Henri Nouwen

One thing is becoming clear to me: God became flesh for us to show us that the way to come in touch with God’s love is the human way, in which the limited and partial affection that people can give offers access to the unlimited and complete love that God has poured into the human heart. God’s love cannot be found outside this human affection, even when that human affection is tainted by the brokenness of our time.

Remembering 9/11

So here’s my take on the 9/11 and subsequent events. There has been a lot of public discussion in the last few weeks about how 9/11 changed us, which it has, and not all for the better. I read one article lamenting what we’ve lost and at this point I don’t even remember what it said but it occurred to me as a historian that what we’ve lost is direction. I think one of the best ways to characterize that loss of direction is by the images of the night when Osama bin Laden was assassinated, and we saw drunk college students celebrating in the streets of the Capitol as if we’d just won a big football game.

What I mean by loss of direction is that we no longer stand for what we once did in the world. Before the United States became involved in a big way in world events there was a predominant feeling that we had no business in world affairs. That dream of isolationism was shattered by the attack on Pearl Harbor, but to me it seems quite evident that the generation that went off to fight World War II did so with a real sense of regret, and a conviction that the world was being threatened by a real evil and that there was a need to sacrifice for the good of all. And that they did. They did sacrifice. And it was for the good of all.

What’s different today is that Americans do not so much seem to be driven anymore by this sense of conviction and sacrifice but more by a desire for revenge. I think couple that with the fact that America’s leaders (and I mean all of them, not just Democrats or Republicans)  no longer seem to be able to articulate a grand vision for America and its role in the world has made the United States appear to many in the world to be little more than a bumbling, revengeful giant.

Now I don’t want to argue that there is not a need for American engagement against its enemies. But beyond that I think we have lost that sense of purpose; we have become disillusioned, cynical, and bitter. And aside from the fact that this is obvious to others in the world, it poisons our national life internally too.

I think one of the reasons for this drift, as I mentioned, is lack of leadership. So even though I know many people remember Ronald Reagan as a conservative ideologue whom many associate with the devil, in fact Reagan was the last of that World War II generation who saw the world through starry idealistic eyes. Whether you like it or not Reagan was hugely popular, and the reason why was in spite of the fact that his actions sometimes belied his rhetoric, he was able to articulate the best of what Americans believed about themselves and about America.

So on the eve of the 9/11 commemorations, I am posting this archival speech of Reagan’s that encapsulates what once were the convictions of this nation, in hopes that at some point we will be able to remember as a nation that love finds its fullest expression in self-sacrifice for the other, even the enemy (Mt. 5:44).

Ronald Reagan Point du Hoc Speech