I’m sitting in a coffee shop on the ground floor of the Empire State building. It’s about 10 a.m. on September 11th. I’m reading the Sermon on the Mount. The man at the table next to me is reading the Koran.
My phone rings and I answer. It’s a professor who teaches courses in clinical psychology. He called to tell me he was coming forward. His course had been taken away from him – the one in which he teaches aspiring psychologists how to treat depression. They weren’t offended when he said that women are more prone to depression. That’s the truth and there’s no denying it. But he talked about the biological bases for those differences. The women’s studies department demanded that he be removed from teaching the course. The feminist these days are a lot like rapists. They get what they want by coercion, not persuasion.
And so they had their way with him.
Now he says he wants to write a book about how ideology is destroying the social sciences. A book about how people’s lives are being destroyed by those who will not permit reasoned debate. He told me he doesn’t have tenure. But he doesn’t care. He just wants to help people.
I sit back down after grabbing another cup of coffee. A young man approaches and asks “Would I be correct to assume your name is Mike Adams?” I told him he was correct. He talked about his time in Afghanistan. He said the columns I wrote introduced a note of levity while he was serving in the war. But they also revealed truths he considered timeless and important. He thanked me for standing up and fighting. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I’ve never served abroad. I’ve taken the easy way out. What a true patriot he is.
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And he was just so humble.
He came back from the battlefield to study at The King’s College in New York City. He is waiting to see what God has in store for him next. I said, “Me too. I’m going to send my kids to King’s.” If not, I’ll just have to go myself and meet my children there.
I check my messages and I hear the voice of a young woman. She reminds me that CampusReform.org will launch in a few days. She asks if I will write about it in my column. I think back to the days when I was stepping out alone. Or at least it seemed that way. No one really believed what I was saying was true. And it wasn’t. Things were much worse but I was learning, too.
The kids at the Leadership Institute are my hope and, in a sense, my prism into the future.
It’s tough to know sometimes whether we are supposed to stand and fight in a place where we are surrounded by those who seek to destroy us by destroying what we believe. Or whether we should surround ourselves with like-minded individuals who will tell us what we want to hear. But there’s no real chance of destroying what we believe.
The phone rings again. It’s a reporter from World magazine. He tells me to come up to the fifteenth floor. They’ll wire me up to the microphone before I head to the stage for the interview. He tells me there’s no script. But, then, he reminds me that my words will be reprinted in the nation’s fourth largest magazine. I feel like I should be nervous and wonder why I’m not.
I’m not sure why they’ve asked me for an interview and I’m sure my critics agree that it is strange.
I remember the first time I was wired to a microphone. I couldn’t hold it while I was playing my guitar. And I didn’t sing so I used it to order whiskey. It felt good for awhile and it helped me to ignore things I wanted to ignore. But the next day was always very different.
Sometimes the guys I used to play with ask me when I’m coming back. But I’m not coming back.
I’m about to leave a coffee shop on the ground floor of the Empire State building. It’s about 11 a.m. on September 11th. I just finished reading the Sermon on the Mount. The man at the table next to me is reading the Koran.
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