The Photo Adorning The Economist's Article on Jeffrey Epstein Features the Billionaire Not With Bill Clinton But With Donald Trump

As we learn that the Media [Is] Oddly Forgetting Jeffrey Epstein’s Role in the Clinton Global Initiative, The Economist's article on the travails of the billionaire responsible for the Lolita Express (Was Jeffrey Epstein’s plea deal fishy?, subtitled It was soft enough to jeopardise the job of a current Trump cabinet member) does not feature a photo of the man with his pal Bill Clinton but with Donald Trump. (Thanks to Ed Driscoll for the Instalink; cheers, mate.)

As John Hinderaker points out, Epstein Is Clinton’s Problem, Not Trump’s.

Instapundit's Stephen Green:

… FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: Jeffrey Epstein Was a ‘Terrific Guy,’ Donald Trump Once Said. Now He’s ‘Not a Fan.’

“Now?”

Trump reportedly kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago more than 15 years ago, long before his recent legal troubles, or even those of 11 years ago:

President Trump has not said much about the arrest of his former friend Jeffrey Epstein, but court documents suggest that he made his opinion of the convicted pedophile well known years ago.

An ongoing lawsuit between Epstein and Bradley Edwards, who represented multiple underage victims in their civil suits against the convicted pedophile, reveals that President Trump banned Epstein from his private club in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago.

The reason for that, according to the filing, was that Epstein had ‘sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club.’

That “now” story was a truly shitty attempt at a hit job from the NYT’s Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman, but nothing unexpected.

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism…

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism…

…/…  In the aftermath of 911, then, Americans unfurled the Stars and Stripes, voiced their support for the acting president, and pulled up their sleeves to go to work. Insofar as this character trait is supposed to provoke ridicule, I find it rather solemn and low key. And there is nothing new about this. In fact, the journalist Arthur Higbee, a Pacific War veteran, wrote in the International Herald Tribune that after Pearl Harbour, America's attitude was even more low key.

Very few people hung out flags, and nobody wore a flag lapelpin. No flag-waving was needed. The tone of the nation was one of grim determination. Recruiting offices were overflowing.

"Grim determination": there is a better description of patriotic America, today and in the past, than Dana Burde's pacifist caricature …

…/… Wailing Europeans and other Uncle Sam detractors [not least in the United States itself — see AOC, Kaepernick, Obama, etc etc etc etc] ought to make sure they keep their droning continuous and never-ending. Because, if instead of endlessly lamenting the distressing state of Americans' patriotism, they were to shut up and try and study it a little more closely and a little more rationally, they might come to believe that Yankee patriotism is not so mystical, or frightening, or perilous, as is commonly believed. Then they would have less to wail about. Can you imagine that!? Wouldn't that be awful?! …/…

Radio : Débat sur le 75ème anniversaire du Jour J et la visite européenne de Donald Trump

Le 5 juin 2019, le patron d'émission du Libre journal du Nouveau Monde recevait trois invités à Radio Courtoisie pour aborder le 75ème anniversaire du Jour J. Le blog Instapundit de Glenn Reynolds a notamment été évoqué (35:06 ou -53:27), en relation avec son "meme" Punch Back Twice as Hard…

Cliquez sur le lien pour entendre l'émission de 80 minutes…

Evelyne Joslain, assistée de Nathalie, reçoit :

• Paul Reen, président des Républicains en France

• Antoinette Lorrain, vice-présidente des Républicains en France

• Erik Svane, chargé des médias pour les Républicains en France

Thème : “Hommage à tous ceux qui ont participé au Débarquement, à l’occasion de son soixante-quinzième anniversaire”

Immédiatement après leur participation à l'émission, les trois invités s'embarquaient en trois voitures pour la Normandie avec trois ou quatre autres amis afin de participer au 75ème anniversaire du Jour J le lendemain.

Rappelons que Evelyne Joslain est l'auteur d'une poignée de livres sur les États-Unis.

Nancy Pelosi Poses with Blogger in a… MAGA Cap

Among the huge crowds that turned up in Normandy for the 75th anniversary of D-Day (read a brief account of the battle here) were a number of VIPs from the American political scene:

Among the numerous administration heavyweights and politicians present were Rick Perry…

…John Bolton…

…Deborah Wasserman Schultz (who, when I asked her when she would join the race for president, replied "Never")…

…and Nancy Pelosi (who does not seem to have noticed the prank being played on her)

***************

Speaking of anniversaries, incidentally (even if the anniversaries happen to be — far — less important ones), No Pasarán has been celebrating its 15th birthday this Spring. Of the more than 13,300 posts written on the blog over the past decade and a half, I consider the following two to be among the most important:

• The Era of the Drama Queens: Every Crisis Is a Triumph

• The Leftist Worldview in a Nutshell:
A world of Deserving Dreamers Vs. Despicable Deplorables

Photos from the 75th Anniversary of D-Day in Normandy

Here Rests in Honored Glory
A COMRADE IN ARMS
Known But to God

The story of D-Day:
An Overview of Operation Overlord
(merci to Instapundit for the link)

American troops look across the peaceful terrain that was so deadly
on June 6, 1944, that their predecessors called it Bloody Omaha

Getting ready for the 21-gun salute at Omaha Beach

VIPs landing on the sand near Colleville-sur-Mer

The Normandy American Cemetery on the 75th anniversary of D-Day:
With a Frenchman, an Englishman, and a handful of U.S. Republicans in France, we headed out to Normandy a day earlier (to an airBNB on June 5) in pouring rain, and the following day, the weather had cleared up — just like in 1944

Why, yes my daddy is a United States Marine
— how did you guess?

Paul Wirth, a few hours before being named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur

Paul Wirth's shirt says it all: 5 battle stars — Omaha Beach (2nd Wave), France,
The Bulge, Belgium, Germany (1st Americans into Berlin)

No Regrets Tour: The sign for a 100-year-old vet by
the name of Sidney seems to be a dig at a previous president

All World War II veterans are at least in their 90s — one outfit that is instrumental in bringing them back to the battlefields of their youth is the Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of all vets with Battlefield Return, Operation Archive and Transition Programs

The Macrons and the Trumps meet at the Normandy American Cemetery

Moving speeches were made by the presidents of France and the United States

Smaller allies who participated in the Normandy landings were given their due, with
 Macron mentioning the Danes, among others, while Trump brought up the Norwegians

After becoming the fifth veteran to be named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur,
Paul Wirth won't let go of Donald Trump but insists on a final word

A sailor from the Pacific War made it to Europe's battlefields; When posing for the photo,
he told me, in no uncertain terms, "Now, hold your back up straight!"

Many Men, the Mighty Thousands

The story
of D-Day.





For the 75th anniversary, Prager U has more…

D-Day: "The beach was total chaos. It was total noise." "When the mortars and shelling started you dived into the nearest hole."

The Times has interviewed some of the last remaining veterans who stormed the beaches of Normandy, writes Will Humphries. See also my basic history of D-Day the 6th of June 1944…

Ron Smith, 94, from Rustington, West Sussex, was operating Landing Craft Tank 947 in Gosport when they were told to move out.
“It wasn’t until [our ship] got five miles south of the Isle of Wight that we were told about D-Day.

“We literally didn’t know until we were on our way. We were called down to the mess room and told what was going to happen. I was apprehensive. Someone in the mess room said: ‘France? We can’t go there,’ and our commander said ‘You can and you are and you don’t need a passport’.” …

Frank Mouque was tasked with clearing mines and obstacles on Sword Beach.
“The first thing you did [when you got on the beach] was lay on your back with your feet in the air to get rid of all the water in your boots. The beach was total chaos. It was total noise. There were beach masters shouting and pointing and directing because everything was landed almost immediately. You could hear the warships firing. …

Joe Cattini landed with his lorry at about 10am after a section of the beach had been cleared of obstacles and mines.
“They laid carpets down so we didn’t sink into the sand. There were bodies floating in the sea and on the beach. I had been in the civil defence reserve during the Blitz in London so it didn’t faze me, but the stench and carnage was terrible.

“We were directed off the beach by the beach masters and we had to keep strictly within white taped lines. One silly bugger decided he wanted to get ahead a bit and went over the white line and had only gone a couple of yards and hit a mine and blew up. That shook me because I had 180 rounds of 25lb ammunition and 80 gallons of petrol on board.” …

James George, 96, was a lance corporal in the Gordon Highlanders, 51st (Highland) Division. He landed at Arromanches on June 7 with his mortar team. He had fought at the battle of El Alamein and was well aware of the horrors of war that faced them in the fight for Normandy.
 “It wasn’t very nice because you know what to expect. We had to get off the beach and get inland. You were just trying to keep alive. When the mortars and shelling started you dived into the nearest hole.

“It had quietened down a bit when we arrived. What I saw was all the Canadians that had been killed and they were all laid out in a nice tidy row on the beach, for a long way. It wasn’t a very nice start.”

Read the whole thing and check out the photos, both from 1944 and of the veterans today…

Most professional historians provide “a basically negative understanding of American history”

If you’re old enough to remember the Soviet Union, 

writes Naomi Schaefer Riley in her Wall Street Journal interview of Wilfred McClay,

you’ve probably wondered why so many young people today seem attracted to socialism. One influence is Howard Zinn, who published “A People’s History of the United States” in 1980, the year before the first millennials were born.

The book “continues to be assigned in countless college and high-school courses, but its commercial sales have remained strong as well” [which is nothing less than an outrage].

… Historian Wilfred McClay aspires to be the antidote to Zinn, whom he accuses of “greatly oversimplifying the past and turning American history into a comic-book melodrama in which ‘the people’ are constantly being abused by ‘the rulers.’ ” Mr. McClay’s counterpoint, which comes out next week, is titled “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.”

He says he doesn’t mean his new book as “some saccharine whitewash of American history.” But he’s seen too many students drawn to Zinn because the standard textbooks are visionless and tedious. “Just as nature abhors a vacuum,” Mr. McClay says, “so a culture will find some kind of grand narrative of itself to feed upon, even a poisonous one.”

A lousy story is better than no story at all: “We historians have for years been supplying an account of the American past that is so unedifying and lacking in larger perspective that Zinn’s sweeping melodrama looks good by comparison. Zinn’s success is indicative of our failure. We have to do better.”

 … in the new book he observes that it’s “hard to read about” early-19th-century America “without thinking of the series of events culminating in the coming of the Civil War as if they were predictable stages in a preordained outcome. Like the audience for a Greek tragedy, we come to this great American drama already knowing the general plot,” and susceptible to the illusion that it was written in advance. He urges readers to resist “that habit of mind” and remember that people at the time had no foresight to match our hindsight.

What gets him most riled up is what he sees as an abdication. “When you teach an introductory course in American history,” he says, “you really have a responsibility . . . to reflect in some way the national story, in a way that is conducive to the development of the outlook and skills of a citizen—of an engaged, patriotic, serious citizen.” Most professional historians don’t “take that mandate very seriously at all,” and instead provide “a basically negative understanding of American history.”

He says proudly that they reciprocate his aversion. When he meets colleagues at conventions and tells them the name of his book, “they just kind of look at me and say, ‘Oh my God, what have you been smoking?’ . . . When I say it has the word ‘Great,’ in ‘the Great American Story,’ then they’re even more dubious.”

Mr. McClay’s objective in “Land of Hope” is to help readers develop a sense of perspective and “a mastery of the detail” of American history. The Zinn approach allows them to be lazy: “Why learn what the Wilmot Proviso was, or what exactly went into the Compromise of 1850, when you could just say we had this original sin of slavery?”

By contrast, “Land of Hope” delves into the complexity of the Founders’ debates over slavery. Many expected it would eventually end on its own, or believed the alternative to accepting it—abandoning the union—was worse. Some were conflicted. The book describes George Mason as “a slaveholder but also a Christian who labeled the trade an ‘infernal traffic,’ ” and adds: “Mason feared the corrupting spread of slavery through the nation, which would bring the ‘judgement of Heaven’ down severely upon any country in which bondage was widespread and blandly accepted.” The Founders had to weigh what was possible, not just what was ideal—and Mr. McClay thinks it’s unfair to denounce them for failing to meet today’s standards.

Similarly, he says that when he talks about the wise and loving letters between John and Abigail Adams, “students will say, ‘Yeah, but you know, women couldn’t own property and couldn’t vote.’ ” True enough, but Mr. McClay responds with a challenge: “Well, compared to what? Were things better for women in sub-Saharan Africa? Were they better in France? And generally they can’t answer the question. What they do is they measure the country’s history against an abstract standard of perfection, against which it’s always going to fall short.”

Mr. McClay decries the impulse to “condescend toward history”—and tear down monuments or withdraw honors from historical figures who offend today’s sensibilities. He says he isn’t trying to “reduce everything to context,” only to acknowledge that leaders from Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King were complicated, and that their flaws are “no reason to rob them” of recognition for the “truly heroic things that they accomplished.”

Take Woodrow Wilson, recently the subject of controversy at Princeton University, where he was president from 1902-10. Critics want to remove his name from the School of Public and International Affairs because of his bad record on race. Mr. McClay isn’t a fan of President Wilson’s diplomatic efforts and criticizes his suppression of dissent during World War I. But when the U.S. entered that war, Mr. McClay says, “it was a moment for all hands on deck, and Wilson proved to be an excellent wartime leader.” The professor praises the 28th president as “acutely attuned . . . to the maintenance of public morale.”

Ideological bias in history textbooks is bad enough when the events occurred a century or more ago. “Especially once you get past, say, 1960 or 1964,” Mr. McClay says, “it just gets awful.” When examining the recent past, “it’s very, very, very hard to have any kind of perspective, other than whatever your own partisan persuasion is.”

He adds that some recent history books are “somewhat disfigured” by the way in which the understanding of recent history is “projected back on to the past.”

 … Mr. McClay is even harsher on history textbooks: “They’re completely unreadable because they’re assembled by committee, by graduate students who write little bits and pieces of them. I’m not convinced that most of the textbooks that have the names of very eminent historians on the cover were actually read by them, let alone written by them.”

There are also the committees that approve them—state and local school boards, which answer to a variety of “stakeholders.” Members of every racial, cultural and religious group want a say in how they and events important to them are described. Mr. McClay opted to dispense with that process, and “Land of Hope” is being published by a conservative house, Encounter Books. He probably won’t sell many copies to public schools, but he hopes there are enough private and religious and charter schools, not to mention home-schoolers, that it will find a market.

… Unlike many modern textbooks, “Land of Hope” has no sidebars or charts; a few maps and portraits provide the only distractions from the text. Mr. McClay writes with a literary quality, as when he likens Lincoln to Moses, “cruelly denied entry into the promised land of a restored Union, denied the satisfaction of seeing that new birth of freedom he had labored so long to achieve.”

 … In the classroom, he endeavors to cultivate a longer view. When he explains the Constitution, he reminds students—or lets them know for the first time—that “conflict is part of the human condition and can never be eliminated. Neither can the desire for power and the tendency to abuse it.”

 … When he taught at Tulane in the late 1980s and early ’90s, he recalls, “almost every applicant for graduate study wanted to work on the civil-rights movement—even though we didn’t have a single person on the faculty at that time who was an expert on the subject.” It’s easy to see the attraction, but he worries about the expectation that history will “provide an agenda for a moral crusade.”

“Very few moments of conflict have the moral clarity of that particular historical moment,” Mr. McClay cautions, “and we fall into error when we try to repeat it again and again.” Instead, he encourages students to appreciate the nobility all around them. “Gosh,” he says, “as Americans, you are part of what is arguably the most exciting enterprise in human history.”

On the Seth Leibsohn show:

The great Wilfred McClay on the beauty of American History and his new book, "Land of Hope" with me today, audio here:https://t.co/Bful5IYuHG

— Seth Leibsohn (@SethLeibsohn) May 18, 2019

UC: “We do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel controversial speakers, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces”

A growing number of colleges around the nation are taking steps to protect their students from ideas and words some find hurtful or upsetting. That protection includes a broad blanket of administrative support for things like safe harbors and bias response teams designed to investigate “micro aggressions” and “micro invalidations.”

That is how Douglas Belkin described the current status of campuses in the Wall Street Journal. However,

The University of Chicago has taken a different tack. In August it sent a letter to incoming freshmen telling them that “we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

We asked University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer why his administration sent the letter and what he sees as the role of universities in this time of social upheaval. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation.

Climate of intolerance

WSJ: You have likened the current climate of intolerance for unpopular points of view on college campuses to the McCarthy era and efforts to ban the teaching of evolution. That’s pretty grim. Is it really that bad?

MR. ZIMMER: The main thing one always needs to keep in mind to contextualize all of these issues is the overarching purpose of universities. The purpose is to be a place that gives the most empowering education to students and creates an environment for the most imaginative and challenging work of faculty. Confrontation of multiple ideas and ideas that are different from one’s own is critical to this.

I think it’s very important not to allow universities to slip into an environment in which they are allowing a kind of suppression of speech, or are allowing discomfort with different ideas to create a chilled environment for discourse.


So without having to weigh what situation is worse and how serious is it relative to one thing or the other, I would just say that the issue on university campuses is important and serious and worthy of everyone involved—whether it’s university leaders or faculty or students—defending an environment in which the highest values and aspirations of universities can be fulfilled.

WSJ: You taught at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. Have the expectations of the students changed much since then?
 
MR. ZIMMER: From a nationwide point of view there has been a shift.

There is less of an expectation in many places that one is legitimately going to confront ideas that are fundamentally different than your own.

 What you’re seeing is a kind of drift of discourse; you see actions by a lot of people which seem to indicate that they feel that they can, in fact, legitimately stifle the expression of others whose views they fundamentally disagree with. …

The average middle-class person today is richer than the average billionaire a hundred years ago: Wealth isn’t simply about money, it’s about the ability to do things

From Jonah Goldberg' s latest G-File:

  … it’s worth highlighting something the folks shrieking about censorship and free speech tend to overlook. I’m one of those folks like Steven Pinker, Marian Tupy, Ronald Bailey, Russell Roberts, Donald Boudreaux, Matt Ridley, and other misery-deniers who feels compelled to point out how much better we have it than people in the past.

By many metrics, the average middle-class person today is richer than the average billionaire a hundred years ago. Of course, your choices in real estate would be much greater as a fat cat in 1920, but your choices in cuisine, air-conditioning, transportation, medicine, communication, etc. would be far worse or simply non-existent.

Kevin Williamson points out a scene in The Count of Monte Cristo in which the Count hosts a dinner at which he serves a staggering variety of fish to his guests. How many kinds of fish in this lavish repast? Two. The Count describes this largess as a “millionaire’s whim.”

The point here is that in terms of the ability to communicate — both to friends and family and the broader public — we’re unimaginably wealthier today. Wealth isn’t simply about money, it’s about the ability to do things. Financial wealth manifests itself in the expanded number of choices you have to do and have stuff. The mid-market cars of today have features that were reserved for the wealthy two decades ago and that were reserved for science fiction a hundred years ago.

2 French Soldiers' Sacrifice in African Raid Becomes Central Story on Fox News Website

Don't let anyone tell you that Fox News is anti-French or mocks the French military. A news report by Greg Norman and Hollie McKay involving the ultimate sacrifices of two French troops became the central story on the website's front page Friday.

 … four hostages … have been freed in western Africa following a French special forces military operation that resulted in the deaths of two of their own soldiers, the Elysee announced Friday.

France said the hostages were rescued Thursday night following a battle in Burkina Faso.

The statement from France said President Emmanuel Macron "bows with emotion and gravity at the sacrifice of our two soldiers, who gave their lives to save those of our fellow citizens".

They were identified as petty officers Cédric de Pierrepont and Alain Bertoncello. A Facebook post by the French Navy added that both men received numerous awards and recognitions throughout their military careers, such as the Gold Level of the National Defense Medal.

The hostages who were rescued, according to France, were a U.S. citizen, a South Korean national, and French nationals Patrick Picque and Laurent Lassimouillas.

The Frenchmen were tourists who were kidnapped during a safari in Benin last week, Reuters reported. The circumstances surrounding the capture of the other two were not immediately clear.

 … As it stands, more than 4,500 French troops are deployed to the area.

 Cédric de Pierrepont, left, and Alain Bertoncello were killed Thursday
during a hostage rescue mission in Burkina Faso (French Navy)

Fire Marshal in Defense of Trump: A burning cathedral is in far more danger of collapsing than one that is covered with flying water tankers' air drops

Among the people who reacted on the day that the Notre Dame cathedral caught fire was the president of the United States, who sent out a tweet:

So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!

Not long thereafter, France's civil security agency responded to Donald Trump's tweet by saying that using Canadair planes is not an option: dropping tons of water on the building could cause the entire structure to collapse.

#NotreDame

@PompiersParis

Le largage d'eau par avion sur ce type d'édifice pourrait en effet entraîner l'effondrement de l'intégralité de la structure. Aux côtés des #sapeurspompiers qui font actuellement le maximum pour sauver #NotreDame.

This led in turn to a reaction from a reader who, after a talk with his local Fire Marshal, wrote that "If it's a firefighter [who made that comment], he should be fired immediately."

Terrekain says that he

just talked to [his] local Fire Marshal.

Whoever said that going for an air drop on the Notre Dame cathedral would cause it to collapse, is an IDIOT.

If it's a firefighter, he should be fired immediately.

Aerial water drops typically disperse in the atmosphere; they do not apply that much more weight on the structure than a heavy rainfall and a BURNING cathedral is in much more danger of collapsing than one that is covered and mist-doused in a fire-retardant slurry. Even if it were true that the building would collapse, the only reason to worry about that is if anybody was in the building...but artifacts and architecture are endangered by the FIRE, far more than any collapse unless we're talking about WTC collpases - we're not.

The building's structural integrity is being degraded by the fire, not any amount of water. So you just let the building keep burning?

Whoever claimed that idiocy is either ignorant, or is gas-lighting the public to make Trump look bad...it's idiocy. What were these idiots waiting for? For the entire structure to burn down?

Terrekain goes on to add that 

 

This is like waiting for the WTC to "burn out" when you are given an opportunity to put out the fire (there was no such opportunity then, but hypothetically speaking)...

Trump: "Put it out with water".

Macron: "Oh, if we put water on it, it might collapse...."

Trump: "What are you talking about? If it's going to collapse because of an air-drop, it'll collapse ANYWAY in the time it takes you to call in the air-drop due to the fire. So why not try it and give yourself a chance?"

Macron: "Ummm....RACIST!"

Related: Yes, the Notre Dame Fire Was a Tragedy; But Does It Really Warrant Comparison with 9-11 in America?

In any case, a number of Frenchmen responded to the civil security agency by saying that dropping water from the air does not need to involve sizable planes filled to capacity with huge loads of water — as it happens, Trump did not specifically mention airplanes either, simply aircraft — but can entail helicopters doing the work (with one tweet showing a Los Angeles county chopper in action).

🤔 J'ai bien compris qu'une intervention des canadaires était trop dangereuse pour l'édifice, mais quid d'hélicoptères bombardiers d'eau? #NotreDame pic.twitter.com/D8M5CJxO9v

— Thibault Lbt (@Nomad1108) April 17, 2019

 

Yes, the Notre Dame Fire Was a Tragedy; But Does It Really Warrant Comparison with 9-11 in America?

At a time when an unimaginable fire has left one of humanity's most famous and most beautiful buildings partly in ruins, everybody around the world would like to join together in unity with the French, while nobody really is yearning for the opportunity to descend into controversy.

That is why on the day that the Notre Dame cathedral caught fire, I wrote that now is not the time to go into (old) polemics, but at the same time, I couldn't refrain from calling out the wife of the elderly French couple interviewed that very night on TF1 (no, t'wasn't Ilhan Omar) who said that when the church's spire collapsed, it reminded her of New York in 2001 when the Twin Towers caved in. (Merci for the link, Instapundit.)

This idea is getting traction — probably because it is so simplistic — and you can perhaps get an idea of the degree to which the French and the Europeans hold dear the lives of Americans and capitalists (or lives in general — like all leftists?) when one Frenchman after the other compares the destruction of the roof of a cathedral — granted, one of the two or three most famous on the planet, as well as a symbol of Paris and France — with the attacks on September 11 2001.

Why not with Pearl Harbor, while you're at it?

Teeny-tiny reminder: in the space of less than two hours (far less than the church's roof was in flames), the 9-11 attacks on New York and DC led to the deaths of 3,000 people.

Here are just two examples, both from a single French weekly: The Notre Dame disaster, "It's a bit our September 11" (« C’est un peu notre 11 Septembre »), Le Point's Jérôme Cordelier was told by Rémi Brague, a philosopher, historian, and medievalist.
 
As the weekly's Louis Chahuneau noted that the Gothic cathedral is a miraculous survivor of history (« miraculée » de l'histoire) and that it has become a symbol for the French, he was given a slightly different wording by another medievalist, Joëlle Alazard: "It's a kind of heritage 911" (« C'est une sorte de 11 Septembre patrimonial »).

It looks like deep down, people know that they cannot deny the lack of proportion between the events, so they have the (weaselly?) presence of mind (la présence d'esprit) to resort to "kinda/sorta" wordings…

Actually, it turns out that — in response to this post's heading — no, the Notre Dame fire may not have been a tragedy (at least not one as devastating as previously feared). Indeed, during a concert only five days after the apocalyptic images of destruction on our screens, there is an entirely new and unforeseen development: according to the French government, "the rescue of Notre Dame is almost complete" (« Notre-Dame est quasi sauvée »)! As the culture minister (Franck Riester) himself says, this is "tremendous good news" (« c'est une formidable nouvelle ») — no disagreements there — although it does tend to make the 9-11 comparisons even more frivolous, shallow, and jarring.

Le Point  : Qu’avez-vous ressenti en voyant Notre-Dame de Paris brûler ? 

Rémi Brague : La même chose que tout le monde, j’imagine, une réaction très banale : surprise, stupeur, inquiétude, chagrin. Puis admiration pour le courage des pompiers. C’est un peu notre 11 Septembre.

Related: Le Monde's front-page cartoon comparing France's 2002 election to 9-11, after Jean-Marie Le Pen managed to become one of the finalists in the first round (with the twin towers representing the ballot's two rounds while the Front National leader is depicted as a destructive airplane aiming for both)

In the previous post's comments, Terrekain says that he

just talked to [his] local Fire Marshal.

Whoever said that going for an air drop on the Notre Dame cathedral would cause it to collapse, is an IDIOT.

If it's a firefighter, he should be fired immediately.

Aerial water drops typically disperse in the atmosphere; they do not apply that much more weight on the structure than a heavy rainfall and a BURNING cathedral is in much more danger of collapsing than one that is covered and mist-doused in a fire-retardant slurry. Even if it were true that the building would collapse, the only reason to worry about that is if anybody was in the building...but artifacts and architecture are endangered by the FIRE, far more than any collapse unless we're talking about WTC collpases - we're not.

The building's structural integrity is being degraded by the fire, not any amount of water. So you just let the building keep burning?

Whoever claimed that idiocy is either ignorant, or is gas-lighting the public to make Trump look bad...it's idiocy. What were these idiots waiting for? For the entire structure to burn down?

Terrekain goes on to add that

This is like waiting for the WTC to "burn out" when you are given an opportunity to put out the fire (there was no such opportunity then, but hypothetically speaking)...

Trump: "Put it out with water".

Macron: "Oh, if we put water on it, it might collapse...."

Trump: "What are you talking about? If it's going to collapse because of an air-drop, it'll collapse ANYWAY in the time it takes you to call in the air-drop due to the fire. So why not try it and give yourself a chance?"

Macron: "Ummm....RACIST!"