God Bless America

“God is back. He’s busting out all over. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote these words more than 16 years ago just after the attack on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001.

“In the past 17 days,” Noonan continued, “since the big terrible thing, our country has, unconsciously but quite clearly, chosen a new national anthem. It is ‘God Bless America,’ the song everyone sang in the days after the blasts to show they loved their country.

“It’s what they sang on television, it’s what kids sang in school, it’s what families sang in New York at 7 p.m. the Friday after the atrocity when we all went outside with our candles and stood together in little groups in front of big apartment buildings. A friend of mine told me you could hear it on Park Avenue from uptown to downtown, the soft choruses wafting from block to block.

“You know why I think everyone went to Irving Berlin’s old song, without really thinking, as their anthem for our country? Because of the first word, ‘God.’”

It made us feel safer. And we took comfort in it.

State of the Union

Last week, when President Donald Trump gave his ambitious and stirring state of the union address before Congress, my hopes rose. Regrettably, most Democrats chose to sulk throughout Trump’s address, even during his recognition of Caryn Owens’ heart breaking loss of her husband, U.S. Naval Special operator Senior chief William “Ryan” Owens.

They also shunned the introduction of the delightful Denisha Merriweather, who, by overcoming huge obstacles, was the first in her family to graduate high school and college and is on track to get her masters degree in social work.

If Democrats want role models in their own party, they should turn to former President, Franklyn D. Roosevelt, who’s response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was right to the point. I was twelve, but I remember it.

He said, in part, “With confidence in our armed forces-with the unending determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God.”

And he delivered. His alliance with Great Britain’s, Winston Churchill and Russia’s, Joseph Stalin, ended the war in less than five years, an enormous achievement.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Back to Peggy Noonan. Her column on 9/11 included a touching reference to Alcoholics Anonymous.

“Then a friend came over,” Noonan wrote, “and we talked about the speech she was going to make at a memorial for a friend of hers who’d died at Cantor Fitzgerald (a securities firm in the Twin Towers). He was a friend from her AA group.

“I asked her what she wanted to say, and she said she wanted to tell the rest of the group that the friend they’d lost had always arrived everywhere early. He was early at AA meetings, and he used to greet the newcomers at the back of the room.

“On Sept. 11 he was early at work. After that he probably got early to heaven, where he was probably greeted by Bill W., the great man who was one of the founders of AA. She wanted everyone to know that their friend and Bill W. probably had a great conversation about how meetings are held these days, and about the importance of having greeters in the back for new arrivals and first-timers.

“I wasn’t surprised by what she said,” Noonan continued, “not only because I know her faith but because some little taboo or self-editing or reticence has lifted in the past few weeks. People are feeling a little less self-conscious about integrating their actual thoughts about their faith into the actual statements they make to friends and family, to coworkers and colleagues.”

Bush’s Speech

Commenting on President George W. Bush’s speech to Congress and the country, based on her own reaction and those of friends, Noonan said, “It seemed to me a God-touched moment and a God-touched speech, by which I mean, in part, that little miracles surrounded it.

“A president and staff who had no time to produce something fine and lasting, produced it. A president who at his strongest moments had betrayed a certain ‘I’m kinda surprised to be here.

“Mr. Bush found his voice, just at the moment when people tended to lose theirs. He didn’t rely on bromides or high flights or boilerplate; he gave it to you plain and hard with the common words of a common man. He said, ‘We will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail.

“On Sunday,” Noonan continued, “I watched Oprah Winfrey at the wonderful Spirit of New York special at Yankee stadium. She prayed aloud–a lot of people prayed aloud–and Bette Midler made everyone feel better just by singing.

“ I was thinking the other day: In 1964, Time Magazine famously headlined ‘God Is Dead.” I hope now, at the very highest reaches of that great magazine, they do a cover that says ‘God Is Back.’”

Peggy Noonan writes a column for the Wall Street Journal on Saturdays.