I watched the first tower come down and walked to school knowing the world was changed. As I approached my office, I saw a group of students and stopped to listen. They were complaining that there were screens in the hall and class had been dominated by discussion of the incident. One complained that in that pre-Netflix world they would be stuck with news on the screen all weekend. One put it bluntly: “World Trade Center. World Trade Center. I am so bored . . . ”
If I am remembering correctly, the second tower had not even fallen and they were bored. We have not yet accounted for the pain of the Civil War and still live in the world created by World War I and we are so bored with 2001.
The foes of liberty count on boredom, the punishment for decadence. They assume we have embraced entertainment culture and personal peace and affluence over duty. If you are fiendish, as terrorists are, then you have read your Plato and know this is the danger of liberty. We can choose to amuse ourselves to death.
My guess is that you have heard this worry, but here is the good news.
I am not bored. You are not either. We do not forget.
If you are too young to remember 9/11, then go watch the video. Do not forget, because the world you live in right now is shaped by 9/11. We must know history, think, and be aware. There is a time for rest, recreation, and relaxation, but 9/11 is not that time. 9/11 is real.
It is not the only date we should recall.
A statue of Robert E. Lee still matters because the evils of 1861 still shape our nation. You cannot be bored or you will be surprised too often by the evils that history gives to today. The Turkish nation remains in turmoil and the Greeks tense, because of the failures of keeping the peace after World War I.
Vlad Putin is the heir of Vlad Lenin in 1918.
If you cannot forget Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, then imagine how alive the results of 9/11 2001 are. They are alive in Afghanistan where Americans fight to stave off darkness returning to that troubled nation. They are alive in Iraq where for bad and some good we overturned a vile dictator and then lost the peace. They are alive in Syria where Christians face extermination from the radical fringe of Islam.
If you are bored, then you are dying inside: mentally dead before physical death. Gout is a disease of wealth, the pain that excess produces. Boredom is gout of the soul, the toll that an abuse of liberty takes on us. We party too hard and overturn the boundaries virtue sets, because we can and we can afford the cost that immorality brings, but then boredom begins. We have been there and done that. We roll our eyes at virtue.
What should we do to recall this day? What we must do on December 7 or every August when the guns of 1914 began . . . remember. We must remember the mistakes that led to doom and what was done as a result. We can prove the foes of liberty wrong by refusing to be bored and enduring in the face of difficulties.
God save this Republic. God bless New York City this 9/11.
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