I just finished Bill Whittle’s latest essay, Shards.  Shards was written from the heart to each of us.  If you are wondering what you can do in the face of overwhelming evil, you may find the answer there.  If you feel that all is lost, you may find some inspiration and hope there.

Bill begins with this:

There’s not a person reading these words who, raised with an understanding that Freedom is not the default state of man but rather a force field against tyranny that must be maintained every day through effort and hard work – there’s not one among you that does not look out into the free land that was handed to us by our ancestors with dismay, and the same sense of unfocused dread that a thousand generations felt as the sun dipped ever lower, day by day – because this time, perhaps, it will not climb again.

Then there is this powerful quote – that I don’t remember ever reading before, and that struck my soul today – spoken by Winston Churchill, before Parliament in 1940:

I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man… And I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.

As Bill says, Churchill spoke these words as

He faced the ruin of his army on the beaches of Dunkirk, and stood there, gazing across the English Channel, knowing that now the fleets of aircraft that outnumbered his Island Home’s defenses by five to one would be coming… and behind them the coal-scuttle helmets aboard landing barges, and then the murdering would begin in earnest. . . . . . . .And so, every day, he woke up to face the ruin of everything he loved and decided, every day, that he would fight them. And he did.

The heroes of history were ordinary men and women until they were faced with extraordinary circumstances.  We who stand here today are not different than our grandfathers, and great great grandfathers.

As Bill says,

That anonymous Warrior Angel may be anyone. Maybe it’s you. Who knows? It could even be me ……
And Anduril reminds me that there is no Greatest Generation. There is no sword broken; there is no Golden Age lost and locked in the past. There are only shards lying before us, waiting for us to gather the will to reforge and wield them. It’s a decision, not a doom or a destiny, and we have to make it every day.

Read this essay, Shards
You will be stronger.
It is very good that Bill has returned to writing.  I highly recommend his book, Silent America: Essays from a Democracy at War.  The essays from Silent America were originally written for his blog, Eject! Eject! Eject!  and are still available, free, on the blog.