Three days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush said in a speech, “…[A]dversity introduces us to ourselves.”
“America is a nation full of good fortune,” he said, “with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom’s home and defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.”
Freedom is America’s precious treasure―and never too far from being lost. Acts of war and terrorism can undermine a nation and its values; but as Russian thinker Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously said, “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.”
On Independence Day 2016, it can be consoling to remember that character is the first defense against the loss of freedom, and that each of us still has the power to make it a force for good. Character under pressure built America, brought us through 240 years, and can keep our country “freedom’s home and defender”—if we want it to.
