Klavan On The Culture

September 10th, 2009 6:53 am

September 11, 2009

My new “Klavan on the Culture” video is up. You can watch it – with its beautiful visuals by Justin Folk – here. And if you’d like to read the text, it’s posted in full below:

“Hi, this is Andrew Klavan on the culture.

It’s been eight years since September 11, 2001, the day 19 terrorists murdered some 3,000 human beings on American soil. The murderers were moved to commit their atrocity by an idea—the idea of jihad, which they understood as a Muslim’s obligation to fight against non-believers.

Ideas are interesting things. Like our creator, like the souls he creates, ideas are known to us only by physical means but have no physical presence themselves. They’re not the brain chemistry that conceives them or the words that express them. In fact, while our ideas take the shape of our humanity and our cultural moment, they have a reality and power that transcend both.

Like all real things, ideas have qualities, characteristics. There are true ideas and false ones, practical and impractical, good ideas and bad. According to their qualities, ideas exert a force on human action. A man may be kindly and honest in his personal dealings and yet, gripped by a bad idea like jihad or communism, he may commit acts of dreadful savagery without even recognizing them for what they are. Conversely, a man of a million personal flaws, may rise to greatness by discovering, adopting or promoting a good idea like the sanctity of the individual.

Ideas create a tension between themselves and our behavior—and the resolution of that tension can set the very course of history. Our nation, for instance, once tore itself violently apart because its practice of slavery couldn’t co-exist forever with its principle of liberty.

That – liberty – is the great American idea: the idea that each and every person is fashioned by God with an inherent right to determine his own actions, pursue his own concept of happiness and enjoy the fruit of his own labor. So powerful was this idea in the era of our founding that people chose to risk and even sacrifice their lives in order to give the idea of liberty physical incarnation on American soil.

As our founders knew, embracing the idea of liberty means leaving other attractive ideas behind. You can’t be free, for instance, and all equal, because, set free, some people will excel due to talent or determination or luck. You can’t be free and have guaranteed financial security because some free enterprises will fail while others succeed. And you can’t be free and perpetually at peace because it’s in the nature of some people to dominate others and such people must often be defeated by force.

The price of liberty is great but the gifts of liberty are priceless. Liberty allows each of us to attempt his best destiny, his virtues freely chosen, his faith freely found. Liberty opens the doors of every field to our greatest understanding, because there is no force for wisdom so powerful as an unfettered and independent mind in open interchange with others. Liberty paves the pathway to the fullest realization of our identities, our lives, and our loves, each his own.

It’s been eight years since 19 men in the grip of a bad idea did terrible evil in its name. On this day as at that hour, our idea, our great idea of liberty is under attack. It’s under attack from without by villains who would enslave us by force, and from within by fools who would enslave us softly with misguided promises of equality, financial security and endless peace.

Ideas are interesting things. Like our creator, like the souls he creates, they can, when rightly conceived, lead us even through hellfire to the beautiful and the good. And yet they have no physical presence. They live on earth only insofar as we embody them and only for as long as we are willing to defend them with all the courage and wisdom we can find.

On September 11, 2009, this is Andrew Klavan on the culture.”

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22 Comments

1. NebraskaPatriot:

I’ve written an entry on my blog about Stephen Lauria, who was in Tower 1 on 9-11. I didn’t know Stephen when I began my research but I would hope that others will take time to read my story. My hope is that it will keep the memories alive of those who died on 9-11 and continue to put a human face on this vile and repugnant act.

Sep 10, 2009 - 6:10 pm 2. Pajamas Media » 9/11 and the Power of Ideas:

[...] Read the entire post here. [...]

Sep 10, 2009 - 10:40 pm 3. Delia:

I hope to never identify with evil.

Where is the steady hand of justice?
Where is the light of truth in the night?
Why does evil too often flourish?
Why do good men have to fight?

Why is the breath of life so fragile?
Why must the heart one day quit beating?
Why is the clutch of death so agile?
Why is our time so cruelly fleeting?

Sep 11, 2009 - 1:19 am 4. Poor Citizen:

Ideas and Liberty. Interesting. To add a relevant thought to your good article. There is the idea that we can reduce are dependence on foreign oil, or we can choose not to do so and once again have to deal with the mid east dictating our way of life. Or we can choose liberty, sacrafice, and do what we need to do to Liberate ourselves from it. At least we now have most in our national leadership that are trying a little harder.

Sep 11, 2009 - 2:14 am 5. Francis W. Porretto:

Unless we reanimate the lessons we learned and the fury we felt that day, we will be struck again. Indeed, given the willingness of the current administration to propitiate the worst men in the world, and to kowtow to the followers of a totalitarian pseudo-religion, it seems inevitable.

Sep 11, 2009 - 4:23 am 6. Dave M.:

Mr. Klavan, The 19 men who committed the attacks on 9/11/2009 were not just acting upon a bad idea. They were acting upon their transcendent belief in an oppressive, violent, evil faith. A faith not from the God of the Bible but from the imposter “Allah”. This is not a battle of ideas. It is a battle of the “powers and principalities” of this world. Unless we treat it as such, we will surely lose.

Sep 11, 2009 - 4:52 am 7. bibio44:

4. Francis W. Porretto: “Unless we reanimate the lessons we learned and the fury we felt that day, we will be struck again.”

Right! And the first lesson is: Mr. President, READ and ACT ON the memos your security people put on your desk! The second lesson: Finish the fight against the perpetrators before spreading resources thin by launching a war of choice.

Sep 11, 2009 - 5:30 am 8. Michael:

It has been awful these last eight years, all those dozens of attacks and tens of thousands of Americans killed on our soil by terrorists.

Oh, wait…It was no more deaths at home and tens of thousands of terroists dead at their homes. They have found that in sowing the wind they have reaped the whirlwind.

Let’s see how the new president’s ideas affect the security and freedom of individual Americans

Sep 11, 2009 - 6:40 am 9. SteveOfTheNorth:

To Delia @ 3

I hope to never identify with evil.
Please do more than hope,act.

Where is the steady hand of justice?
Justice is like rain,sometimes here…sometimes not.

Where is the light of truth in the night?
Truth is like the flame of a small candle, we must shelter it from the maelstrom of ignorance.

Why does evil too often flourish?
Because good men do nothing,and so do evil ones.Evil can achieve by doing nothing…
“I don’t want to get involved”..”It’s not my job”..”Why should I?”..”Not my fault”
…and the list goes on.

Why do good men have to fight?
When there is death and injustice how can one run and hide yet still be called a good man? My father said: Some day there will come a time to fight,you will be afraid yet do not stand idle”.Such is from grandfather to father to son.It is Honor and Duty.

The last four are the lessons of the Sequoia and sapling.
We live and achieve,to grow tall and when age comes upon us we fall and die,
thus we nurture the grow of the next generation.

Sep 11, 2009 - 6:43 am 10. SteveOfTheNorth:

From time to time the tree of liberty must be refreshed
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Sep 11, 2009 - 6:51 am 11. Frank:

I actually agree with the Bibiotroll who says:
“Mr. President, READ and ACT ON the memos your security people put on your desk!”

Had Clinton acted on intelligence information when he had the chance or ordered the hit on Bin Laden when our friends the Saudis presented him on a silver platter, 9/11 would never have happened. Thanks for the reminder Bib.

Oh, you didn’t mean THAT President? Sorry, I forgot terrorism didn’t start until 2000. My bad.

Sep 11, 2009 - 8:28 am 12. Mike G:

To Poor Citizen: I would like to be free from your notion that there is something wrong with using oil based products and that “the mid east (is) dictating our way of life”. I would like to choose liberty as you suggest but that is not what you are offering. Please back off and tell your national leadership to allow freedom to ring as the author suggests. We can make our own choices and we will optimize our standard of living here in this country far better than any central planners will.

Sep 11, 2009 - 10:20 am 13. Poor Citizen:

to Mike G: I am not in the business of offering anything except one concept. But its only a concept. That we may be able to really begin to create new energy alternatives so that we can free ourselves from our “over” dependence on foreign oil. But that can only happen if… if we have the willpower to do it. I believe that this over dependence has brought us both heartaches and benefits, but since the 70.s the burden has outweighed the benefits. Now if you work for an oil company or in saudi arabia I am not advocating anyone giving up “totally” on using oil based products. That is not what I meant to convey. So I hope that clears up any misunderstanding. I know you may never agree with me. But I really believe that in order to acheive this freedom, it will take a national effort.

Sep 11, 2009 - 1:10 pm 14. Moho:

And you can’t be free and be enslaved. Oh wait, they forgot one. But it was only black people, not real Americans.

Sep 11, 2009 - 1:42 pm 15. Scott:

Moho is an idiot as usual…I guess you missed this part.

Our nation, for instance, once tore itself violently apart because its practice of slavery couldn’t co-exist forever with its principle of liberty.

Sep 11, 2009 - 2:27 pm 16. Moho:

Our nation, for instance, once tore itself violently apart because its practice of slavery couldn’t co-exist forever with its principle of liberty.

This has to be the oddest formulation I’ve seen in a while…”couldn’t coexist forever”? Does that mean it could co-exist for a while? And is that why Klavan forgot to include the slavery in the part where the founders consciously approved of a nation that granted freedom only to land owning white men? It was an odd thing to leave out of his “You can’t be free”…list. And a strange way to include it. I didn’t miss it. It makes as little sense as the habit of you teabagging douchebags to never acknwoledge the failures of the founders, and how so many of those failures were based on economic and political considerations, not philosophical or moral ideas. You people worship the constitution [and indeed, a fantasy version of it] without recognizing the main impetus that drove it–a nation with a vibrant economic sector driven by slave labor, and the need to incorporate that area into the nation without threatening its sovereignty. Next to the real importance of including the South into the USA without threatening its apartheid political structure, the “ideas” that pinhead Klavan is stroking off to came up pretty short.

Sep 11, 2009 - 3:38 pm 17. Moho:

“Ideas are funny things.”

Well, yours are, that’s for sure.

Sep 11, 2009 - 6:38 pm 18. myth buster:

Evil must be exterminated, without mercy. Grant them no quarter, no mercy, no compassion. Kill them, cut their heads off and display their skulls. Strip their bodies of all useful organs and tissues and use them for transplants. Feed the remains to dogs. Use nuclear weapons, they can’t fight that. The war will be over in a month tops, and then we can have peace, because our enemies will fear us. The enemy can never be convinced to love us so long as they cleave to their wicked religion. Would that they would all embrace Christ, for then we would have a lasting peace, but failing that, peace through fear is the only other way. To have that peace, then, we need to kill them all or break their spirits.

Sep 11, 2009 - 6:52 pm 19. Delia:

9. SteveOfTheNorth,

Great post, Steve. Thank you and I agree.

Sep 11, 2009 - 7:44 pm 20. SteveOfTheNorth:

yes

Damn those terrible land owning white guys who enslaved us away from jolly old
England,by making a ‘Bill of chattel” known as the constitution.OMG! for someone
supper smart and wise they should have debated until forever if that what it took
to have a land to be truly free.OMG! the slave-less north should have ever
excluded that nasty south!OMG! that truly apartheid political structure of the
south that kept all of its slaves out of and way far away from the house and dressed
in rags or less!OMG!the films “Gone with the Wind” and “Birth of a Nation” are like
so accurate and depict 100% of what happened.OMG! like I forgot Irish need not apply!
OMG! like I forgot also the Chinese labor on railroads too!OMG! like I also forgot
that both those happened after Lincoln free the slaves.OMG! like it was so cool that the war between the states (war of northern aggression) freed the slaves and wasn’t really
about tariff laws or rejecting that evil constitution,dude!

snarky-troll blather:OFF

If we waited for perfection,nothing would ever happen.
The way to the future is not easy,climb the stairs,climb the walls,
don’t wait for the elevator.

Sep 12, 2009 - 7:57 am 21. Bill:

This explanation would be enough for kids. Good guys vs. bad guys. Evil vs. God. There is a catch the definition of liberty can not be an opposite of Islam because that religion contains its own explanation of liberty. The same thing is with socializm or communizm because they contain two others explanations of the same thing. Life is not black and white men!

Sep 13, 2009 - 12:59 am 22. Phillip:

How could you say such things about America! Please read Rahm Emanuel and Bruce Reed’s book “The Plan” and you will get a better understanding of what America is about. What is all this nonsense about “our founders” ? How droll, how quaint. Get in the real world. I mean, after all, Rahm Emanuel defines the new “real world”.

God help us.

Sep 27, 2009 - 4:45 pm