On a brilliant blue September day twenty years ago this Saturday, the twenty-first century began in the United States, the murderous events of that day clearly marking the “before days” from the “after days” far better than orbits around the sun can ever achieve. Things changed that day, and a new national trajectory was begun. It is important to think back to what things were like on 10 September. The internet bubble had burst and the economy was somewhat on the downstroke, but there was a sense that this internet thing might actually be a sustainable means to growth and prosperity. There was marginal kvetching about how the media was beginning to impact world events through instantaneous coverage and the competition it wrought, but it is hard to imagine even the most farsighted among us being able to foresee the degree of connectedness existing today, with its capacity for good and its tendency to enable our national, natural inclination to conspiracy.
We were on that day, at the top of our game internationally, with one European wag affixing the term “hyperpower” to American military, economic, political, and cultural dominance, even as China plotted its rise and Russia licked its wounds. The “peace dividend” was being reaped as security broke out all over the world, and the American President was centrally focused on leaving no child behind while deeply considering the implications of fetal stem cell research.
And then it happened.
Where we are today is in no small measure a function of that day and the nation’s response to it. The wound created a gravitational reaction that brought the nation together, if only temporarily, only to unleash countervailing forces that now hobble us. Our political opponents are our enemies, our government is not trustworthy and is colluding with big business, the media cannot be trusted, but my cousin living down by the river in a trailer should be.
We are a nation on a twenty year losing streak, and I’m not quite sure how we are going to get out of it. Our politics seems to offer no path forward, and our civic life has become so atomized as to offer little evidence of future coalescence. Both major parties are increasingly held captive by their extreme elements, with one side anchored by clinically unwell death cults and the other by historically ignorant collectivists. Common ground is increasingly hard to find as we dig in for whatever the next contest is where we get to demonstrate our blind loyalty.
Texas and Abortion
As is often the case when a reasoned, conservative argument need be made the great Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review makes it:
Which is to say that the core problem here is not Texas’s law, or the order it prompted, or the case law that it put at issue. The problem is Roe. The problem has always been Roe. It is not this or that law; it is not this or that precedent; it is not this or that state or legislator or governor. It’s not the trimester rule or the viability standard or the shift from strict to undue burden; it’s not the details that were presented in that case from 1991, or the circumstances in which that 2017 appeal was heard, or the judicial philosophy of the judges who heard that brief up in Pennsylvania; and it’s not this or that “ism,” either. It’s Roe. Because, legally, Roe has always been utter nonsense — and because, deep down, we all know it.
There does not appear to be a clear sanction for or against the practice of abortion in our Constitution, and in such matters, the founders left such issues to the political branch 1) of the States or 2) of the federal legislature if enumerated or implied. Roe manufactured a tortured façade that has been criticized from the moment it was issued.
Texas Republicans have of course, manufactured their own tortured approach in the legislation that has the left taking to their fainting couches bingeing “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Designed specifically with the Supreme Court in mind, the law creates a set of conditions through which inferior courts would be unable to prevent its implementation, in order to create test cases rather than having the law simply blocked before it achieved any purchase. Mr. Cooke’s recitation above applies, as this clever, cynical approach born of the original sin, Roe.
I do not now nor have I ever believed that the Supreme Court ruled correctly in finding a right to abortion under our Bill of Rights. I believe the document silent on the matter, as in most others. The States are where this should be worked out on the political level, and were Roe overturned, abortion would almost certainly remain widely available throughout much of the country. Volunteer groups and charitable contributions would almost certainly arise to aid women in gaining access to abortion providers where availability is curtailed. It would be harder to get abortions in some states, and it might be impossible to get one legally in others.
There is a lot of hyperventilating going on right now about this issue, and a ton of mis/disinformation. I think this piece (recommended elsewhere by the Sage of Austin Jack Henneman) lays things out rather nicely.
On the Death of a Shipmate
Senior Chief Darrell Dunford is dead and the world is a dimmer place.
When I arrived at the USS BULKELEY (DDG 84) in the summer of 2004, Darrell was a Second Class Yeoman. It was instantly clear that that he was disproportionally influential to the success of the ship, as no matter what was going on, he was in the middle of it.
His professional duties as a YN meant we were constantly in each other’s company. Like many ship captains, I wrote a lot of letters to parents and spouses—letting them know that their Sailor had arrived safely, or that he/she had accomplished something notable. Some of them were form letters, but I tried to add a little bit of a personal touch to as many as I could—and DD always seemed to know just what to say if got stuck.
Darrell was always smiling. He was INCREDIBLY respectful, and if all I had of him were the experiences where we interacted directly, all I’d know was that loyal respect. But a good captain (which I hope I was) sees around corners, hears into adjoining rooms, and knows what is going on without those around him knowing that he knows. I cannot tell you how many times I’d catch him out of the corner of my eye reducing another crewmember to tears of laughter, because Darrell was a very funny man. Not to me, mind you. But to the rest of the crew—and I reveled in the critical role he played in keeping things light when sometimes the heaviness intervened.
I haven’t seen Darrell in probably ten years. We used to run into each other in the Pentagon now and again, as he rose through the ranks and I shuffled around in a suit and tie.
The world is a less friendly, less funny, and less efficient place with him gone. RIP, Shipmate.
One More Thing
The nation will commemorate the 9-11 tragedy in a few days, and there will be many opportunities to participate, especially on social media. One small suggestion? You don’t need to show pictures of burning towers, smoking Pennsylvania fields, or Pentagon Rubble. Those were murder scenes, and 3000 families across the country have one of those three images as the final moment of the life of their loved one. Think what it would be like for someone on the anniversary of a loved one’s death in a car accident to have the twisted steel of the wreckage blasted out on Facebook. I know it isn’t exactly that, but it is enough that. Thanks.