Ronald Reagan\u2019s famous \u201cMorning in America\u201d campaign commercial<\/a> heralded the end of a long dark night in America\u2019s common life. \u00a0By 1984, we had endured the malaise of the Carter years, the 1979 energy crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, stagflation, and unemployment that remained in double-digits for ten months. \u00a0Yet the economy was growing again in leaps and bounds. \u00a0Unemployment was falling swiftly. \u00a0After the moral confusion and generational chaos of the 1960s, and the corruption and malaise of the 1970s, America was regaining its sense of self-assurance. \u00a0The campaign ad celebrated that we could, once more, \u201clook forward with confidence to the future.\u201d<\/p>\n A different kind of morning in America dawned ten years ago on September 12th. \u00a0A band of hate-filled murderers had boarded four commercial airliners the day before and steered them into the Pentagon, into two skyscrapers teeming with innocent civilians, and would have done the same \u2014 but for the actions of a small band of heroes \u2014 into the Capitol or the White House. \u00a0All day long, we had watched in horror and grief, fascination and dread, as our assurance of our own national security and strength was shattered.<\/p>\n It\u2019s good and proper to remember 9\/11 on its tenth anniversary. \u00a0Acts of unthinkable heroism unfolded on that day. \u00a0But September 12th was no less extraordinary, for that\u2019s when we began to dig our way out. \u00a0September 11th represents an assault upon our nation, and the mind-bending courage of the first responders who climbed those towers to save the dying and paid the ultimate price. \u00a0September 12th represents a commitment to soldier on, a commitment not only to respond to the evil zealots who had long since declared war against us, but a commitment, after suffering a devastating blow, to rebuild a safe and flourishing society. \u00a0On the morning of September 12th, Americans awoke from their rest, remembered what had happened the day before, and then shouldered the burden of grief and carried on.<\/p>\n But the September 12th project is not complete. \u00a0In many ways, the day that dawned on September 12th has been a gray one. \u00a0I will always be grateful to President Bush for his leadership in the immediate aftermath of the atrocity. \u00a0Although I disagreed with the Bush administration\u2019s big-government tendencies, I still believe they took many right steps in response to 9\/11. \u00a0The middle Bush years were in some respects relatively bright: the economy grew, the terrorist network was degraded, and the homeland was kept secure. \u00a0Yet now those years feel like borrowed time. \u00a0Corrosive elements that predated the Bush administration were at work beneath the surface, consuming the pillars of our society, economy and government.<\/p>\n In other words, our self-inflicted wounds are far graver than anything al-Qaeda dealt us. \u00a0The deepest problems we\u2019ve faced over the past decade have had little to do with 9\/11. \u00a0So our response to 9\/11 could not fix them. \u00a0While we were fighting (rightly) against the challenge that 9\/11 presented, other challenges went unrecognized and unopposed. \u00a0In fact, those deeper problems fed upon 9\/11 and were exposed by it.<\/p>\n For one thing, the economic expansion of the past two decades floated on the gossamer-thin surface of the dot.com, housing and financial bubbles. \u00a0The growth of deficit spending that seemed sustainable in the bubble-boom years is now reckless and dangerous. \u00a0The incestuous relationship between government and public employee unions, and the courting of the aged and the poor with promised entitlements we could not afford to deliver, have led to mountains upon mountains of federal, state and municipal debt. \u00a09\/11 did not cause these problems, but it did add military and national security costs on top of our other federal obligations, and the post-9\/11 stock market plunge warned of the fragility of our globally integrated financial system.<\/p>\n At the same time, changes in our media and political systems have balkanized the American public into hermetic enclaves of hyper-partisanship. \u00a0Hyper-partisans can receive their news, commentary and community exclusively from sources that confirm their worst prejudices and suspicions. \u00a0I know some of my fellow conservatives don\u2019t believe the partisanship we see today is unprecedented, and perhaps unprecedented <\/em>goes too far. \u00a0Our\u00a0system of government depends on creative opposition, checks and balances, and the competition of ideas makes us stronger. \u00a0Yet there are creative and destructive forms of opposition, opposition that is loyal not only to the country we share but to our fellow Americans with whom we share it.<\/p>\n 9\/11 did not cause this hyper-partisanship, either, but the hyper-partisanship fed upon it. \u00a0Remember the \u201clittle Eichmanns\u201d in the Twin Towers? \u00a0\u201cBushitler\u201d assassination porn? \u00a0The 9\/11 Truthers? \u00a0The \u201cTexas barbecue\u201d where the case for the Iraq war was \u201ccooked up\u201d? \u00a0\u201cTorture chambers reopened under new management\u201d? \u00a0Soldiers killing innocents \u201cin cold blood\u201d? \u00a0Or the suggestions that Bushitler had Osama bin Laden holed up somewhere and would announce his \u201ccapture\u201d right before the 2004 election? \u00a0And let\u2019s not forget the Far-Lefties who said that \u201cKing George\u201d would never give up control of the country. \u00a0This kind of paranoid hatred was then echoed in the Birther movement \u2014 and, although I don\u2019t find it in the Tea Party movement as a whole, one hears its echoes in the claims that Obama is deliberately destroying the economy in order to usher in true socialism. \u00a0Now again one finds it in the lavish loathing and hatred for Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and the Tea Party. \u00a0Indeed the hatred of the Tea Party is now so exaggerated and delusional that one finds\u00a0conversations<\/a> blaming the Tea Party for lost wages and lost jobs, or saying that hatred of Tea Partiers is just as justified as hatred of Nazis \u2014 or accusing the Tea Partiers of wanting to \u201cburn the whole thing to the ground\u201d \u2014 or saying they want to lynch black people \u2014 or in Vice Presidents calling them \u201cterrorists\u201d and \u201cbarbarians\u201d and Congresswomen telling them to \u201cgo straight to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n Deception and caricature harm the cause of an educated electorate. \u00a0The Truther and the Birther, for instance, occupy entirely different worlds, not only with different opinions but with different \u201cfacts,\u201d and each sees the other as the enemy. \u00a0This kind of hatred makes us weaker and less resilient in the face of challenges. \u00a0It\u2019s hard to rebuild your society when your hands are at each other\u2019s throats.<\/p>\n Yet I would not be so worried about our economic and political problems if I were confident that we had the moral, cultural and spiritual resources to respond to them. \u00a0On the one hand, we\u2019ve developed a culture that\u2019s thin on the virtues of industry, integrity and self-sufficiency, and thick with passivity, entitlement and resentment. \u00a0Where those who suffered hardships were once admired when they avoided welfare or received it only briefly, now they\u2019re admired who soak the system for all it\u2019s worth. \u00a0A free-market economy functions well when it\u2019s undergirded and propelled by the Judeo-Christian work ethic, but we\u2019ve grown fat and complacent, more interested in watching the next Extreme Home Makeover than we are in starting businesses and building companies that provide for our families and employ others. \u00a0To make matters worse, just when we need strong family units that can better weather the tough times, we have high rates of divorce and delinquent dads, single parents and children with cohabiting couples.<\/p>\n On the other hand, even as our economic and family virtues have waned, so have our patriotic virtues. \u00a0Passive voices of doom and gloom dominate the headlines. \u00a0America, they say, is beset with insoluble problems. \u00a0Our prosperity and our influence are doomed to diminish. \u00a0Our markets are fixed in inexorable decline. \u00a0We can neither defeat our enemies in Afghanistan nor match the rise of the Chinese. \u00a0Our culture has grown insipid and attenuated. \u00a0Apparently there is nothing for Americans to do but bow their heads and accept their fate.<\/p>\n Since when have Americans been the victims of circumstance?<\/p>\n We\u2019ve lost confidence in ourselves as a nation, partly because we no longer believe in each other. \u00a0We\u2019re not defeated, but we are defeatist. \u00a0Instead of fortitude we have fatalism. \u00a0Perhaps most worrisome, when we are faced with problems we look to the government for solutions. \u00a0It was not the government that made America great; it was the character and creativity and moral culture of her people.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret where this declinism comes from. \u00a0Many of my former colleagues in academic circles openly yearned for a humbling of the United States. \u00a0They saw America as a blundering bully on the international blacktop, a kind of callow jock whose brawn far outstripped his brains, and whose actions around the globe were disrupting local cultures, exploiting cheap labor and resources, degrading the environment, and exporting consumerism and cheap culture and rapacious capitalism.<\/p>\n I wonder: America is stumbling now \u2014 do they like what they see? \u00a0With tens of millions unemployed or underemployed or giving up and leaving the work force? \u00a0With European markets teetering on the edge of disaster, and world markets sure to tank if America enters a depression? \u00a0Or with the rise of a superpower in China that has no concern for human rights, animal rights or the environment? \u00a0It\u2019s easy to yearn for the mighty to fall until you see just how much stood upon their shoulders, and just how much will fall with them.<\/p>\n The problems described above are real \u2014 but I still believe in this country. \u00a0I don\u2019t mean that we have a unique covenant with God that will always preserve us. \u00a0I mean that if we honor the values and principles that God has given us, our society will flourish. \u00a0Our challenges are great, but so is our heritage. \u00a0For many decades the United States has been\u00a0the greatest engine of economic growth in the world. \u00a0It\u2019s been the greatest champion of democracy and human rights the world has ever seen. \u00a0It\u2019s largely driven the last century\u2019s astonishing, life-saving advances in science and medicine. \u00a0And it helped to end the Nazi and Fascist threats in World War 2, helped contain the spread of a political ideology (communism) that takes a catastrophic human toll wherever it is tried, and still casts a security umbrella where nations are safe over vast swaths of the globe.<\/p>\n Can we have another September 12th now, and dig out of the trouble we\u2019re in today? \u00a0I don\u2019t believe that decline is inevitable. \u00a0Neither should you believe it. \u00a0It\u2019s no accident of history that America has succeeded on so extraordinary a scale. \u00a0Our economic and democratic system have proven remarkably effective. \u00a0But it is no given, either, that America will succeed again. \u00a0It will depend, as it always has, first upon the will of God and second upon the character, the courage and the ingenuity of the American people. \u00a0The question is whether we can reclaim the strengths and the virtues that made the American heritage possible.<\/p>\n