Four years. Everyone has their story of that morning and how it impacted their life. Mine is not so significant, but it was still a life changing event. Beyond my political conversion, it caused me to rethink what it is that I value most. And that turned out to be freedom.

I’m not going to engage in a political rant on this day of days. I am going to remember what I saw and what I felt on that September morning as I watched smoke billow from the Penatgon from my office in DC. And I am going to honor our brave soldiers who are fighting those who would see us dead rather than living free.

If you don’t get that, words would be wasted anyway.

God bless America.

A fascinating post over at Belmont Club on the decline of Europe is a recommended read, especially for the naysaying commenters on my earlier post on this subject.

Here’s a small sample:

Europe if not now then soon must accept that enlargement by itself can never fully compensate for the fundamental weakness of its demographics and economy. Even a ship as large as the Titanic eventually fills with water. French EU Foreign Minister Michel Barnier could not have spoken more eloquently of the dead-end French policy had become when he said the EU had no contingency plan in the event of a rejection [of the EU constitution]. “We have no plan B. You cannot have a plan B. It is ‘Yes’ and that’s the only way to discuss this item, so we go 100 percent for that outcome”. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.

After sixty years of retreat from its colonial heyday, Europe is an idea whose back is to the wall. What it needs now is a new vision and leadership, which with some American help, may address the core of its weakness: suicidal demographics; cultural self-loathing; its oppressive socialist economies. The hour is late and the ship captained by fools but hope still remains.

There are some outstanding comments on the Belmont Club post, don’t miss them. A couple of my favorites:

Other factors to look at in Europe are:

1. The demographic disaster is continent-wide, meaning the influx of Muslims is the crucial, defining political issue.

2. The best and brightest continue to try to escape to Australia or Canada, leaving the elites at home even more ossified, inflexible, and incompetent.

See “One-third of Dutch people want to emigrate”: “A survey has indicated that 32 percent of Dutch people want to emigrate abroad and that just 51 percent are proud of the Netherlands.”

****

Any colonization effort which involves the usage of the indigenous people as low-level work force will eventually fail. The colonizers may initially beat the native people with better arms and technology, but over time the native people will assimulate the technology and weapons knowledge of the colonizers and use it against them. The French discovered that in Algeria, in IndoChina, and elsewhere.

The mistake that France made in its colonization effort, is that it wanted to export a gentry class, who would make the natives do the work while the gentry lived in leisure.

Now France (and Europe) is being colonized by foreign powers. The immigrant gentry (who the French call welfare recipients) have little interest in work or in assimulating, and grow in numbers rapidly. The people who do the work to hold it all up are decreasing as childless people retire and are not replaced.

****

If I summarize Wretchard’s thesis as tersely as possible, it comes out as: “Goodbye Europe—Hello Eurabia”

****

I’m not sure exactly what the hope is here. I can imagine terrorist outrages producing a ferocious turn to the right in Europe, Muslims becoming the enemy that justifies rapid rearmament, strict immigration controls, and a radical reform of the social welfare system. But even if European economies boomed overnight, who would be manning those enterprises? The demographic problem cannot be solved in any short run, and meanwhile Europe’s choices are few and bad. Birth rates in the old East Bloc countries are even worse than in Western Europe, so East-West migration only rearranges the deck chairs. I have no doubt that Europe would dearly love to have a Mexico across its southern border, instead of what they do have.

****

As Wretchard notes, the French currently seem to fear the Polish plumber more than they fear the Arab wilders. The French pols pimping of the EU (always with a wink and a nod to let the proles know who really would be running things) is not overcoming the reality that half of every Frenchman’s potential income is going to support either a bureaucrat or a wastrel. Perhaps some Frenchmen are even realizing that taxing those nasty capitalistic companies results in higher prices.

Whether the EU constitution passes or fails is a matter of indifference to me. I doubt that passage will speed up or slow down the economic collapse that only a change in demographic trend can cure. In a democracy, the people fully deserve the government that they get. Europe has been eating seed corn for forty years, the granaries are empty and winter is coming.

****
And my favorite, which captures my sentiments on Europe exactly:

I am not at all persuaded that America should help in the coming European meltdown. It seems to me that since Europe — and especially France and Germany — have tried their damndest to implode twice in the past century, (taking the whole rest of the world lemming-like with them over the cliff), that from a Darwinian standpoint, that should be allowed this coming iteration.

If the European model is a failure, then it should be allowed to fail every bit as much a the Russian model is being allowed to fail. Granted there is that little Muslim problem they’re having, but it seems to me that we need to be focusing on Canada’s little Muslim problem first, and secondly, on Mexico’s desperate determination to over-run the United States and to take enough of our wealth to send back home to keep the home enchilada’s cooking.

We should support our allies the Brits, of course, always. And on an individual basis, any of the other countries that wake up and smell the coffee beans, such as Queen Margarethe in Denmark. But to support a “Europe” entity like we would support the nation of Australia just doesn’t make sense, neither from a psychological, a social, an evolutionary, nor an economic point of view.

Because quite frankly, saving them has not worked. We have spent enormous sums of both blood and money on saving and rebuilding Europe … twice. And have been rewarded for it with smug arrogance, uninformed stupidity, and backbiting perfidy. To me, this coming time will be three strikes, and it’s time to try something different.

****

So, I understand that I am just a backwoods American hick, too unsophisticated to have an opinion on issues of such great importance as those involving the superior and enlightened beings who reside on the European continent (and a federal employee to boot [have I no shame?]), but is it possible that just maybe their is a slight chance, that in their blind arrogance, our European betters have failed to see the wolf at their doorstep?

Nah, forget it. It couldn’t happen. Forget I said anything.

Reading this speech from the great historian David McCullough was very moving. Sometimes we need to be reminded of just what it means to be an American. How we got here. What sets us apart. The legacy of our past is no less great than the challenges we face as nation to honor the spirit of our founders by continuing this “grand experiment” in the 21st century and beyond. Our freedom and liberty were not gifts bestowed upon us by providence, there were bought in blood and toil. To forget our obligations to those who went before, or to fail in upholding the values and traits that make us uniquely American, is the surest way to lose all that we cherish and revere.

As McCullough said so well:

We all know, in our own lives, who those people are who’ve opened a window, given us an idea, given us encouragement, given us a sense of direction, self-approval, self-worth, or who have straightened us out when we were on the wrong path. Most often they have been parents. Almost as often they have been teachers. Stop and think about those teachers who changed your life, maybe with one sentence, maybe with one lecture, maybe by just taking an interest in your struggle. Family, teachers, friends, rivals, competitors – they’ve all shaped us. And so too have people we’ve never met, never known, because they lived long before us. They have shaped us too – the people who composed the symphonies that move us, the painters, the poets, those who have written the great literature in our language. We walk around everyday, everyone of us, quoting Shakespeare, Cervantes, Pope. We don’t know it, but we are, all the time. We think this is our way of speaking. It isn’t our way of speaking – it’s what we have been given. The laws we live by, the freedoms we enjoy, the institutions that we take for granted – as we should never take for granted – are all the work of other people who went before us. And to be indifferent to that isn’t just to be ignorant, it’s to be rude. And ingratitude is a shabby failing. How can we not want to know about the people who have made it possible for us to live as we live, to have the freedoms we have, to be citizens of this greatest of countries in all time? It’s not just a birthright, it is something that others struggled for, strived for, often suffered for, often were defeated for and died for, for us, for the next generation.

Nothing fills me with as much pride and honor than to be called an American. I pray that I prove to be worthy.

Via PowerLine

Cao has a great post on why it is so hard to kill Americans. Check it out.

Michael Gove at The London Times gets it:

Who won the Iraqi elections? The formal counting won’t be over for days. But the result’s already clear. Iraq won.

And who lost? Well, a full list would take up all this column, but, for starters, I would say that the people who seemed a little glum yesterday morning include Saddam Hussein, Robin Cook, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, George Galloway, Osama bin Laden, Douglas Hurd, Bashar al-Assad, Menzies Campbell, Jacques Chirac, BBC News and Current Affairs, Robert Fisk and Sean Penn.

On Sunday Iraq enjoyed freedom. And enjoy seems to be the mot juste. Iraqis celebrated their chance to vote, revelled in it, embraced it. But for Robin, George, Douglas, Menzies, Jacques, Sean and those who joined them in opposition to the Iraq war there can’t be any great cause for celebration, can there? For none of this happened in their name.

Women in an Arab nation taking their place as free individuals alongside men, their voices and votes at last given equal weight. But not in your name, Robin. The Kurdish people, victims of chemical attack, ethnic cleansing, savage repression, at last voting to take their equal, respected, place in a new Iraq. But not in your name, George. The Shias of the south, after years in which their culture was marginalised, their lives held cheap, their faith mocked and their relatives tortured, now, at last, assuming a share of power in their own land, through the ballot box. But not in your name, Douglas. And an Arab nation, defying the racist stereotypes of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s camel corps, shows itself not just ready but enthusiatic for democracy. It is a victory for the principle that human rights can have a universal application. But not in your name, Menzies.

Just as the Spanish Civil War and the Cold War compelled people to take sides between democracy and oppression, so the Iraq war forced a choice on us. All of us. It was a choice that became inevitable after the events of September 11.

It was easy for most people to express their horror at the events of 9/11. It was natural for most, although not all, to feel sympathy for America. It was said that the world would never be the same again. But for all too many the world hadn’t really changed. As they proved by their opposition to the effort to change it for the better.

It has become a commonplace to assert that America squandered the world’s sympathy by going on to tackle Iraq after dealing with Afghanistan. But to wage war on Afghanistan without going farther would have been to squander something far more valuable, the moral high ground. Any old nation bent on revenge would have settled on Afghanistan. And left it there. But a nation determined to tackle the real root causes of terror had to go on. Because it is only by securing a decisive shift towards democracy across the region that the misery of the Middle East’s peoples can be relieved, and the threat to the rest of us brought to an end. Victory in the War on Terror depends not just on the elimination of regimes which sponsor terrorism, but on the nurturing of democracy’s roots in the hills of Kandahar, the banks of the Tigris and beyond.

For the past few months, whenever discussion has turned to the wisdom of the Iraq war, or the prospects for Iraq’s future, in our newspapers and on our airwaves, the critics’ voices have been dominant. And their opposition to what has been happening doom-laden.

But there are other voices who were not heard, indeed had not been heard for many years. On Sunday they spoke at last. The people of Iraq told Robin, Menzies, Douglas and George something I had been longing to hear. Their message was simple.

When you tell us that it was wrong to get rid of Saddam, foolish to press ahead with an election, naive to believe in Arab democracy, you exercise a valuable, cherishable freedom. But not in our name.

To be sure, some folks are beginning to acknowledge that maybe, just possibly, they were wrong and the President was right. And there should be no shame in that, because wherever you stood on the war the election in Iraq is a victory for us all.

Via Mudville Gazette

A liberal columnist reflects on the ramifications of Sunday’s vote.

Via Instapundit

In short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776 have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume those engines and all who work them.

— Thomas Jefferson, 1821

Lots of photos and timeless quotes over at Citizen Smash. Worth the trip!