09/11/09: Moral Clarity and Cultural Fog

This is a day where the appropriate thing to do is make a rousing post, a post reminding us of our spirit, our determination. This day is for fulsome, Whittlesque posts about the indomitable, stalwart nature of the average American, regardless of their race, creed, sex, or ethnicity, be they native-born, like Todd Beamer, or be they immigrants like Rick Rescorla. That the heroes of of that day embodied this - personified it, exemplified it, displayed all of the best of what it means to be an American and how we can and should keep the flame, ever resolute.

What is left to be said?

Some time ago, on my other blog, now vanished in the sands of time, I had a 9-11 retrospective post that, to the best of my own poor ability, encapsuled the above.

In these times a prospective might be in order. It may be optimistic: The era of large-scale Islamic terror is coming to an end. It may be pessimistic: This is not because Bush defeated terror, or because Obama will have shown the world a better face, causing our foes to lay down their bombs.

If anything, it is for the same reason that Billy Ayers, Laura Whitehorn, Mark Rudd, and LeRoi Jones (AKA Amiri Baraka) layed down their pipebombs. Not because they were defeated. Not because they changed their mind, asking for forgiveness and redemption. Only because other avenues for advancing the same goals had opened up to them.

The "Long March Through the Institutions" is a path well-trod. Already extremist voices of this ilk are welcomed on college campii, in media as the legitimate voice of their world, and the fallacy of redressing grievances, "understanding" and "outreach", the same methods that are practiced with all mascots (but never targets), that of empowerment. A word that, yes, means what it means.

It is the true moderate voices in Islam, secularizing, liberal-minded, who have been neglected. Throughout the West "authentic" is presumed to be the bearded Saudi-trained Madrassa head, or the polemical intellectual. The Nedas of the world they would prefer to ignore, and will seek to forget. That is obvious. These are the fruits of multiculturalism. The inevitable fruits of the last "Long March Through the Institutions," come to apotheosis at last.

So what is to be said? I could repost the images that we all thought would be seared into our minds. I could, perhaps, quote Andrew Sullivan saying that things had changed forever, something I did not believe at the time, though I was then an admirer of his writing. To do that would only highlight how...untransformed...things are. "Moral clarity" has been lost in the cultural fog.

But what was an inattentive drift over the last eight years has become a purposeful stride.