Replies

I have re-read this splendid essay and it is, as others have similarly noted , beyond my meager ability to describe. That this could be authored by someone so relatively young is truly remarkable - first because the emotions expressed required identification prior to penning the essay. Then, to express them so magnificently is, well, truly remarkable.

The essay is obviously about the courage and indomitable spirit in rare people - especially Americans. But, I thought there was something else brilliantly woven into the essay. It's worth re-captioning. Near the end, Bill Whipple says:

But there are people who scare me - people who scare me very badly indeed, because these people have the power to kill this idea we call America.

We have turned our children's minds over to certain people who are so bitter and angry, so hateful of the country that gave them birth and safety, that their poison now fills our college campuses and has overrun entire communities. These are not loyal dissenters who rightfully question the policies of our nation, but small and diseased people who cannot understand why their fantasy ideologies are never in vogue, who can see nothing noble or magnificent on their foggy and dim and very close inner horizons. People whose anger and envy have driven them to turn all virtue into an ironic smirk, people who react to strength and morality with the revulsion born of a lifetime of failure and dark plans for revenge on the happy, the confident and the self-reliant.

I fear these people. I hate them. I hate them because they can kill our confidence, corrode our will, poison our history and make us believe we are the base, savage and dismal society they see through their cataracts of failure. These people can kill America. And they are determined to do it if we let them. And the one thing they mock and spit on, the one trait they despise above all others, is the physical and moral courage they have never known, and that is the leaden nugget of self-hatred.

There are people - Americans - who would turn this into the Land of the Guilty and the Home of the Terrified. We cannot let them do this. We simply can not.

These words are absolutely brilliant in their eloquence. Whittle speaks so splendidly to what has made and what makes this country so great. But, his words of "fear" are chilling to me. Much more so than any terrorist threat. It is within our ability to meet any physical threat. But, should we ever lose our ability to identify evil for what it is through the equivocation of values.....God help us!! I pray God continues to bless America, the American spirit, and those brave people who will defend her from enemies foreign and domestic. We must.....

Never forget!