I have always enjoyed a quiet fire, chatting with friends, faces glowing in the flickering flame. There is a cheerful solemnity to it, apparently, whether you burn a few logs or an entire department store. And everything, it seems, is now fuel for the fire.
The new kind of fire is a bit unsettling until you get into the mood. Homes and cars and banks seem a bit extravagant for use as firewood. Bibles and American flags, though more affordable, appear especially ill-suited. One half-expects the government to take an interest, to find some poor policeman whom it has not yet defunded and send him to investigate.
But then, there is no mystery to investigate. Everything is fuel for the fire because the fire is more important than what it consumes. Everything is fuel for the fire because, when the businesses and Bibles and flags have settled to ember and ash, something will rise to take their place.
The real mystery is this: Who and what will rise? Who and what, having tossed onto the flames so much that we love and honor, will build upon the ruins, and what will they honor?
It won’t be people that they honor, regardless of race, gender, or integrity. A few months ago, Mr. Kavanaugh became fuel for the fire, and now it will be Mrs. Barrett. Their lives, however innocent, are to be incinerated, as Clarence Thomas was incinerated before them, all for the thought-crime of respecting the Constitution.
It won’t be public safety they honor, because we can see in every police officer they abuse, every police station and emergency vehicle they destroy, every police confrontation they distort and exploit, that they regard law and order as an obstacle to their rise.
It won’t be America they honor, because they want nothing so much as to erode, distort, and finally erase our memory of those who laid the foundation for this place, and the beauty of much that has been built upon that foundation.
That beauty and even that foundation are fuel for the fire and this year’s virus provides a preview of the new foundation, where fearful obedience is honored and reasonable precaution is mocked, where rage is blessed and peace belittled, where government spills into every corner of our lives and independence in punished.
The fires in our cities show what we can expect from the party of fire — a party that has (astoundingly) coalesced around the death of children, the closing of our churches and businesses, the defamation of our nation, and the careless destruction of all who impede their power. Next in their string of firecrackers, our jobs were made fuel for the fire so that our electoral system might become fuel for the fire. I fear this might be the final blast, the fire that consumes what remains of America.
And against all this, the humble firemen. In St. Paul’s words, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good”, and we suddenly stand in urgent need of brave souls who will not only love what God loves but hate what he hates. The evil is upon us and the fact that it hates our nation tells us much about America. If we don’t stand now, if we don’t fight the arsonists and defend what is good, let us not speak of God’s love.