HAS EVERYTHING CHANGED?

As we are coming to grips with the events of September 11, we often hear that "everything has changed" that we have a new appreciation of what is important and what is not; that, after such horror, we have a clearer perception of right and wrong.

We have come face to face with willful evil, and its very existence has shocked us. Temporarily at least, moral relativism has lost much of its false appeal. And being "non-judgmental" in view of the atrocities appears plainly absurd.

People can and do act in evil ways. With the temptation to do evil comes the diabolically inspired hope that we become defiantly powerful when we follow the temptation. Beyond any immediate pleasure and short-term gain, it is the promise of acting with power that makes evil so tempting, especially "big" evil. Being able to consider other people not just mere mortals but mere things; being master over life and death; defying God Himself by destroying those made in His image, by the thousands-- that is the intoxication born of doing evil on a grand scale.

Fortunately, most of us shrink from it. It is true that we are constantly doing wrong on a small scale, out of weakness and for the sake of petty satisfaction; but mostly we are too much in awe of God to stand before Him in complete and willful rebellion and say, "I shall defy you!" And thank God that is so, because it is good and wise to fear God. It is also good and wise to know the difference between right and wrong and what the consequences of doing wrong are. The proper motivation, though, is to do right because that is what the children of God do and not because we fear punishment for doing wrong.

Given all this, we naively tend to consider truly evil acts unlikely. And if they occur, we don't expect them to affect us. Yet the genocidal persecutions and the wars incited by nihilistic regimes in the 20th century ought to convince us that this is a miscalculation.

And the terrorist attacks of recent years and of September 11 remind us that the nihilistic impulse to destroy has not disappeared. Sometimes this nihilism manifests itself in a godless ideology such as Naziism, Stalinism, Maoism, and down the line of murderous ideologies. And sometimes it hides under the pretense of "doing God's will"--as in the case of the terrorists who attacked us on September 11.

In all its manifestations the result is the same: the planned and willful killing of the innocent in order to "exterminate" and terrorize. That is so because the nihilist is intoxicated by power. Power exercised in defiance of God, power wrenched away from God--at least so he thinks. The ultimate manifestation of power is to kill. The nihilist would like to kill God, but God is not within his reach (though he may presumptuously declare God "dead"). Thus he must kill other human beings to feel his power. And they must be innocent human beings.

It is not always certain what comes first: nihilism leading to the killing of the innocent, or the killing of the innocent leading to a growing nihilism in the killer. For Hitler and Stalin it surely was the former; for many of those who killed following their orders it probably was the latter.

A natural catastrophe resulting in a death toll as high as that of the September 11 attacks would have shaken the nation, too, but it would not have invoked the deeply disturbing awareness of having seen a manifestation of true evil. The reason so many now say "everything has changed" is that on September 11 a virulent form of nihilism exploded in destructive fury--and we recognized its face. The instinctive response of millions of Americans was to fight this evil force in two ways: to reach out to God, the supreme power before which the nihilist must ultimately cower, and to rally to the defense of the country in patriotic fervor. And that is as it should be.

Thus, the cultural climate seems to be changing for the better. (Whether that beneficial change will last is another matter.) There is a new seriousness in the country. The wave of narcissistic self-involvement that has washed over us during the past decade seems to be receding. Senseless murder on such a massive scale and the realization of one's own vulnerability to such attacks do clarify the mind.

A small minority seems to lack the normal instinctive insight one ought to have in this situation. They have responded to the attack with distressing moral and intellectual cluelessness. Among the most jarring responses was Planned Parenthood's offer of free abortions to women affected by the attacks: In response to the mass murder of the innocent, more killing of the innocent, only this time in the sanctuary of the womb. Once again, the nihilistic mindset is at work.

The September 11 attacks amounted to a sudden and unexpected confrontation with the nihilistic mindset. For pro-lifers this was as shocking as for the rest of Americans, but it was not new. The evil of killing the innocents by the thousands each day has been keeping us awake for decades now. We have confronted this before, not in frighteningly spectacular images on television but in the private, agonized testimony of women who have had abortions and in the dry statistics documenting the fruits of a nihilistic view of humankind.

In the early years after the legalization of abortion on demand, pro-abortionists feigned ignorance (and in many instances they actually were quite ignorant). That was the time when we heard that "the products of conception" were "just tissue" and, moreover, no one knew when life began. These stupid lies we rarely hear now. Instead, we hear the bold and cold expression of the nihilistic mindset: So what, if science shows that the child in the womb is a human being. Under the law he is not a person, just a mere thing. So the mother has every right to sacrifice him on the altar of "choice."

America has reacted with horror and angry determination to the killing of the innocents on September 11. Is America now ready to end the killing of the innocents in the womb?