In Memory of A Bygone Time

In remembrance of the abomination we now call "nine-eleven," I'd like to bring your attention to a previous time, a time of comfort, of happiness, of prosperity.

It is memorialized here in this wonderful 1998 article by Peggy Noonan.

But even in 1998 she wasn't speaking of happy times forever. Money grafs:

It has been said that when an idea's time has come a lot of people are likely to get it at the same time. In the same way, when something begins to flicker out there in the cosmos a number of people, a small group at first, begin to pick up the signals. They start to see what's coming....

Something's up. And deep down, where the body meets the soul, we are fearful. We fear, down so deep it hasn't even risen to the point of articulation, that with all our comforts and amusements, with all our toys and bells and whistles . . . we wonder if what we really have is . . . a first-class stateroom on the Titanic. Everything's wonderful, but a world is ending and we sense it. ....

Three billion men, and it takes only half a dozen bright and evil ones to harness and deploy.

What are the odds it will happen?

Read it.

And weep.