I was flipping channels tonight and happened to stop one tuner of my HD TiVo on Charlie Rose on PBS, and the other tuner on a speech by Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. Charlie's guest was a New York Times reporter or columnist (is there a difference?) who was prattling on about the import of tomorrow's speech by President Bush at the UN. Bill was recounting his memories of 9/11, and of a conversation that he had that day with Bill Bennett. Bill Kristol remembers wondering whether 9/11 would be a seminal moment in American history or not; he remembers Bill Bennett saying that he believed that it would be.

It struck me that part of America's success is so obvious as to be easily overlooked. We have a society that has agreed to play by the rules. What does that mean? It means that we drive on the right side of the road, we pay taxes, we send our kids to school. Most of us do the normal everyday things that we all take for granted in life. That is the American dream writ large: if you go to school, get pretty good grades, go to college, get pretty good grades, get married after high school (better still, after college, but not too much after), get a job, stay married, stay out of trouble, stay in the job and do the work--you'll have a pretty good life. You may not have a life like a trust fund baby or a stock options millionaire, but you'll be able to afford a lifestyle that would amaze people of not so many decades ago. If you believe in God, do good works in his name, and pass that along to your children, you will be happier still, and will leave a legacy worth leaving.

This great "compact with Americans" works, will continue to work, and is worth defending. It is the legacy that we can leave our children. You can write the life plan expressed in the preceding paragraph down and give it to your children. If they follow it, they'll have a great life too.

We are facing groups of people who do not value normalcy, or reason, or who want to play by the rules as we know them. Their society, if it can be called that, takes offense at nonsense. The American observer sees that it has no humor, it appears to take little joy in life, it does not strive to make a better, safer world for families, children and society. It attacks unbelievers who are real, and who are imagined, to restore the world to a state of anarchy. Anarchy by any definition that an American observer would apply.

Arrayed against these forces of anarchy are a relatively small group of men and women from some of the "first world nations" who have suffered many losses in wars over the centuries. In this country, we have fought wars to free ourselves from colonial rule, to put down pirates, to end slavery, to end tyranny, and to free the oppressed. Most Americans hold certain truths to be self evident, and believe that those truths are worth protecting against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

I honor those who have taken on the burden of defending America. American society is the greatest promise that has ever been made, and kept, in the history of mankind. Most Americans are religious, not jihadists, but are peaceful in their worship. If an unbelieving, amnesiac American were to fall into the clutches of a group of Southern Baptists (or any traditional denomination in the country) tomorrow, he or she would probably only have to contend with the consequences of an overdose of fried chicken and of gatherings of concerned families and friends who offered help and prayers. No sabers would be brandished.

Christianity has had a reformation. Western civilization endured its dark ages. Parts of Islam wants to return mankind to a kind of dark age, and rejects reformation and reason at the point of a gun, if not a nuclear weapon or other WMD. Those who follow Islam must learn that the comments that the Pope made are words, not weapons. Those words he quoted from centuries past show how far parts of Islam need to come to join the 21st century. The moderate followers of Islam must speak up, and embrace debate and reform, or embrace anarchy. Those who have found a good and just society based on a simple set of rules and a wonderful promise of a vibrant future will not sit still and watch anarchy destroy their hard won society. They will defend it, hard as it will be, terrible as the price may be. America has always done so, and will do so now.

The President of Iran speaks at the UN tomorrow, in a body formed by Roosevelt, Churchill and other great men at the end of WWII in the hope that war could be averted by the concerted action of nations whose societies chose to "live by the rules". He will do well to pay more attention to the thriving metropolis that surrounds the UN, and the vibrant life and hope seen in the faces of its citizens, than the "light that surrounds him" as he speaks to the General Assembly. The people of Iran, and all people not mislead by leaders drunk with power, desire the promise fulfilled of the "compact with America", and wonder why their leaders don't strive to brink it to their lands, peacefully, to join with the rest of the world in the pursuit of happiness. President Bush understands the promise of freedom, of free markets, and how those simple elements not only created America, but restored prosperity to victor and vanquished alike after WWII. We can only hope that every leader will take the same message home after tomorrow's sessions at the General Assembly.