Give me a break. The spire, or as dubliner's refer to it, the Stiffy on the Liffey, is no great anything. It is not a monument. It is not symbol. It is not anything significant at all. All it is is a large metal shaft in the middle of the street. Dublin is filled with monuments and meaning, from the College to the Castle. All representative of something, and significant within themselves. Ground Zero has meaning. Ground Zero has symbolism. The monument that we erect there should too.

You're so right about that stupid spike - which every Dubliner I've met regards with a sort of angry ambivalence (a contradictory emotion unique to the Irish). But the problem with the Ground Zero memorial (as well as the WWII Memorial) is that it goes to the opposite extreme. If artful symbolism is the desired middle, then the Stiffey on the Liffey is too far on the utterly meaningless side, and the Ground Zero project is inartful, literal, in-your-face vainglory. This is something that we're quite good at here in the States, but it doesn't serve the memory of the victims or the future generations who will want to mourne the dead and admire the sacrifices of so many.