Capitalism is not the same thing as large-scale heavy industry or tall, glorious skyscrapers. It is the everyday voluntary cooperation of free people in the marketplace; trade among friends, neighbors, suppliers and customers from the neighborhood to the world. Yet only capitalism in its most avanced form could produce the United States of America as we know it and everything that it has built, including one of capitalism's greatest testaments: the World Trade Center.
It is no random chance therefore that the fascist islamists chose to vent their rage on the twin towers. They represent everything that a backward, tribal, intolerant and ignorant mindset could hate: individual liberty, tolerance of differences, freedom of religion, interest understood as an exchange of different money values across time, equality of the sexes, private property and rule of law in the Western tradition.
The terrorists hate us for who and what we are. Capitalism works and offers hope to millions who flock to the shores of capitalist nations. Communism, fascism and fundamentalist islamic Sharia law offer only physical and mental prisons, torture chambers, privations and death to all but the most privileged elite.
The innocent victims of 9/11 died for living, and thereby defending, freedom and capitalism. Among the honors we give to them, let us continue to defend the same principles.