Dear Weekend Jolter,
One day, we were asking each other where we were when we learned Princess Diana had died. The next, the question had shifted to our whereabouts on the day the world ended.
The world as we knew it. Those two queries alone can illustrate the dividing line between the carefree ’90s and what would follow. Those old enough to have formed memories of the September 11 attacks have their own answers to the latter, their own 9/11 stories. I was in college, in South Jersey; I remember seeing the smoke from the first plane on television in the student center, assuming as many did that it was a freak accident, then heading to class. A second plane hit. “I’m sure it will all work out,” was the wishful counsel of our professor. University staff hauled a gigantic TV into the common area, where people gathered to watch the horror, all day long. There were calls to relatives, exchanges of disbelief. Anger, and sadness. Just unimaginable sadness.
I’ll turn this section over to NR’s writers, who have spent the week revisiting and reflecting on that day of anguish and resolve, 25 years ago:
• Charles C. W. Cooke writes about the unhealing anger that lingers: “Nothing good came of September 11. Pearl Harbor, like Operation Barbarossa, brought about the conditions that guaranteed the Allies would win the war. Antietam led to the Emancipation Proclamation and, eventually, to the defeat of the Confederacy. September 11 had no salutary consequence. We would, without doubt, be better off if it had never happened. A quarter of a century later, I still find myself fantasizing idly about going back in time to stop it.”
• Noah Rothman laments how Osama bin Laden’s manifesto is reaching a new generation of credulous Americans.
• Jim Geraghty recalls the sheer uncertainty and insanity of the fall of 2001.
• Phil Klein tracks how the terror attacks changed American politics.
• Dan Foster honors the service of so many young Americans who signed up to fight for their country in response.
• Brian Allen visits New York’s 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
• Joshua S. Treviño argues that the victims of 9/11 deserved better than the response America pursued.
• Brittany Bernstein reports how educators are approaching the attacks now that they must be taught to the next generation.
• Dan McLaughlin writes on how that horrible day, like all events that were once news, is now history, and the obligation that presents to those of us who lived through it.
• NR’s editors, relatedly, write on why we must remember.
• Armond White looks back at 9/11 in film.
• Younger members of the NR staff, who either were born after 9/11 or are too young to remember it, write on their experiences learning about the attacks and the Gen Z perspective.
• Andy McCarthy explains how we’re still losing the war, 25 years later.
• Kathryn Jean Lopez honors the mothers and unborn children lost in the attacks.
• Jeff Blehar recalls his unique personal connection to the bin Laden hunt.
• Andrew Stuttaford details the illusions that survived 9/11.
• Christopher J. Scalia writes about the dividing line of that day.
Dan McLaughlin, whose office was blown up that morning, calls on those who remember, who lived it, to pass on that history to those who don’t, and didn’t. In closing:
Memory prefers the vivid to the coldly rational. I remember the doomed fire engines streaming down Manhattan’s avenues (closed to all other traffic) at top speed, their flags flapping in the perfect sunlight, as the rest of us were trudging on foot northward as fast as we could get away from danger. Those men had to know that many of them would not come home. My uncle, who as an FDNY higher-up had overseen many drills of the department’s protocols for responding to fires in the Twin Towers, has always said that he knew right away that the Fire Department was going to lose a lot of good men that day. The firemen were trained to go into danger and stay there until they got everybody else out.
I remember the forlorn hopes. The city was festooned with the pictures of missing family members. Almost none were ever found alive, and few were even found in condition to be buried.
I remember the smoke and the smell. We lived on a hill in Queens, from where you could see the towers, and then they were gone, but for a few days the cloud lingered, and so did the reek.
I remember the spirit of defiance. Nobody wanted to give an inch to the people who had taken so much from us. My law firm, through heroic efforts, was back to work the following Monday. We had nothing to work on — no files, no computers, no telephones. It was like Whoville on Christmas morning. But we were there.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On new migrant data: Immigration Policy Matters
A little something for Labor Day: We Should Call It ‘Economic Growth Day’
ARTICLES
Eva Terry: Charlie Kirk Lost His Life Trying to Save My Generation
Raleigh Adams: Elite Formation Is Fueling the Socialist Project
Becket Adams: The Professional Fact-Check Is Dead
Ed Whelan: Virginia’s Amendment 1 Is Extreme and Deceptive
Charles Hilu: From Reagan to Trump: The GOP Has Changed — but Mike DeWine Hasn’t
Michael Brendan Dougherty: What Makes Vance Appealing
Gregory W. Slayton & Sergei Ivashenko: Welcome to Ukraine, Steve and Jared: What Took You So Long?
Jianli Yang: Mao’s Longest Shadow
Rich Lowry: Are We Getting Dumber?
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Let’s Never Get Over a Mother Viciously Killing Her Children
Charles C. W. Cooke: Trump Breaks Glass, Joins Socialists, Embraces Bribery
Last, a three-part series from Andy McCarthy on America’s Venezuela oil grab:
Taking Venezuela’s Oil: How We Got Here
Taking Venezuela’s Oil: Nullifying the Claims of American Companies
Taking Venezuela’s Oil: If America Becomes a Rogue, the Future Is Dark
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White, on “some serious unseriousness”: Lanterns Makes Race Relations Dimmer
Once more, Brian Allen, on the 9/11 museum: Murder and Mayhem on the Bluest of Blue-Sky Days
TIME OUT FOR EXCERPTS
Eva Terry looks back on Charlie Kirk’s murder, which she witnessed:
Looking out at 3,000 Utahns, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed a year ago today.
He was debating a young man about gun violence and transgenderism. I stood on the lawn near the front, covering the event as a reporter for the Deseret News. I have watched the scene on the backs of my eyelids a thousand times. The bullet hits him; he closes his eyes; my co-worker and I drop to the ground and pray. Gathering myself, I brace for bullets as we run over dots of blood on the concrete.
I see it differently now.
12:23 p.m. was the moment Charlie Kirk lost his life in the battle for the soul of Gen Z. He was speaking to us that day, and a member of his target audience rejected his message in the most violent and forceful way possible.
As his widow, Erika, eulogized, Charlie’s mission was to “save the lost boys of the West.” My generation has been, in many subversive ways, manipulated by digital and political interests since we were kids. We are isolated, overly indoctrinated, and largely ignorant of reality. . . .
Gen Z has never known an uncurated world. We live under an illusion that our beliefs and preferences are overwhelmingly held by the majority. Even if we logically understand that other people have different feeds than our own, we do not — and largely cannot — genuinely understand what others are constantly being fed. We are unaware of each other.
Evidence of such isolation is everywhere, but it was extremely apparent after Charlie Kirk was murdered. After blasting high-definition videos of his fatal wound to millions of phones, our feeds did what they’ve always done: provide news tinted in whatever political hue we like. If the overlord bots thought you didn’t like Charlie, it fed manmade clips that portrayed him as evil. If they pegged you as a fan, your feed likely sang his praises.
Charlie Cooke properly assails Trump’s plan to bribe voters:
Painfully aware that, once the midterms are over, he risks being gradually consigned to irrelevance, President Trump has hit once again upon a Hail Mary plan for political success. That plan is bribery. Last night, after vocally condemning the rise of socialism in the United States, Trump pledged some of his own. “If the Republicans win,” he told a crowd in Houston, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”
No, no, no, no, no.
Did I mention “no”?
The Democrats who have condemned this idea are, of course, ridiculous, for in trying to trade votes for cash, Trump is merely adopting their approach without the middlemen or the euphemisms. But that is not a defense of the move — which is, in every sense possible, utterly catastrophic.
Let us start with the obvious moral problem that the money in question does not belong to those to whom Trump is promising it. Explaining his idea, the president described it as a “dividend.” But, of course, it is no such thing. A dividend is money a company pays to its shareholders, usually from its profits. The United States is not a company; the voters are not its shareholders; and, to put it lightly, there are no profits to be shared. There is no reason whatsoever that each adult in America should be sent money from the federal government; there is no reason that, if it is to be sent, that money should be equally allocated; and there is no reason to condition such a payout upon the Republicans winning the midterms. This isn’t tax policy or fiscal policy; it is a reckless, shapeless, irritable spasm, divorced from the nature and purpose of our government and from the Constitution that created it.
Practically, the idea is deeply irresponsible.
Regarding another anniversary, Jianli Yang marks 50 years since Mao’s death:
The most obvious part of Mao’s legacy is written in blood and suffering. The political campaigns, executions, persecution of “class enemies,” the Anti-Rightist Movement, the Great Leap Forward, famine, and the Cultural Revolution destroyed tens of millions of lives and subjected hundreds of millions more to hunger, humiliation, fear, dispossession, and political degradation.
But Mao’s deepest damage to China may be harder to count. He poisoned its political culture. Mao did not merely teach generations of Chinese people what to believe. More consequentially, he taught them what kind of person prevails.
The lesson was simple: Life is struggle. Your opponent is not merely wrong; he is an enemy. Rules are useful when they serve you and dispensable when they do not. Cruelty is strength. Mercy toward an opponent is weakness. Loyalty matters more than competence. Repetition can manufacture truth. Mobilized anger can overwhelm institutions. And ultimately, winning vindicates everything. Mao was a master practitioner of this philosophy.
He understood that politics could be conducted not simply through institutions but through the manipulation of fear, resentment, humiliation, and loyalty. Again and again, people who had helped him defeat yesterday’s enemies became tomorrow’s enemies themselves. Allies became “rightists.” Revolutionary veterans became “capitalist roaders.” Intellectuals invited to speak became counter-revolutionaries. The categories changed. The essential rule did not: Mao decided who belonged to “the people” and who became “the enemy.”
Mao famously wrote that “a revolution is not a dinner party,” and that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” His political vocabulary elevated douzheng — struggle — into something far larger than an occasional necessity; struggle became a way of understanding politics itself. Ideology mattered, but it was also extraordinarily adaptable in his hands. What remained constant was power. Yesterday’s orthodoxy could become today’s deviation. The standard was ultimately not consistency with doctrine, but consistency with Mao’s political requirements.
In closing, a passage from NR’s Labor Day editorial:
Every Labor Day, unions claim responsibility for much of modern America’s cushy living standards. They argue that the eight-hour workday and five-day workweek wouldn’t exist without their valiant efforts against the mighty industrialists. We are supposed to thank unions for minimum wages and workplace safety laws, too, and for banning the scourge of child labor. If not for organized labor, the story goes, we would essentially still be living in the Gilded Age.
The comforts of working in today’s U.S. economy are nothing to scoff at. But to attribute these improvements to labor unions — ignoring the underlying force beneath them all — is to engage in historical revisionism. At best, organized labor ratified improvements in living standards that were already enabled by rising productivity.
It is crucial to remember that mankind’s economic baseline is universal grinding poverty, with life sustained only by subsistence. All improvements in material welfare, from the First Agricultural Revolution onward, must be forged through investment and ingenuity. The Industrial Revolution, the era that unions decry, was an extraordinary advancement in human welfare. Daily economic life has only gotten better since, as free peoples have developed new ways to arrange capital and labor to yield greater wealth for all involved.
Begin with labor hours. Since the 19th century, the number of hours worked per lifetime has more than halved worldwide, while leisure time has increased fivefold. Weekly hours worked by men in the United States have also gradually declined, even as the unionization rate rose and then collapsed. The same is true of American seniors.
The now-standard workweek — five eight-hour days with a two-day weekend — was not a union creation. Rather, it was innovated by Henry Ford at his company’s strictly non-union Highland Park Plant. The productivity revelation that was the assembly line first permitted Ford to give workers one day off a week in 1922, then two days off in 1926. With mass production came the free time needed for mass consumption. . . .
Time and again, laws pushed by labor unions were enshrined only after economic growth made them feasible — and after such standards were already being adopted voluntarily. When businesses must compete for employees, they have every incentive to boost productivity and share the proceeds through higher wages and more attractive working conditions.
CODA
One more highlight from the Tedeschi Trucks Band show I recently saw — not from the headliner, but from Lukas Nelson, who opened. (Yes, this is Willie Nelson’s kid, one of many.) His act has gotten considerably tighter since the last time I saw him and his band a decade ago. I don’t care if it’s sappy — this song, which he played live, is just lovely.