Wednesday is September 11, and I will do my usual posts remembering the dastardly attack upon our nation that left three thousand dead. I was forty-four at the time and I assume all adults and many teenagers and children above the age of seven will not forget that terrible day.
We are now as far in terms of years from that day as the year 1964 was from Pearl Harbor. Once upon a time the firing on Fort Sumter was emblazoned on American memory. How many Americans today can recall the date without looking it up? Even after a terrible event, time tends to obscure it in the cascade of events that occur each year. While time does not heal all wounds, it does put scar tissue over all wounds.
We have a whole new generation who are now young adults born after 2001, and the huge numbers of teenagers and children following in their path. Their numbers grow each day, while the number of Americans alive during September 11 is waning.
In a way this is healthy, since living in the past for a culture is a dead end, just as it is for individuals. But I fear that the lessons of September 11, that we are not invulnerable, that eternal vigilance is necessary, and that malign forces abroad wish to kill as many Americans as they can, have been forgotten and that a repetition of September 11 is inevitable. Gloomy thoughts for a Monday morning, but perhaps necessary ones.
September 7 celebrated the defeat of Islamic aggression at Covadonga, Spain in 722, beginning the seven centuries of the Reconquista. We can defeat them again, if we remember (1) that we need to and (2) that we have done it so many times before. Mohammed was a psychotic, pedophilic bandit who began the longest-running con game in world history. We used to have a Church that knew that and talked that way (well, perhaps a tad more politely). We used to have a political and intellectual class that was more discerning about “diversity”. We need both again. Santiago!
Battle for Vienna, won September 12, 1683, vs I think Islam? Or Turks ?
Sea battle of Lepanto, won by The Holy League, vs Ottomans, October 7, 1571.
Our enemy has much longer memory than us.
Wish I knew/understood all of this much better…..
Consolata:
It was both Islam and Johnny Turk. The Turks and their relatives scattered across Central Asia make a scary point those Americans enthused about immigration need to consider: that Islam arose in barbarism and can remain perfectly happy in barbarism. All other religions created or adapted a civilized order around themselves. There is no barbarous Buddhism or Confucianism, Judaism or Christianity. Islam doesn’t need civilization and while it can make use of a civilized order, it’s long-term tendency is to barbarize it. Does modern Iraq give any hint that Western civilization began there? Does modern Iran look anything like the Persia of ancient myth and legend, or Pakistan the place where Indian culture began? To paraphrase Tacitus: Islam makes a desert and calls it the Religion of Peace.
@Tom Bryne:
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, Musulmani vocant falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
To plunder, to butcher, to pillage the Muslims call empire by false names, and, where they make deprivation, they entitle peace.
The original Tacitus seems incomplete; I fixed that. 😉
The beauty of the traditional “Third, Seventh, Month and Yearly Mind [remembrance]” is, in part, that it is so well suited to just what you, Don, speak of: we remember, more frequently and intensely the closer we are to the event, and as time goes by, we don’t forget but we don’t need so frequent a remembering. Hence, the traditional Missal has Requiem Masses for the day of burial, three days later, seven days later, an entire month later, and from then on, only once a year.
9-11
My nerves are up.
Commercial break right now from the debate.
I am convinced that Kamala’s lies are going to win over far too many undecided voter. How I hope Im dead wrong. Up to this point, I’m afraid my hunce is right.
I anticipate a large swing in future polls going blue.
I cant watch the last segment.
4am wake up coming up too soon for me.
9-11
Indeed.