Every American remembers where he was on September 11, 2001.
It was the same for my generation on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Dark days such as these may not cause the dark history that follows them, but it’s difficult not to feel they mark the place in time where a certain shadow fell.
JFK’s murder marked the end of that period of patriotism, confidence, and unity brought about by the Allied victory in World War II. The Islamist destruction of the World Trade Center marked the end of the “Holiday from History” that followed the West’s victory in the Cold War.
Many of today’s young people feel beset and battered by such catastrophic days. Endless wars in the Middle East. The 2008 financial crisis. The COVID lockdowns. Race riots. Inflation. The madness of woke — or the rise of conservative populism, or both, depending on your point of view.
But, of course, my generation also saw such things. The Cuban missile crisis. The 60s riots. Assassination after assassination. The stagflation of the Jimmy Carter economy, and the gas shortage. Speaking personally, I lived in the crime-ridden New York City of the 70s and 80s, when smoking was bad for your health because you were likely to get shot going to the store for a pack of cigarettes.
Yet I also saw that things could turn around. I saw Ronald Reagan restore the economy and help engineer the end of the Soviet Union. I saw Rudy Giuliani transform a cesspool of a city into the greatest, safest metropolis on Earth, thus leading the way to an era of lower crime across the nation. These men were reviled every day by the powers-that-be and the news media. Yet on they went, and did what they did and accomplished what they accomplished. As we recently saw in the Lindsay Clancy trial, it really is true: One man with courage makes a majority.
Still, there is no doubt we are living in an age of uncertainty. As the Baby Boom generation passes into the greater life and its long-dominant vision begins to fade, destructive radicals are vying to fill the gap. The collapse of a non-credible news media followed by the rise of a non-credible social media has caused an information crisis — a long Good Friday in which it seems the truth is forever being crucified. We know from history that such uncertainties often resolve themselves through war. It doesn’t take a catastrophist to trace a potential path from the present moment to some worldwide conflagration.
All this, I think, should be taken seriously, but calmly, too, in a spirit of hope.
It has always fascinated me — and puzzled me somewhat — that hope is considered one of the three primary Christian virtues. Faith, hope, and agape love — that spirit of benign, non-judgmental goodwill sometimes called charity. I feel I understand two of these virtues. Faith is “the evidence of things unseen.” It gives us assurance that we can know and live in some human version of God’s truth. Agape love is the spiritual practice that helps us develop the third eye with which we see that truth, even amid the harsh practicalities of life.
But what about hope? I suppose this could mean the sort of generalized hope that “all things work together for good to them that love God,” the hope that suffering and death lead to eternal life and so on. But this always sounds to me better than it actually is. I know a lot of people who believe in that kind of hope, and yet they live as pessimists, morosely and sometimes angrily counting every setback as a sign of the incipient End of Days.
I myself am frequently derided for what some deem my blindly optimistic attitude. But I think they mistake me. I see the possibility of disaster just as clearly as they do. It’s the certainty of disaster that is rarely apparent to me. I am a tragedian by nature. I take a dim view of humanity. I know that every mortal enterprise will ultimately end in failure and death. I simply don’t believe that it will necessarily end today — “Sufficient unto this day is the evil thereof.”
This sort of hope is the hope of doctors and soldiers. Of Gandalf’s consolation: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” This is the sort of hope that knows that in the certain march toward death, today is a day of life and there are works to do and tears to shed and loves to love. This, I think, is the hope described by the poet Emily Dickinson when she wrote:
Hope is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all …
“The tune without the words,” means, as I read it, not with grim reason ceaselessly charting out the possible paths to destruction, but with a general attitude of joy in living. Whatever the outcome, after all, this is the day that the Lord has made. We should rejoice in it and be glad.
When The Daily Wire began, it was Ben Shapiro and I recording podcasts in the pool house in Jeremy Boreing’s backyard. The first day, I was so jet-lagged from a trip to England that I forgot to put my shoes on and arrived wearing bedroom slippers. I stumbled through a short opening podcast that ended with that Bible quote: “This is the day that the Lord has made.” It was like nothing else I’d ever done. So when I was finished, I asked Jeremy how it went. He said, “Great, but you say ‘uh’ too much.” I said, “Well, what can I do about that?” He said, “You can not say it.”
I was startled to discover that this was true. It was a small piece of wisdom, but it grew greater over time. Because I also soon discovered you could treat fear and depression and despair in much the same way. Without denial, without repression, without dishonesty, you could simply not do them and let the thing with feathers sing.
“A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.” So says Aragorn in the movie version of “The Lord of the Rings.” And he adds: “This day we fight.”
So yes, the crises facing the West this day are real, and so are the possibilities that they will lead to disaster. But every day is the Lord’s day, and we are only responsible for the days He has given us.
So this day, we rejoice — each one of us — and we fight.
Because one man with courage makes a majority.
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