The Real Global Test: Moral Courage

With the election approaching I could not help the impulse to reflect on how we got to this day. Most would cite September 11, 2001 as the day that defined the times in which we live. I say it is the day on which the people of this nation learned to take our times seriously. In fact the challenge we face today is essentially the same as those we have faced throughout my lifetime and well before.

Pearl Harbor was the event by which we entered this phase of our nation's history. That day marked the beginning of an era when technology encroached on the advantage of our geography. The beginning of the space age sealed the deal. Henceforth, enemies of democracy would seek us out and test us, because we were now and forever more within their reach. Over and over Americans have been asked to face this challenge or run from it.

With the cold war over and won, many felt that we were done. We had defeated the largest totalitarian state yet to threaten us, what else could there be? The trouble is, totalitarian philosophies know no borders, nor are they limited to the philosophies of the west.

Now we are tested again. We are faced with the same challenge as ever: do we meet those who revile the principles of Jeffersonian democracy and would destroy any government founded on them or do we cower before such tyrants? Do we believe in the principles of our system of government, and the rights we enjoy because of it, enough to fight for them or do we bow before barbarians?

Throughout the 70's the political dialogue in this country was one of temporising moral cowardice. Do we bear any burden and pay any price? No, said the popular culture. According to such as the self-proclaimed war hero John Kerry, and his sponsors in the Senate we were the barbarians, and we had to be humbled.

America failed the test of moral courage in the 70's and entered in to a period of self-absorbtion and self-flagellation. The result? Slaughter in Viet Nam, slaughter in Laos, genocide in Cambodia, millions under the totalitarian boot all over the world. Marxist goverments, some of them quite new, exist on every continent today because America wavered. In addition, jihadism returned to life after nearly a century of dormance.

For a time we found the heart to fight, and we won the cold war. We won it only because we found a man willing to lead us who never doubted this nation, its principles nor its people, and who never failed to pass that moral courage on to others. After he had done his work and passed from the scene, many in our nation felt the need to return to self-absorption and self-loathing, as though that were the more natural condition of a free people. September 11 was a cold slap in the face to that thinking. We live in a world where we can either be both brave and free, or neither.