“Peak Guardian Reached,” muses Ed Driscoll over at Instapundit, in response to this:
What if the mega-rich just want rocket ships to escape the Earth they destroy?
Hey, geniuses:
- When you insist on leaving no avenue of escape from Progressivism / “social democracy” on Earth, you guarantee that people will seek another way out.
- Shouldn’t you rejoice to see those ruinous capitalists leave? At long last, you can have your Progressive paradise! Then we can see how the world ends up. Because apparently the Soviet and Chinese environmental records haven’t established a clear enough precedent.
Fourteen years later, I have nothing fundamentally new to add.
The horror of that day has long since been eclipsed in my mind by the consequent exposure of our own weakness, and our determined unwillingness to squarely confront the enemy that brought such horror to us, in the years since. Our appetite for self-deception and willfully naïve thinking far exceeds anything I’d have imagined. Our foundational institutions, from academia to journalism to entertainment and the arts to government and even our military, have been extensively compromised beyond likely repair by determined ideological termites whose goal of an ever-weaker America is now at hand. The realities of the day did not shake their belief systems, as I had once supposed an attack on our nation would. Nor has the steady litany of attacks in the years since — from London, to Madrid, to Beslan, to Bali, to Mumbai, to Kenya, to Paris, to Moscow, to the Fort Hood shooter, to the Beltway Snipers … the list goes on and on. Nor has the rise of ISIS, with all its attendant barbarity plainly on display for the whole world to see. ISIS operates with free reign because we — The United States in particular, and the West in general — lack the resolve and moral conviction to do anything substantial to stop them. We are now led by people deluded enough to believe that weakness is somehow strength, and that our implacable and barbaric enemies can be persuaded by olive branches and “Coexist” bumper-sticker platitudes. These are people who led us to abandon all gains in Iraq, with our intentions and timetable so clearly advertised that we might as well have hung out a “This territory up for grabs” sign. ISIS is expanding its reach virtually unchecked, and is successfully recruiting from Western populations, for God’s sake — because unlike us, they actually believe in themselves and what they are doing.
Soon, Iran — whose political and spiritual leaders have been unambiguous about their intentions toward Israel, the United States, and the West — will have nukes. They’ll have them because, gullible fools that we’ve become, we’ve effectively surrendered on that front too.
I’ve pleaded. I’ve striven to educate. As have many others, with much greater dedication and skill. At this point, those who can be awakened have been. Those who do not wish to see, won’t.
I’m weary of seeing things I don’t want to see, that few others are willing to see and acknowledge. I have no patience to stand by and watch a slow cultural suicide, nor do I especially want to spend years studying the mechanics of self-inflicted civilizational decline when there are far higher aspirations for this civilization of ours to reach. I have zero respect or patience for PC scolds and their demonstrably flawed multicultural platitudes, whose net effect ends up somewhere between naïve ignorance and willful sabotage. We, who have managed to welcome and happily “Coexist” with people of just about every other belief system in the world, have encountered an enemy that has been pretty clear about its lack of interest in “Coexist”-ing with us, and with our cultural foundations now compromised due to the willful actions of some among us, we are under-equipped to confront that reality and deal with it. We’re in grave danger of losing everything that matters, not because a handful of Jihadist scumbags attacked us on 9/11/2001, but because far too many among us are willing and eager to choose cultural surrender as an alternative to fighting and decisively defeating those rotten bastards.
It seems maybe, remotely possible that in the final, twilight years of this once great Civilization of ours, the lunatics who labored to institute such weakness might, as they finally start to notice things crumbling around them, look back and wonder whether they’d perhaps made a mistake or two — long, long after it’s far too late to do anything to turn the tide. I’m not holding my breath.
We’re a culture in serious need of a reboot, and I’ve turned my efforts to finding a way for that to happen — for some remnant of our indomitable spirit to have a chance to thrive again unhindered. Because in the end, mere physical survival and avoiding playing a part in the fulfillment of a Jihadi death wish for another day isn’t what it’s about. It’s the long-term survival of the essence of who we are that matters. And how that goes … is entirely up to us.
My Previous Years’ 9/11 Posts
2014: 9/11, Thirteen Years On
2013: 9/11, Twelve Years On
2012: 9/11, Eleven Years On
2011: A Plea, Ten Years After: Please, Open Your Eyes ~ Ten Years Later: 9/11 Links
2010: 9/11: Two Songs
2009: Tomorrow is 9/11 ~ My Experience of September 11, 2001 ~ 9/11 Quotes
2008: 9/11, Seven Years On ~ 9/11, Seven Years On, Part 2 ~ 102 Minutes that Changed America
2007: 9/11, Six Years On
2006: Soon, Time Again to Reflect ~ 9/11 Observances ~ 9/11 Observances, Part 2
2005: I Remember
2004: Remembering and Rebuilding (republished here September 12th, 2014)
Occasional insomnia is a nemesis I’d rather not have to deal with. But once in a while it yields worthwhile fruits. Had I not been suddenly awake for no good reason and restlessly browsing my incoming Twitter timeline a couple of nights ago, I have to wonder whether I’d ever have stumbled upon this fantastic, extraordinary series by Tim Urban at “Wait But Why”, courtesy of @spacecom.
Start with Part 1: The Story of Humans and Space — which, if you have any inkling of wonder in you, will pull you in like a sci-fi tractor beam, the way it did me. It’s preceded in the series by a two-part, in-depth background about SpaceX’s Elon Musk, who is rightly cited as a major driving force in the quest to bring space travel costs down and pave the way to human colonization of other planets. I’ve spoken of the urgent need for a new frontier — for a way out to another place where humanity’s pioneer spirit can again thrive. This series is about exactly what it will take for us to achieve a future in space — as an even more fundamental matter of long-term survival as a species.
Of the psychological difference between manned and unmanned space exploration, Tim writes:
The human spirit of discovery is alive and well, having thrived in space in the years since Apollo.
But as fascinated as we are by discovery—as much as we yearn to know all the secrets hidden in the pages of Where Are We?—when it comes to filling us with true excitement and inspiration and getting our adrenaline pumping, discovery doesn’t hold a candle to adventure. Probes and telescopes may fill us with wonder and light up our curiosity, but nothing gets us in our animal core like watching our species go where no man has gone before.And in that arena, the last four decades have left us feeling empty.
There’s a familiar bit of disappointment or despair in that. But Tim isn’t remotely convinced that our recent spacefaring lull is the end of the human story in space. Much to the contrary:
I’ve spent the last couple months reading, talking, and thinking almost non-stop about what the coming chapters of this story will look like—and my assumptions about the future have now changed dramatically.
I think we’re all in for a big surprise.
By all means, read the whole, magnificent series. It’s well worth it.
I’ve been nose-to-the-grindstone focused on the all-important day job for a while now. (What’s new?)
Setting aside projects like this one to facilitate evening overtime on that is easy enough to do in the short term … until the weight of thinking about all the other important stuff I’m not doing becomes too great to bear.
Writing here has been a tremendously helpful and valuable outlet for me, and in times of stress I too easily forget that. Articulating and posting these thoughts decreases my stress levels greatly, and seems to do an even better job of that when I can keep at it regularly. The gloom is hardest to endure when you’re doing nothing about it. Stress is the mind’s little way of saying: Get up, man! We’ve got work to do!
Occasionally in writing here, I even manage to come up with stuff that, when I read it later in moments of despair or uncertainty, lifts my spirits. The posts I’ve written so far in my “The Way Out” series have been a prime example of that. I’ve come back to them several times lately (especially the inaugural post), finding some needed comfort in the thoughts and perspective I’d put to the page, while at the same time contemplating what’s next in this line of exploration.
Feeling better is all well and good, but of course the main goal is to figure things out. I’ve had hope that my thinking on this might be of help to others who find themselves facing the same cultural dilemma, and that in the course of working through the details verbally I might find some new answers. Take a look while you’re here, and see if where I’m going with this doesn’t have some relevance for you. There are key practical mechanics to work out, and I welcome ideas as to how to tackle them.
It’s been ten years since I published my first post here, and in retrospect, I’m very glad I followed that impulse to start writing and publishing. Whether or not this project has been of value to others (I certainly hope it has, to at least a few), it has definitely been of great value to me — as a place to methodically sort out my thinking, respond to things that have troubled my ever-restless mind, and assemble a vision for something better to work toward. However infrequent my writing and posting has been, the cumulative result is a record of my thinking that I’m glad to have, and the process of producing it has helped me to better understand myself and get my bearings, in ways that continue to profoundly shape my life.
I set this blog up in part to express my gratitude for a culture that I love dearly, and am grateful to have been a part of — one that I feel we should be celebrating, even as others labor earnestly to weaken it and tear it down. It has been important to me to counteract the misguided “counter-culture” of bitter, vindictive social criticism that has as its aim to subvert, undermine, and dismantle the culture of liberty I have loved dearly all my life. Moreover, it is important to me to help correct the misconceptions that needlessly place people in the service of such destructive ideas and attitudes, to their and our detriment. I have endeavored to do some measure of that here.
I have also attempted to warn others about the threats we face — from within and without. I don’t know whether I have succeeded in changing any minds. The lure of wishful thinking and self-deceptive platitudes seems to be far stronger than I’d imagined. I now expect there are many people who I’ll simply never be able to reach. Nonetheless, I stubbornly persist.
If there is one resounding conclusion that I have reached and keep coming back to lately, it’s that we’re a Frontier culture in desperate need of a way out — of a new place to escape to. It’s become my mission to find that way out, and chart a practical means by which we can achieve it. This, above all else, is the project I expect to devote much of my energy to for the foreseeable future.
My profound thanks to those who’ve stopped by to read now and then, and thus have joined me for some part of this journey. I appreciate your company, and hope you’ll be with me on the roads yet to come. Amid reasons for despair, I find hope that we shall go on.
