Eighteen years seems an impossible amount of time to have passed. Eighteen years since Al Qaeda Jihadists murdered thousands by flying aircraft full of people into buildings full of people in New York City and Washington D.C. Eighteen years since people trapped on the upper floors of the burning World Trade Center towers leapt to their certain deaths rather than accept the fate their vile killers chose for them. Eighteen years since everyday heroes rose from our ranks aboard Flight 93 and in those burning buildings — risking and sacrificing all, so that others might live. The enduring sting of the memory is such that it hardy seems it could have been that long ago. And yet, here we are.
My thoughts are much the same as on last year’s anniversary. For better or worse, I don’t think I’ve learned anything new or surprising in the past year about the nature of what we’re up against or the state our own culture is in. This is a long war, a relentless grind, and it may be dedicated endurance as much as anything that sees us through. I reflect with resolve and humble gratitude on the fact that I am still here and able to fight for the future of a world that I love.
I’ve been revisiting past episodes of The No Fear Pioneer lately, finding much enduring value therein. The themes are as relevant now as ever, and I’m more pleased with this concise podcast series than with most any other work I’ve done.
If you have an interest in the role frontier life and adventure-seeking have played and will likely continue to play in human thriving, please do check it out. I look forward to getting back into it and producing new episodes in the near future.
There is more writing and exploring of ideas that I’d like to do here, at some point. I’ve been investing my time in other endeavors: my work, building a treehouse with my kids and spending a “Dad Camp” week with them, helping out in our Cub Scout pack, and building my mental and physical resilience through regular exercise and Tae Kwon Do training. These are things I cherish and count myself fortunate and grateful to be able to do.
I’ve also taken a more stoic view of things in recent years. As the span of time since that terrible day grows ever longer, the pace of change in our cultural state, or my perception of it, seems to have slowed. Things seem to have settled into a momentary stasis or more viscous flow, and my attention has shifted to the very long term: to where this Civilization of ours may be headed over the coming decades and centuries. The primary question on my mind has become, as I related in some form last year: What happens when a culture that believes fanatically in itself, and in its right to kill, subdue, or enslave unbelievers in its unhesitating quest for dominance, comes into contact with a culture that has been taught to fear, distrust, doubt, and even dislike itself? Where do things go from there?
There is tension in this culture of ours, to be sure: between the forces of submission and surrender, or the impulse to turn away from confrontation with the brutal enemy we face, and the Remnant among us who stand ready to fight with indomitable spirit for the civilization that is near and dear to our hearts. The key question seems to be how that tension will play out. I no longer worry that the strong timbers of this structure will weaken. What seems less certain is how the burden of persistent rot and termite activity will affect the structure as a whole. Are we headed for a schism of some sort in the long run? What happens if the load-bearing timbers get up and walk away?
I remember with clarity, on this day: the brutality of the bastards who attacked us (I see no reason to mince words). The thousands murdered in the World Trade Center towers and aboard Flights 11 and 175 that were crashed deliberately into them with full loads of fuel. The noble heroism of the first responders and everyday citizens who sacrificed to rescue others from the burning inferno of the twin towers. Those who stepped up without being called on, and independently thwarted the plans of the Flight 93 hijackers. The hole in the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania where their struggle came to an end. The people who leapt to their deaths from the doomed WTC. The people murdered when Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon. The sight of still-smoldering wreckage being cleared from “Ground Zero” two weeks later. And moving forward from there, the slow discovery that all my preconceived expectations about the superficiality and transience of our cultural weaknesses were mistaken. That the intentional undermining of our foundations over decades had put us in much worse shape than I’d ever realized, and that we have much work to do to find our strength again.
I cannot account for things yet unknown to me, for the particulars of where we’re headed and how all of this will be resolved. But I am certain of the strength and resilience in my own heart, determined that we shall stand and find our way again, and grateful for those kindred spirits who I know journey through the storm with me, seeking our way home with indomitable perseverance.
It’s a somewhat different world than it was a year ago. I don’t yet know whether to judge it a much better one.
For all his faults, we now have a president in the U.S. who has had the audacity to candidly name the ideology we are up against — and what is remarkable to me is that doing so takes any audacity at all. Such is the deep denial we’ve slumped into these past 16 years, that anyone finds shocking what should be a foundational part of our shared understanding, whatever our differences may be regarding how best to face and defeat that threat. Had anyone suggested to me in the days following 9/11 that this level of denial would come to exist, or stranger still that it would come from forces within our own culture, I’d have been stunned by the insanity of the thought.
Whether our actions now and in the next few years will produce greater success as a result of leadership that will honestly name our enemy’s motivating ideology has yet to be seen. I have not been generally optimistic about our degree of cultural resolve, which I think is what we need most. The forces of civilizational decline are entrenched and persistent, and this might be but a temporary reversal of a much stronger tide. I still hold out some hope for a genuine and lasting turnaround. But I don’t know what it’s going to take to truly wake us up and get us on our feet and fighting for our future with the strong conviction that will be essential to victory. Europe has experienced numerous grisly Jihadist attacks in recent years, and hardly seems to have deviated from a course of submission, surrender, decline, and suicide. We are witnessing what happens when a culture that believes fanatically in itself comes into contact with a culture hobbled by self-doubt.
For our future to differ, our thoughts and actions must differ. If we can’t start by having the honest, fact-based conversation about radical Islamic violence that Sunni Muslim Raheel Raza calls for in this video, we will lack even the hope of turning things around. I look forward to the candor of our public discussion improving someday.
It’s been on my mind to do some more writing and podcasting — a thought that has me pondering both the content I want to get down in words, and the potential purpose of completing and publishing that work. I’ve gained a lot of valuable and life-improving perspective in recent years, that I think could be of help to others who may be journeying down similar paths. It interests me to distill my observations — partly for my own use in developing my thinking further, but I also wonder to what extent it may be a worthwhile endeavor to publish the results, either here or elsewhere.
With time being in short supply relative to my many projects, I'm driven to weigh the value of this endeavor as realistically as I can. To what extent will it matter? I think of all the superb writing that's already out there on the subjects that preoccupy me, by writers whose wonderfully articulate insight both inspires and humbles me (see my links page for some of my favorites), and I have to wonder whether the most useful thing I can do is direct people to their work. Twitter is an apt and effective tool for that, and a substantial part of my use of it (as well as this blog) has been for that purpose. Where others have said with great clarity of thought what I have lacked the talent and time to articulate, it makes every bit of sense to direct people to their articles, podcast episodes, and videos with due enthusiasm.
Time is in understandably short supply for potential readers, too. In a world where Twitter's brevity connects people with ideas, and with one another, with undeniable effectiveness, I make the time to read my own favorite writers far less often than I'd like to. What are the chances that others will find the time to read my own humble work, or can be reasonably expected to? At the point of that thought, I fall back on the knowledge that putting my thoughts together in writing is of great benefit to me, independent of how many or few others may read or benefit from the results. But if I'm going to take the time to craft work that I'm happy enough with to publish, and because I harbor hope of helping others and building friendships with people on similar journeys, I feel driven to figure out what I can do that would be most effective and worthwhile.
They say to write about what you know, and maybe therein lies the answer. More specifically, I think I need to figure out what I can contribute that's relatively unique — what's a novel result of my own perspective that might not be found elsewhere. My thinking about the frontier cycle and the development of new frontiers seems likely to be part of that, and I may redouble my focus on that pursuit both here and on the No Fear Pioneer podcast. I'll be interested to see where that goes, and I hope others will find some value in the results of these pursuits too.
Photo of people gathering for our town’s Memorial Day ceremony. Attendance was good despite the rain. (If I’d taken another photo later you’d have seen many more umbrellas.)
We were there with my son’s Cub Scout troop, which brought back memories of planting flags on soldiers’ graves at the Los Angeles National Cemetery in L.A. when I was a scout.
The bravery and sacrifice of those who risked and lost all for us humbles me as always. May we forever remember them with heartfelt gratitude, and strive ceaselessly to make ourselves worthy of the ultimate price they paid for our lives and liberty.
Freedom is a tremendous and precious inheritance. To develop our potential, thrive in it, and pass it along to each successive generation is our highest calling. I write here to give my thanks, and to seek ways we can cultivate the resilience, independence, courage, and indomitable spirit necessary to sustain a culture that cherishes liberty.
