I’m tired of obligatory sayings, memorials, and mournings. We have a country to save.
Author’s Note: Normally, I publish three articles during the work week for paid subscribers. Saturday’s articles are free for all readers. Today, given the significance of the 9/11 anniversary, I feel it is only appropriate for this message to fall upon the widest distribution possible. This is written from the heart and is meant to impact you in a way that you keep fighting for what we believe in.
I’m a couple months shy of 42 years old. Still young, by most accounts, especially in the world of politics. But when a lot of you started following my work, I was 36. When you have a brain wired like a calculator, these exercises in age-pegging can become exhausting. Everyone has been talking about how it has been one-quarter of a century since 9/11. People who were my age on that day are now almost 67 years old. I am now at my halfway point between 17, when 9/11 went down, and 67. How can it be?
Recently, I’ve begun to ask questions related to purpose and mission that are common for people making their way through their forties. Not all of these questions are productive, but when I rattle everything around between my ears and sit with people who know me, it remains clear there is nowhere to go but through the obstacles that sit in our way as Americans. I am convinced far too many still don’t understand the gravity of what it is we Americans must understand in order to reform society in a way far bigger than how election results come to pass.
Sometimes, people become so fatigued by the constant strife of the political discourse in America that they resign themselves to simply getting by. Like I’ve said many times from the stage, you are very likely to have a nice life and “get by,” especially if you’re 50 or older, like most of my readers are. Your kids may, depending where they live, even share the same fortune. Your grandkids will not. The bill for our country’s corruption and mangled spiritual state is coming due, fast. I know many Republicans in my personal life who have thrown in the towel and stomped off from engaging at all.
The question becomes, “Is the fight worth the pain?”
If Republicans sustain losses in keeping with 92 years of midterm history this November, you’ll be able to cut the negativity with a knife. Going on X will be like crawling over broken glass. Many will suggest it represents a loss of everything it means to be American, a surrender of everything fought for, and a sign that the Republic is doomed for good. Now, not then, is the time to resolve yourself to “find your hill” and dig in.
Now let me share with you a story that is near and dear to my heart.
26 June 2010
Dear Son:
Glad to hear you are settled in at your new station. After a long trip like that it takes some time to readjust.
Exposure to some of the world’s great sh*tholes gives a man a new understanding of how much we Americans have and too frequently take for granted as well.
I had been in Afghanistan for only a few days when Dad penned that note, and received it in early July. For those of you unfamiliar with my story, when I shipped out to the combat zone, my father was dying of pancreatic cancer. Saying goodbye, knowing he still had time on the clock, remains the most significant pain in my life and as real to me today as the keys beneath my fingertips as I type this. Dad had recently found faith in Christ and despite his affliction, was a changed man – much different than the battle-hardened, three-tour Vietnam veteran who was impossible to please for so many years as I grew up.
Now he wanted to build me up. All the way until he succumbed to the disease in early September, he was deliberate in being there for me, offering me important advice, and conveying to me the kind of humor a man needs to get through the hardest trials in life.
Read the last line of this note to me again:
…how much we Americans have and too frequently take for granted as well…
Have you ever stopped and looked around at how easy our lives are? Even those of us aware of the many political and societal problems America has, including the considerable corruption of all three branches of government, should understand that we have more gifts, more blessings, than any other people on Earth. Rachel and I have done some international travel since we’ve been married – the kind in which people aren’t shooting rockets at you. At first, I struggled with figuring out what to do in some of these places. After all, how many pieces of bread can a man eat, or how many tiny coffees should one consume?
Then it struck me – the value of traveling abroad for an American should be to prompt one to take inventory of the many things our country has going for it. It should remind you why so many people have crossed oceans and impassable terrain to have a shot at one day becoming American. We have been to countries that were once powerful empires, but are now rotting crusts of what was once a majestic culture. The moods of the people reflect the decay, and all sense of national pride and identity appears erased in favor of the encroaching stench of global cosmopolitanism.
How should you feel about 9/11 twenty-five years after those events went down? That’s not for me to decide. For years, I’ve posted the same things everyone else has. What I was doing when I heard about it, how I felt, and marked every significant anniversary deliberately. 9/11 represents death and downfall, and one that swept into our country at the very outset of the 21st century. This was going to be our century fully, until then. That event, despite some of the resilience we saw for a short time, sent our country stumbling out of the gate and chasing ghosts all over the world. We sacrificed so much liberty in the name of security and invested so much blood and treasure in unwinnable conflicts that we are now on the ropes, with rival nations doing all they can to ensure Americans suffer under incompetent leadership so they can surpass us in all things. Make no mistake – China is on pace to surpass us as the top global superpower if we handle the next quarter-century like we did the last one.
The fool that Bongino addresses when we get into my X post about 9/11 can’t possibly understand the deeper meaning behind that event. He wasn’t even alive, and thanks to the clout afforded by social media, can’t help but inject idiocy into the public discourse. 9/11 did indeed represent death and downfall, but when you adjust your perspective, it also represented resurrection – if only for a while. The fragility of life, just like when you observe it from middle age, changed the way people engaged with the world and with one another. If only for a while.
The choice about how to respond to the historical reality of 9/11 is up to you. Should you choose to dwell in the death of 9/11, then it was indeed a funeral for the American future. It was the catalyst to many of the “Fourth Turning” events we’ve lived through as we struggled and failed to catch our footing. Should you choose to focus on the life-giving lessons of 9/11, then it serves as a reason for your mission.
If you choose to measure your purpose based on how many wins the Republican Party piles up, then you will always be disappointed. You will chart defeats as verdicts against your divine calling, and you will even be left feeling flat by the majorities elected that proceed to do nothing but disappoint, like a Senate unwilling to pass a piece of election-related legislation that three-quarters of Americans support.
Life, and your mission, are about much more than political outcomes. Political outcomes are downstream from the fundamental changes that must occur to make our society a healthy one capable of producing a functioning political system. Why are our politicians corrupt? Because the people themselves are corrupt. We have outsourced our thinking to Artificial Intelligence, don’t read up on candidates, allow lobbyists to select their own champions, and then refuse to attack the most critical pillars of the American nation with intensity.
Want to inspire Christians to take part in the affairs of the nation? Then start challenging the do-nothing pastors who encourage people to gossip about so-called end-times while avoiding the turmoil of the modern world entirely.
Want political change? Recruit faith-based candidates with resolve, guts, and skill to run for local offices, and start booting bureaucrats at the lowest levels which do not attract national attention and money. I helped get my friend David Cole, a reader of this newsletter, elected to a local position in Washington State.
Want to impact widespread change that reaches far beyond politics? Get engaged with those God has put in your lives. Proverbs 27:17 (NIV) says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” Take your views, convictions, and beliefs to those in your church (find one if you don’t have one), your men’s (or women’s) groups, sports clubs, hobby groups, and workplaces. Remember, not everyone will agree with you, and some will hate you. But they hated Jesus, too, and not even He was able to convince everyone to take His side. Who are you to expect everyone will side with you?
We seem to think that because everyone agrees with us on social media that we have arrived at some sort of consensus. But the sad reality of the modern world is that social media has allowed humanity to be more connected than ever before, with absolutely, positively, zero deep connections. We have lost touch with those we should be connected with, and I am just as guilty as everyone else here.
John 15:4 (NIV):
Remain in me (Jesus – parentheses mine), as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
In Numbers 13, those sent to scout the Promised Land came back and expressed fear and doubt over the giants living in the land. The only two who said they should trust God and go forward were Joshua and Caleb:
Numbers 13:30 (NIV):
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”
We live in a land occupied by the dark giants inhabiting our institutions, courts, schools, entertainment industries, and government – to name a few. Despite proclaiming great faith, half of this country believes we are not able to conquer, and by espousing belief in such, poisons the hearts and minds of those who wish for a better future.
What if you were the solution? You may think you’re only one little voice on a map, but if you truly believe the faith you espouse, then you should remember that your efforts are one break away from being greatly multiplied. I lived it myself. I was selling traffic control devices in Texas in 2020, and remember when my sales routine was ruined by the COVID-19 pandemic. My attitude sucked, but I was rightfully angry enough over the 2020 quasi election that I jumped right in there and put my analysis on paper for the court cases that were eventually thrown out. I distinctly remember asking General Flynn if I should be worried about signing my name to my affidavits, and if there would be reprisal for standing up.
If you know that man, you know what he said, and the rest is history. Nine months later, President Trump boosted my work, and in doing so, forced me out of my comfort zone.
Now, here comes the honesty. Since facing my mortal feelings and pondering my years, I’ve sought wise counsel. If we are to have lasting change, we will rebuild the very foundations of what it means to be freedom-loving Americans, and we will demonstrate it to those in our lives, social circles, professional settings, and even by the way we interact online. Political victories are fleeting; look how many people who were jubilant on November 5, 2024, have embraced death and negativity and walked away from a fight that once animated everything in their lives.
I remain a watchman on the wall. Yet if I do it for my own clout, or my own kingdom, I fail in what I was called to do. We, the people of character, faith, integrity, and conviction, must begin to take charge and assert ourselves boldly, not relying on circumstances we can’t control but on our impact on the people who believe in us and what we say.
Go to the 9/11 Museum in New York City. It will shake you to your core. While you’re in the Northeast, go to the Flight 93 memorial, which honors some of the bravest people to have ever lived, who sacrificed their lives to save others. Yet after 25 years of ceremonial online posts, I find myself believing more and more that the only way to honor 9/11 is to no longer focus on the death, but move ourselves to creating a lasting resurrection. We can certainly do it, as Caleb said – not because of our own strength but because of the convictions in our hearts and our reliance upon God.
It is the only way, because it had to be the only way.
Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes, and consider the two pennies thrown into the offering bin by the widow a substantial investment. He can likewise take your efforts, futile as you may think they are, and multiply them into something that can fundamentally resurrect the American way of life in a way no election outcomes can. Even the first miracle, the turning of water into wine, is meant to symbolize the taking of something ordinary (you) and an ensuing transportation into something outstanding.
Dad knew “how much we Americans have and too frequently take for granted.” He was the son of an Austro-Hungarian immigrant who was a rabid anti-communist. Grandpa Keshel instilled those values and a love of history in my father, and Dad passed all of that down to his kids. Four of the five of us remain grounded in reality and responsible citizenship. Because we are unlike any other nations, we must stand up and fight or lose what we love forever. Your grandchildren will grow up in a nation like the United Kingdom – a place where you can still go get a nice meal, and look at the sad faces of an increasingly secular people who know their country’s best days are in the distant past.
I will do my very best to continue to bring you actionable and relevant information, while pointing people to the light to become the best versions of who God made them to be. Thank you to all of you who have invested your time in helping sharpen me, and for those of you who find this newsletter worth reading – I am indebted to you.
Today is the day to get moving, because if 9/11 taught us anything, tomorrow is promised to no man.
Seth Keshel, MBA is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy and a retired Army Captain. He publishes Captain K’s Corner on Substack.
