fire stations. U.S. flags rise in the rubble
of
> lower Manhattan, shroud the crumbled corners of the Pentagon and flutter
> from trucks, bicycles and backpacks.
>
> We have apparently rediscovered what sometimes seemed lost only a week
ago:
> we are a nation, not just a country.
>
> But there is an ominous shadow looming as we head into the weekend, and it
> is in the darkened faces and dour mood of those who made America what it
> is - its consumers.
>
> It is on the backs of consumers and free markets that we have built the
most
> diverse economy, the strongest entrepreneurial ethos, the most socially
> mobile society the world has ever known. It is this the terrorists want to
> destroy. Blood is their means, but not their end. Our way of life is what
> they mean to destroy.
>
> We cannot let them.
>
> Americans have shown how generous we are in recent days. Now there is one
> more thing we can do. Just as we rally around the flag, we can rally
around
> the market that made us what we are. We can spend money.
>
> In a memo to employees earlier this week, Ellen Beswick, Editor and
> Publisher of Virginia-based Intelligence Press, Inc., raised the rallying
> cry. She beseeched her colleagues to take "the one extremely powerful
action
> that any American can take right now to stem the losses and get us back on
> track." She told them to buy something. Anything. A stock. A television. A
> five-year supply of toothbrushes. Whatever.
>
> We should all follow Beswick's lead. The best signal we can send to those
> who would bring us to our knees is a Dow graphic on Monday poking through
> the top of the chart - not unlike a giant middle finger.
>
> Hans Nordemann, president of Norquest Capital, said it best on Fox News
> Channel Friday morning. "We need to go forward and show what we're made
of,"
> he said. "We need to show them that they can wound us, but we'll come back
> stronger, not weaker. That's an enemy to be fearful of: an enemy that
comes
> back stronger."
>
> So instead of staying home this weekend, go out. Take someone to a movie.
Go
> out to dinner. Buy your kid a new toy, or your lover a knick-knack. If you
> can't get out, buy something online. Send flowers to your mother. Order
that
> book you've been meaning to buy.
>
> And when the market opens Monday at 9:30 a.m., plop a couple buy orders on
> the table at Schwab or Morgan-Stanley. It doesn't have to be much. Buy 10
> shares of EMC or, better yet, 20 shares of Espeed, a spin-off of Cantor
> Fitzgerald, the financial firm that lost hundreds of its workers on
Tuesday.
>
> Each such act, no matter how seemingly minor, sends a message to those who
> would revel in our demise. It sends the message those who died this week -
> and are sure to die in the struggle now confronting us - did not, and will
> not, do so in vain. It sends the message that this country and its
economy,
> a country of the people, by the people and for the people - to borrow one
of
> our greatest phrases - shall never perish from the earth.
>
> Scott Norvell is executive editor of Foxnews.com.



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