Steyn asks the Big Q.

I’m not sure precisely when the 9/11 era – “The Day That Everything Changed” – became The Day That Everything Changed Back To The Way It Was Before Only Even Nuttier And More Suicidal. But, a quarter-century on, the Taliban are back running Afghanistan, but with more territory than they ever had before; an al-Qaeda guy has been installed with American approval as strongman of Syria; the Christian community in Iraq was extinguished on America’s watch; the Libyan intervention delivered the North African ports closest to Europe into the hands of Isis, with direct consequences for Continental demographics; and – just to confirm the “war on terror” was utterly lost and always misconceived – a Shia Twelver from Uganda who believes in everything the guys we’re droning in Tehran believe is Giuliani’s successor as Mayor of New York City and the new kingmaker of the Democrat Party. If the United States Government had been working for the other side all along, what exactly would it have done differently?

Oh, I’m afraid we all know the answer to that one, only too well: nothing whatsoever.

So, even before the dispiriting observances of the coming week, it’s hard to recall the visceral emotion that in those first weeks and months after September 11th engaged almost every area of American life. With one striking exception, that is. On the eve of the Second World War Irving Berlin’s gift to the nation was “God Bless America”. Across the ocean Hugh Charles and Ross Parker did the same with “There’ll Always Be an England”. But this new war found American songwriters sitting on their hands, the very silence serving as a kind of recessional, for pop culture’s retreat from any aspect of the subject. The short history of American popular music’s contribution to national resolve can be told in two photographs of blockbuster pop stars in military uniform: on the one hand, Glenn Miller, shot down over the English Channel while leading the US Army-Air Force Band, and, on the other, Madonna, who on her world tour a few years back cavorted on stage in a burqa and, when she disrobed, as she inevitably does, was revealed to be wearing army uniform underneath. This was in order to make the highly original point that the Taliban and the Bush Administration were both equally oppressive. Truly, the herd mentality of celebrity “dissent” is indestructible. Would it kill ’em once in a while to dissent from their dissent and try something other than the dreary conformity of celeb cardboard courage?

As for less tediously obvious provocations, as I wrote on the first anniversary of 9/11, “Bruce Springsteen’s blurry equivalist mope of a 9/11 album, The Rising, is a classic example of how even a supposed ‘blue-collar’ icon can’t bring himself to want America to win.”

Well, I mean, y’know, SPRINGSTEIN. If there was ever a bigger phony, a more obnoxiously objectionable Limousine Liberal, than that jerkweed, I’m sure I haven’t heard of him/her/it.

The article veers off in a most unexpected direction from there, which ultimately proves to be even more dispiriting. Which is, y’know, SAYING something.

Update! Lest you think there’s nothing more substantive to this one than le doom et le gloom, hey, it’s Mark Steyn, fercripessake.

Then they rushed the hijackers. Mrs Jefferson kept the line open. A few minutes later, the plane crashed, not at Camp David or the White House or the Capitol, but in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Jeremy Glick knew that he would never see his three-month-old daughter again, Todd Beamer that he would never know the baby his wife was carrying. But both men understood that they could play their part in preserving a civilization for their children to grow up in. By being willing to sacrifice themselves, the citizen-soldiers of Flight 93 saved thousands, including perhaps the terrorists’ intended target – the highest officeholders in the republic. Flight 93 was the decisive event of September 11th. As Jim Bennett of UPI wrote:

The Era of Osama lasted about an hour and half or so, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty.

And, for a while, that remained true: as I wrote at the time, “No one will ever again hijack an American airliner with box cutters, or, I’d wager, with anything else — not because of idiotic federal regulations, but because of the example of Todd Beamer and his ad hoc platoon.” Faced with a new and unprecedented form of terror, the latest American technology (cellphones) combined with the oldest American virtue (self-reliance) and stopped it in its tracks in just 90 minutes. When the Air France passengers jumped the Shoebomber and the Delta passengers the Pantybomber, they were acting in accordance not with FAA regulations but with Flight 93 rules.

But the years go by…

I’m not a big Neil Young fan. If I never heard the fey, dopey “Harvest Moon” or “Heart Of Gold” ever again, it wouldn’t be too soon. But I’m glad he wrote this song. For serious Young admirers, and the rock biz in general, it was more problematic, even a mere three months after 9/11. The venerable rock critic Dave Marsh said Young’s politics had “all been downhill since ‘Ohio'” – his song about the Kent State shootings – and dismissed “Let’s Roll” as “jingoistic”. But, if it takes a Canadian rocker to purvey a bit of Yank jingoism, let’s have more of it.

Amen to that, Mark old fellow.