For The Powers Of Heaven Shall Be Shaken

A photo of New York firefighter Edward James Day is placed on his name at the 9/11 memorial reflecting pool. Photo credit:  Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images

I spent the day yesterday wiping my eyes and grinding my teeth as I sifted through photographs of the heartbreaking swiftness and cruelty of 9/11. Sixteen years have passed and the sorrow still runs deep.

Thousands of 9/11 victims' relatives, survivors, rescuers and others are expected to gather today at the World Trade Center to remember the deadliest terror attack on American soil. 

“A solitary candle, a flag, a tear, these are the tokens of our renewal,” was how Tony Snow began his “Parting Thoughts” segment on Fox News Sunday on September 16, 2001.

He barely made it through while reading the words he had written down in the minutes before the show aired that day:

"The United States had a spirit before it had a name─one of faith and freedom, of ambition tempered by piety. We once were a nation of neighbors and friends, we are again today. We once were a nation of hardship-tested dreamers─we are again today. We once were a nation under God─and we are again today. Our enemies attacked one nation, they will encounter another, for they underestimated us. Today in our grief and in our rage, our determination and hope, we've summoned what's best and noblest in us. We are again Americans."

Are we Americans again?

A decade and a half later a horde of savages spread around the world and skulking here among us are still bent on our destruction.

Hate-filled celebrities used their Twitter accounts to compose death wishes for supporters of President Trump during hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  Democrats of every stripe hang by a fraying thread of hope they can successfully impeach the man who embarrassed their party and utterly humiliated their deeply flawed and corrupt candidate for president.

During Irma’s destruction, looters ransacked evacuated homes and businesses.  For weeks before the arrival of the cataclysmic weather that struck Texas and Florida we’ve seen extremists trying to destroy America from within.

Today we are concerned with remembering our darkest day and we will weep for what was taken from us.  Tomorrow we will move on. 

But what are we moving towards?  America is being destroyed from within as much as from without. What the nation has become, through death by fire, bravado, war, forgetfulness, treason, and vulgar asininity could not have been prophesied on September 10th, 2001.

We will never be able to undo the pain of that day or the barbarity that is unequaled in our history.  I will lower Old Glory to half-staff at sunrise and raise her again at sunset as a tribute to those whose names were added to The Lamb’s Book of Life and pray for a more gracious and civilized America.