Lest We Forget: September 11, 2001

An Excerpt From "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear"
                                -- Wendell Berry, Orion Magazine 2001


In the aftermath of the horror of September 11, 2001, Kentucky farmer, author, environmentalist and activist wrote a stirring series of three essays, published as In the Presence of Fear. 

Berry's clear grasp of what had happened and what needed to be done was a clear indictment of the Bush administration's response.  Unfortunately, we have now seen that a change in administration did not change the fundamental nature of the plight we're in.  Fourteen years later, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism, with it's on-going march of an unfettered corporate capitalism bolstered by military power and the national security state, makes Berry's words even more relevant.

Here is an excerpt from the first essay.  It can be found in it's entirety at: https://orionmagazine.org/article/thoughts-in-the-presence-of-fear/

Wendell Berry

We citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labor of self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize our mistakes…

This is why the substitution of rhetoric for thought, always a temptation in a national crisis, must be resisted by officials and citizens alike…

The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence…

What leads to peace is not violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and active state of being… The key to peaceableness is continuous practice…