Four planes, taken over by terrorists with box cutters, shocked the world that morning. Two planes hit their intended targets, taking out both of the World Trade Center Towers, one hit the Pentagon, and the fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania because of the courageous and heroic acts of the passengers on board.
Since that time, many editorials have been written and many news anchors have reported that things have fundamentally changed and that we are venturing, as a nation, onto a new frontier. Perhaps. But what that day really showed was the unchangeable and unalterable course of human nature; that men are not always angels and some really are devils; that there is evil in the world; and that virtue, honor, and justice can still prevail.
Those who attacked us tried to rip the virtues of what it means to be American from us. Unfortunately, the rise of the administrative state and modern progressivism did, in a sense, make this task easier for them. As Thomas G. West notes in an NRO symposium:
The FAA disarmed pilots in 1987. Passengers and crew were ordered to submit quietly to hijackers’ demands. In the name of safety, government banned the very thing that could have prevented the murder of thousands: the Founders’ agenda of self-help, self-defense, and gun rights.
We no doubt have become a less self-reliant people and a people less capable of self-government over the past 70 years. But even with these intellectual and political assaults, we still proved capable of rising to the challenge to act in the face of evil. We awoke from our long slumber that morning.
Those who took over the airplanes came from regimes whose laws were said to come directly from God. They hate Americans because they hate what we represent: a regime based on natural law principles. St. Thomas Aquinas said that the natural law is the rational creature's participation in God's law. This principle, radical for its time and still radical to this day, means that the Catholic no less than the Muslim has the same natural rights by nature. Natural rights are not sectarian and are self-evident for any being capable of reason. When Lincoln spoke of government of, by, and for the people, he was speaking of the principle of consent based on equal natural rights; that no man has any right to rule any other man without that other man's consent. This of course flies in the face of those who believe that the governing class speaks directly for God and that their laws are not to be questioned.
Soon after that day, we went after the terrorists in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. The rule of law has triumphed thus far but we are by no means out of the woods yet. We must continue to keep the flame of that manly spirit that was rekindled on 9/11 alive and glowing bright.
God bless the United States, and I pray that she may continue to live a long and happy life.
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