The Glory of America: From Fort McHenry to New York City, Americans under fire have demonstrated the true character of our beloved country. (Cultural Currents).

Thus be it ever, when free men shall stand between their loved homes, and the war's desolation;

Blessed with victory and peace, may that heaven-rescued land, praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto -- in God is our trust.

These words are taken from the sadly neglected last verse of our national anthem. They were written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812 in an outburst of joy as their author, who was detained on a British ship that was laying siege to Fort McHenry, caught sight of our nation's flag waving in defiant triumph. Nearly two centuries would pass before America would again experience an assault upon our home soil by a foreign enemy.

Unlike Fort McHenry, Ground Zero in New York City is not the site of an American triumph. But the sight of New York City firemen raising a tattered flag over the rubble of the World Trade Center vividly illustrates the depth of America's reservoir of resolution, which springs from the ultimate source of our nation's greatness -- Almighty God, the Author of our Freedoms.

On Black Tuesday -- which may have been the worst day our nation has ever known -- hundreds of free men chose to place themselves "between their loved homes and the war's desolation." That number included the firefighters, rescue workers, and policemen who raced into the stricken Trade Towers to save those who were trapped inside.

Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, and the other heroes of United Flight 93 were also among those who answered the terrible summons to sacrifice. Having learned of the fate of three other hijacked planes on that terrible morning, the Heroes of Flight 93 staged a desperate counterattack against the beasts in human form who sought to use their jetliner as a weapon to kill hundreds more of their fellow Americans. Were it not for the righteous rage and selfless courage of the Americans aboard Flight 93, it is likely that either the White House or the Capitol building would be a charred and smoking ruin.

Those passengers were thrust into circumstances in which they had to make a spontaneous choice for heroism, and they were not found wanting -- because as Americans they were heirs to a legacy of boldness in the defense of freedom. In their sacrifice we were reminded anew that in the republic created by our Founding Fathers, it is the citizenry, not the government, that is ultimately responsible for the defense of our freedoms.

One of the most edifying scenes we witnessed in the aftermath of the September 11th atrocity was that of black New York residents, who had been endlessly admonished by their supposed "community leaders" to look upon police as their enemy, applauding the men in blue. In the wake of our national tragedy we learned that, despite the relentless efforts of those devoted to dividing our nation along lines of race and class, we have retained much of our shared identity as Americans. We are a people blessed to live under a constitutional system in which the government exists solely to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of the law-abiding. However corrupted that system has become, Americans instinctively understand and appreciate the self-evident truths that provide the foundation for our system of ordered liberty -- and we have the same instinctive appreciation for the willingness of honorable men to serve and protect the communities in which we exercise our liberties.

Liberty and Character

In the late 18th century, as the French Revolution pursued its bloody course, apologists for that experiment in mass terror insisted that wholesale slaughter and the destruction of ancient institutions were the price that had to be paid for progress. Responding to such apologists for state terrorism, British statesman Edmund Burke, who sympathized with the independence-minded American colonists and despised the French revolutionaries, penned a defiant defense of traditional values: "Thanks to our sullen resistance to innovation, thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers."

The same can be said of Americans today. Yes, there has been a determined assault upon the institutions and values that we hold most precious. Our federal government consistently ignores constitutional restraints upon its powers. Corrupt, power-hungry, and opportunistic individuals routinely practice the politics of plunder, buying votes that are paid for with other people's money. Those who preside over our entertainment media continue their relentless assault upon decency and moral discipline. And evil men bent on global control continue to undermine our independence as they bind down our nation with Lilliputian strands of "interdependence" -- such as United Nations treaties and conventions.

But despite all of this, our national character still bears the impress of the God-fearing men who wrested our independence from Britain and founded our republic. Some have feared that America's greatness was merely a product of the moral momentum we received from our founding era. But once again, Black Tuesday showed that the moral strength of our nation remains a renewable resource.

The continent upon which our republic was founded was richly blessed by heaven -- but not uniquely so. Other nations -- Russia and Brazil, for instance -- have been given vast and impressive allotments of natural wealth. What made possible America's dramatic and irresistible rise -- from a small collection of republics clinging to the eastern seaboard, to a continent-spanning colossus -- was a political and social order that allowed men to develop their creative capacity, mixing their God-given intellect and industry with the natural wealth with which our land has been so abundantly blessed.

But the most important blessing given to us was a generation of men who understood that the key to true greatness is humility. Washington, the greatest American, was acutely aware of his own weaknesses and his vulnerability to the temptations of power. This is why, according to several accounts, Washington would react to praise by leaving the room -- lest he be exposed to flattery. It is also why Washington's most valuable service in a lifetime of heroic acts was to surrender power after two terms as president and retire to his farm. There is no better example of the American concept of freedom, in which the practice of self-control replaces external controls imposed by government.

America's Founding Fathers, who had a sober understanding of the dangers of entrusting fallen men with power, were uniquely dedicated to creating a constitution that would limit the powers that they could exercise. They did not share the conceit of rulers throughout recorded history that they were somehow immune to the failings and flaws that characterized the subjects of government. Instead, they devised a system in which both the government and the citizens would be ruled by law.

It was Christian tradition that provided the topsoil in which the institutions of our republic took root. As Christian philosopher Luigi Civardi observes: "The Christian ruler must look upon his subject not as a servant, but as a brother, having the same rights before God, their common Father." It was this version of equality -- that is, equality before the "laws of Nature and of Nature's God" -- that was asserted in our Declaration of Independence. While many nations have paid homage to that vision of equality before the law, only ours was founded upon it. That fact alone is a sufficient explanation for our heritage of liberty and prosperity.

What We Take for Granted

It has been said that a free society depends upon uncompelled obedience to unenforceable moral rules. Even now, despite our nation's moral erosion, most Americans practice the moral discipline necessary to maintain a free society.

Our nation's economic resilience offers a compelling witness to the fact that each day, hundreds of millions of transactions take place. Most of them are acts of faith, made on the assumption that each party will act equitably and honorably and be bound by an agreement. While this is taken for granted by Americans, honorable, mutually beneficial commerce is a relative rarity in human history; indeed, it remains relatively uncommon even today in the so-called "developing world."

While Americans have cause for alarm regarding the accelerating campaign to create a police state, we still exercise freedoms that are the envy of the rest of the world. We can still write, speak, petition, and organize ourselves in defense of our freedoms. Americans can still keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, and their communities. Indeed, since the events of Black Tuesday, many Americans who had previously been ambivalent about the exercise of that right have become gun owners -- a fact that illustrates the abundant good sense of the American public.

Despite all of the efforts to strip-mine our society, our moral bedrock has not been removed. The Black Tuesday attack offered a core sample of our nation, through which we learned that both iron and gold remain abundant beneath the crust of our national character. A startling discovery at Ground Zero presented a potent reminder that He who presides over the destiny of nations is the ultimate source of our national strength and individual freedoms. As firefighters stoically cleared away the debris that had entombed hundreds of their comrades and thousands of other innocent victims at Ground Zero, they came across a striking reminder of the source of our national greatness: A perfectly symmetrical cross made from fragments of two steel girders. Although the World Trade Center had been reduced to rubble, there remained a sobering reminder that the glory of our beloved nation, like that of the full moon, is a mere reflection of something infinitely more glorious and majestic.

It is the glory and majesty of our Creator, Redeemer, and the Author of our Freedom that we celebrate in this season. Both the freedom that He has given us, and the nation with which He has blessed us, are worth fighting to preserve.