One of the overdue lessons of 9/11 is that we can't afford to sneer at physical courage any more. The willingness of New York firemen, Special Forces troops in Afghanistan, and the passengers of Flight 93 to put their lives on the line has given us most of the bright spots we've had in the war against terror. We are learning, once again, that all that stands between us and the night of barbarism is the willingness of men to both risk their lives and take the awful responsibility of using lethal force in our defense.

The rediscovery of courage visibly upsets a large class of [i]bien pensants[/i] in our culture. Many of the elite molders of opinion in the U.S and Europe do not like or trust physical courage in men. They have spent decades training us to consider it regressive, consigning it to fantasy, sneering at it — trying to persuade us all that it's at best an adolescent or brute virtue, perhaps even a vice.

Like all virtues, courage thrives on social support. If we mock our would-be warriors, writing them off as brutes or rednecks or simpletons, we'll find courage in short supply when we need it. If we make the more subtle error of sponsoring courage only in uniformed men — cops, soldiers, firemen — we'll find that we have trouble growing the quantity or quality we need in a crisis. Worse: our brave men could come to see themselves apart from us, distrusted and despised by the very people for whom they risk their lives, and entitled to take their due when it is not freely given. More than one culture that made that mistake has fallen to its own guardians.

For multi-culti and po-mo types, male physical courage is suspect because it's psychologically linked to moral certitude — and moral certitude is a bad thing, nigh-indistinguishable from intolerance and bigotry. Men who believe in anything enough to fight for it are automatically suspect of would-be imperialism &mdash, unless, of course, they're tribesmen or Third Worlders, in which fanaticism is a praiseworthy sign of authenticity.

Elite opinions about male physical courage have also had more than a touch of class warfare about them. Every upper crust that is not directly a military caste — including our own — tends to dismiss physical courage as a trait of peasants and proles and the lesser orders, acceptable only when they know their place is to be guided by their betters.