Post-Benghazi Post-Boston Americans, Take Note:

My friend Elan reminds us of this, by Caroline Glick -- writing ten years ago on September 30, 2003:

 

The truth is that the heroism of Israelis -- from our soldiers in the field to Egged bus drivers who have personally thrown bombers from their buses, to waiters who have wrestled bombers to the ground and border policemen who have sacrificed their lives to keep suicide bombers away from civilians at a bus stop -- is unmatched by that of any nation in the world. The problem isn't our resilience; it is our lack of outrage. We have gotten used to being killed." 

 

Elan warily notes from this end of the decade that we have "learned to accept rockets on civilians, the murder of an ambassador, the whirr of centrifuges, and an inept commander-in-chief golfing through the apocalypse."

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Elan is -- characteristically -- correct. It's just the way human beings are. Subject them to a steady diet of outrages and, sooner or later, a kind of spiritual sluggishness or moral malaise, what the theologians call "acedia" -- a torpor of the soul -- sets in. Call it, in plain English, outrage overload -- a piling-on of more outrages than one can handle. When a whole society is afflicted with acedia, those few holdouts who continue to feel outraged are dismissed as cranks or even hysterics. My guess is that we're going to see a lot more of this moral fatigue in the next three years -- as the Obama-caused outrages multiply and proliferate. The Left, surely, is depending on -- and looking forward to -- this happening, because the ensuing apathy will only make their job easier. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, when acedia sets in, vigilance is the first thing to go. From the standpoint of those who wish to deprive us of our liberties, nothing could be better.