In Rome’s Defense As a professional historian, it is my job to report the events that move the world, and their causes.  From the perspective of the ages, the magnitude of today's events is staggering.  Both of the nation's capitols were attacked.  I say "both," because New York City may be considered the *spiritual* capitol of America.  The World Trade Center was brought down because of what it stands for -- a society founded on freedom, rights, individual liberty, and capitalism.  In a deeper sense, however, these skyscrapers stood to symbolize the very spirit of Western man since the Renaissance -- the choice to build, to explore, to discover, to create.  The existence of the World Trade Center symbolized the same aspect of the human spirit that enabled us to land men on the moon, 250000 miles away.  There is a fire within man's nature which asks, "How high can I go?" and rebels against the concept of a limitation.  It is this spirit that the attack on New York's skyscrapers represented.  Thus, today's act of war, while far less tangibly devastating than the horrors of fascism and communism earlier this century, has as a single and sudden event an much greater metaphysical significance. Not since the fall of Rome in 410 A.D., sacked and plundered by barbarian hordes, has a single historical event occurred representing so fundamental an assault on the ideas that make human civilization possible. The barbarians landed in New York today.  The question is, what can we do to prevent Rome from falling a second time? The answer to this question depends on recognizing that some societies do, in fact, support human life, while others destroy it.  People do not flee on boats from Miami to get to Cuba.  The boats come one way -- fleeing from societies opposed to human life to a country that upholds the spirit of the best within man. We need to abandon the current deadly ideology that claims all societies are equal.  That the American system of freedom, individualism, and capitalism is merely our cultural bias, but Chinese communism is just as good "for them," and Middle Eastern fundamentalism is just "their way," and who are we to say our way is better? To which I answer, in the name of the court of history: we are Americans! There is no reason in principle why the whole world cannot enjoy the same liberties and wealth that we do here in America.  But freedom cannot exist within a Chinese gulag, wealth cannot be created in societies that sponsor terrorism, and skyscrapers cannot be built by praying to Allah five times a day.  These societies are not good for anybody.  Not for their inhabitants, for they live in repression.  Not for their believers, for they believe in lies constituting treason against the creativity of man's limitless spirit.  And certainly, as today has demonstrated, not for America and western civilization.  It makes no difference in principle which two-bit country was supporting today's terrorists.  Was it Afghanistan?  If so, will terrorism be stopped by only waging war with them?  Or are Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Palestine also houses of terrorists, with the same beliefs that underlie terrorism?  Make no mistake, our enemy is not just Bin Laden, but the entire belief system of the Arab world that makes a terrorist like Bin Laden possible.  When we allow that system and ours to co-exist together on the same planet, the result is what we witnessed today. I bring up these points as our nation prepares for war.  Because the war that needs to be fought in the Middle East means a lot of civilians over there losing their lives.  As we witness the absence of two of the world's tallest skycrapers from the New York's skyline, it becomes clear that it is either their civilians killed, or ours.  There is no such thing as war against a country that is only waged against its leaders.  Americans need to have the moral certainty that the use of massive retaliatory force is required to defend the very fabric of our civilization against the barbarians.  For if we do not defend our culture, then a new Dark Ages will arrive soon with the fall of New York. But this doesn't have to happen, not if America stands up for what is right -- for the spread of our concepts of freedom, individual rights, and capitalism on a global scale.  So much progress has been made already!  The fall of the Berlin Wall, barely a decade ago, is poignant testimony within our own lifetime of how dark areas of the world are beginning to be illumined by the ideas of liberty and individualism.  The destructive idea of socialism, for which "society" has rights but individuals do not, was only a generation ago championed around the world as a crusade to utopia.  Today, socialism is almost everywhere in retreat, not just physically but *morally*, and the spirit of capitalism -- of incentive, entrepreneurship, and profit -- begins to rise across the globe.  These are encouraging developments that, if fostered, point to better times ahead. So in the midst of our sadness and anger over today's events, let us not lose sight of the big picture.  Yes, war will be a necessary evil in order to now defend our great nation.  But in the long-term, across the epochs of history, our victory will occur when someday American ideals have spread so far and wide that the people of the Middle East can enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in skyscrapers built along the West Bank.