Get ready. Congress comes back into session after Labor Day, and the Fall campaign for mid-term elections is about to get noisy.

But people are sharper this time around. Soft slogans that worked in ‘08 have turned into blame in 2010, and blame doesn’t work as well as politicians think. Remember the promise of accountability?

The Barack Obama that most Hoosiers remember voting for can still be found on YouTube. He stands before a cheering Elkhart high school gymnasium in August 2008, tireless, aspirational, promising a new America of jobs and hope. “We can choose another future,” says the newcomer with the funny name. “So I ask you to join me.”

Today that view of Obama is harder to find in Indiana.

How times have changed.

In a recent television ad, an unflattering photo of Obama and Pelosi flashes while [Democratic Congressman Joe] Donnelly condemns “the Washington crowd.” This is basically a Democratic campaign slogan now: Don’t blame me for Obama and Pelosi. “I’m not one of them,” Donnelly told me when I caught up with him. “I’m one of us.”

This shift in perception — from Obama as political savior to Obama as creature of Washington — can be seen elsewhere. When Obama arrived in office in January ‘09, his Gallup approval rating stood at 68%, a high for a newly elected leader not seen since John Kennedy in 1961. Today Obama’s job approval has been hovering in the mid-40s, which means that at least 1 in 4 Americans has changed his or her mind. The plunge has been particularly dramatic among independents, whites and those under age 30. With midterm elections just nine weeks off, instead of the generational transformation some Democrats predicted after 2008, the President’s party teeters on the brink of a broad setback in November, including the possible loss of both houses of Congress. By a 10-point margin, people say they will vote for Republicans over Democrats in Congress, the largest such gap ever recorded by Gallup.

This is more than the usual behavior of a disgruntled electorate. The precipitous fall from favor of a president elected on symbol over substance has even been acknowledged by the White House.

In more confiding moments, aides admit that the peak of Obama’s popularity may have been inflated, a fleeting result of elation at the prospect of change and national pride in electing the first African-American President. As one White House aide puts it, “It was sort of fake.”

Sort of? Small comfort there.

But while these explanations may be valid, they are also incomplete. A sense of disappointment, bordering on betrayal, has been growing across the country, especially in moderate states like Indiana, where people now openly say they didn’t quite understand the President they voted for in 2008. The fear most often expressed is that Obama is taking the country somewhere they don’t want to go. “We bought what he said. He offered a lot of hope,” says Fred Ferlic, an Obama voter and orthopedic surgeon in South Bend who has since soured on his choice. Ferlic talks about the messy compromises in health care reform, his sense of an inhospitable business climate and the growth of government spending under Obama. “He’s trying to Europeanize us, and the Europeans are going the other way,” continues Ferlic, a former Democratic campaign donor who plans to vote Republican this year. “The entire American spirit is being broken.”

Time for truth? Why wasn’t this magazine asking the hard questions in the presidential campaign that would have helped voters clarify what the candidates stood for and what qualified them for the most powerful job in the world? Where were the leaders, in media and government, before now? In fact, where’s the leadership now?

At an event the other day in Chicago, a man confided to me that he was a lifelong liberal Democrat, proudly and ecstatically caught up in the Grant Park frenzy when Obama delivered his victory speech in ‘08, convinced that he would usher in a new era of utopia. And now, he said with great disappointment, some sadness and definite remorse, he knew it was all an illusion. “I would never vote for him now,” he admitted, and I knew this was difficult for the man to admit. “In fact, right now, I don’t care what party the candidates belong to, I’m just looking for good leaders.”

Amen, brother.

At least scientists are still tackling the question of God, though they seem self-assured that they’ve pinned it down.

We’re in another go ’round right now. Here’s Barron on Hawking on God.

Stephen Hawking, probably the best-known scientist in the world, has said, in a book to be published a week before the Pope’s visit to Britain, that the universe required no Creator…I confess that something in me tightens whenever I hear a scientist pontificating on issues that belong to the arena of philosophy or metaphysics. I will gladly listen to Stephen Hawking when he holds forth on matters of theoretical physics, but he’s as qualified to talk about philosophical and religious issues as any college freshman. There is a qualitative difference between the sciences, which speak of objects, forces, and phenomena within the observable universe, and philosophy or religion which speak of ultimate origins and final purposes. Science, as such, simply cannot adjudicate questions that lie outside of its proper purview—and this is precisely why scientists tend to make lots of silly statements when they attempt to philosophize.

Like this one:

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

To which Barron responds:

The classical philosophical tradition gives us an adage that is still hard to improve upon: ex nihilo nihil fit (from nothing comes nothing). Any teacher worth his salt would take a student to task if, in trying to explain why and how a given phenomenon occurred, the student were to say, “well, it just spontaneously happened.” Yet we are expected to be satisfied with precisely that explanation when it comes to the most pressing and fascinating question of all: why is there something rather than nothing?

Celebrity atheists and scientists keep coming up with the non-answer ‘because that’s the way it is.’

Apparently, the affirmation of God involves far too great a leap of faith, yet the assertion that the universe just popped into being is rationally compelling!

Carl Olson has a good pull quote about why science should stick with science.

The job of the physicist is to uncover the patterns in nature and try to fit them to simple mathematical schemes. The question of why there are patterns, and why such mathematical schemes are possible, lies outside the scope of physics, belonging to a subject known as metaphysics.

But one discovery these scientists have made is of a market, and that’s quantifiably enriching.

The U.S. bishops issued their annual Labor Day statement, written by Bishop William Murphy, Chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. Bottom line: whatever social contract existed with American workers in the past, we need to revisit it now.

With millions unemployed and U.S. workers experiencing tragedies such as mining deaths in West Virginia and the oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Americans “must seek to protect the life and dignity of each worker in a renewed and robust economy…”

Robust economy? That’s a tall order. There are unusually difficult times, the bishops conceded.

“America is undergoing a rare economic transformation, shedding jobs and testing safety nets as the nation searches for new ways to govern and grow our economy,” said Bishop Murphy. “Workers need a new ‘social contract.’” Bishop Murphy said that creating new jobs would require new investments, initiative and creativity in the economy. He also drew on the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, which call for placing the human person at the center of economic life…

“Workers need to have a real voice and effective protections in economic life,” said Bishop Murphy. “The market, the state, and civil society, unions and employers all have roles to play and they must be exercised in creative and fruitful interrelationships. Private action and public policies that strengthen families and reduce poverty are needed. New jobs with just wages and benefits must be created so that all workers can express their dignity through the dignity of work and are able to fulfill God’s call to us all to be co-creators. A new social contract, which begins by honoring work and workers, must be forged that ultimately focuses on the common good of the entire human family.”

New jobs…just wages and benefits….the dignity of work. Good message, bishops. Stay on it.

A few years ago, the Witherspoon Institute assembled essays from nearly a dozen outstanding scholars in a book that probably slipped under radar at the time: the meaning of Marriage; family state, market, & morals. In the Foreward, University of Chicago professor Jean Bethke Elshtain makes the keen point that “the terms of our public discourse seem poorly equipped to engage in a serious and nuanced discussion concerning the nature and purpose of marriage in society.” Then she asked: “Why is it so difficult to discuss marriage?”

Good question. Short answer is that we all have a stake in its outcome. But we’ve become all discombobulated in trying to talk about it…if we’re willing to try at all. She notes that

distinguised sociologist Robert Bellah, along with his colleagues, point out in the 1988 bestselling book Habis of the Heart that Americans have lost ways of talking about their commitments and what gives their lives meaning, except in and through a subjective kind of rights-talk….

This way of thinking and speaking tilts the debate from the outset. The benefits and burdens of traditional social relationships can be re-described only imperfectly in the language of individual choice. Therefore, anyone with doubts about same-sex marriage is often seen as “anti-choice,” or even bigoted, by those who uncritically adopt the contemporary terminology of the debate. Matters frequently stall out there.

Not for Don Feder. The Boston Herald columnist turned author and commentator is not among the uncritical relativists who accept cultural drift. He recently published the warning If Marriage Is Lost, We Lose Everything.  He opens with this declaration:

Memo to conservative defeatists: Surrender on gay marriage is surrender on marriage – which is surrender on the family and, ultimately, surrender on civilization.

No less.

This unwillingness to fight for the family, on which civilization depends, is another sign of the failure of modern conservatism. The right can win a thousand battles against big government and lose the war for America’s future, if it surrenders on marriage and the family.

America’s social traumas – illegitimacy, juvenile crime, drug abuse, female-headed-households – can all be traced back to the decline of the family, which started with the Great Society in the ’60s, accelerated with no-fault divorce in the ’70s, continued with the rise of cohabitation and reached its culmination with strange-sex marriage.

These are words not usually uttered in “polite company”, though Feder relies on the shock value of his message to jolt a complacent culture into awareness of what they are doing.

Voters of 30 states have amended their constitutions to prohibit recognition of pseudo-marriages, by an average vote of 67 percent. In 2008, in the most liberal state in the nation, 7 million Californians cast their ballots for the only definition of marriage that makes sense.

But the voters were overruled by activists and a complicit judge. Feder takes this trend to its ‘logical’ progression.

All they do is accelerate the decline of an institution as old as human society. How can we say yes to gay marriage and no to polygamy, group marriage, cohabitation, child brides and other lifestyle choices seeking official sanction?

Unfortunately, many conservative intellectuals have lost sight of a crucial fact: American exceptionalism rests on three pillars – faith, family and freedom. Remove any one, and the entire structure collapses…

Conservatives who don’t understand this understand nothing.

What do we understand and what are we willing to fight for?

Jean Bethke Elshtain concludes her Foreward and makes us consider….

In the summer of 2005 I was one of four speakers debating–in a friendly way and to a learned and (it must be said) relative affluent audience over the course of a week–the role of religion in public life in America. One of the speakers stated his own doubts about same-sex marriage and lamented the fact that we were not having the sort of debate about marriage as an institution we ought to be having. To my astonishment, he was booed by this respectable and mannered assembly. The hoots echoed across the audience. This left me, although I wasn’t the target myself, with a rather bad taste in my mouth and a genuine sadness about the inability of such well-educated people, who are influential and accomplished in their fields of endeavor, to acknowledge the need for such a debate. Maybe it is too late and we shall never have this much needed discussion. But perhaps not.

The time is now.

Her infamous outburst at a line judge at last year’s U.S. Open got a lot of attention. Her follow up act deserves more…

I first saw a short film feature about Serena Williams’ work with African children during Wimbledon coverage in June. The U.S. Open is taking place right now in New York, and though Serena can’t play because of a foot injury, she’s there supporting her sister Venus and making the rounds at one of her favorite venues. She was invited into the ESPN broadcast booth Friday night for commentary and conversation with John and Patrick McEnroe, and it was good stuff. She was interesting and funny and engaging on tennis, but compelling on life beyond it.

When one of the McEnroes asked Serena if she wanted to be considered the greatest woman player in tennis, she answered thoughtfully. ‘I don’t want to be considered the greatest woman tennis player…..but the player who helped others the most through work I’m able to do.’ She went on to reflect on the deeper meaning of success and celebrity, and said ‘Maybe the reason I’m good at tennis is to help others.’

Right on. Here’s how she’s doing it…

I often think and say to myself “what I can do to help others.” For years I have donated to so many different charities because I am a philanthropist at heart and I believe in the bible adage that says “giving is better than receiving.” When I give I truly feel excited and happy and my heart rejoices. Last November I went to Africa and saw things over there that were simply not fair. Kids could not afford to go to school because their parents could not afford to pay $1.00 a week I was mortified. What would I have done if I did not have my education? I would be in a bad situation. I would probably be a bad money manager and I would be heading for a dead end. I couldn’t see these young people just not attend school and damage their future; however I understood that their parents simply don’t have the money for school.

I thought to myself as I toured Africa “what could I do?” Then I thought to myself I have finally found my calling, I finally found my love. I love education, I love helping people, and I love seeing people succeed. I want this world to be a better place for tomorrow.

Giving back when you’ve been given much is…well…biblical.

I am one person and no I am not trying to save the world or trying to make world peace. I would be happy if I could just help one person. That would be more than enough for me… But if we all just help one person imagine the impact we could make.

This reminds me of someone I interviewed on radio in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, someone who sped down to the Gulf to do whatever he and his organization could to help meet such great need.

The Starfish Foundation. Way to save the world, one person at a time.

This medical specialty is intended to relieve extreme suffering in the final stages of advanced illness and give the dying patient personal care and human dignity. The right-to-die movement has seized on it as yet another inroad to sell its ideology that some lives aren’t worth living, and suffering is an unnecessary evil. And they’re doing it under the guise of ‘compassion.’

Just when a new study shows how acutely beneficial this care really is…

Adding palliative care early to patients’ standard regimens not only improves their quality of life but lengthens their life as well, according to a study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Unlike traditional hospice care, which is available to patients expected to live no more than six months and typically requires them to forgo curative treatment, palliative care can be offered in addition to regular care, and can start immediately after diagnosis…

Patients in the palliative-care group had a 50% lower depression rate, and that didn’t result from the use of antidepressant drugs, said Dr. Jennifer Temel, lead author of the study and an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“It’s clearly something about how the palliative-care clinicians were communicating with them and managing them that improved their mood,” she said.

The study may help physicians better understand what the medical specialty of palliative care can offer to patients who are struggling with intense physical and emotional suffering, Temel said.

The former Hemlock Society is using this to suggest to struggling patients a way out. The group renamed themselves ‘Compassion and Choices’ to soft-sell death. Their director recently wrote this letter to the New York Times.

Leven starts by giving kudos to the medical community for offering palliative care, and New York Governor David Paterson for signing into law legislation assuring that patients will be informed of their right to receive it. All the way to the end of the final sentence of the letter, Leven strikes the tone of advocacy for patients and their end of life care.

The law will result in the provision of more and earlier palliative care, which The New England Journal of Medicine study found greatly benefits patients, and more and earlier referrals to hospice, as well as greater respect for patient wishes.

Those last five words hold the key to their agenda. So by sponsoring and advocating for this end of life care, the former Hemlock Society is positioning itself to introduce assisted suicide as one of the options patients may choose, and helping them ask for it more often.

Every movement has its fringe, its lone rangers, who take an ideology to radical extremes out of fervor for its cause. No matter what the consequences. Or….to produce the exact consequences they perceive will advance an ideology. They may be the unfortunate exception. Or the manifestation of carrying an idea through, on its own course of logic, to its inevitable conclusion.

What happened Wednesday at the Discovery Channel headquarters was the surreal and hellish fury of a ‘radical environmentalist’ enraged….not at the world….but the people who inhabit it.

The gunman, identified as James Lee, was killed by police following four hours of negotiations but the hostages are all safe, said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger.

Manger said the suspect had “metalic canisters” strapped to his chest and back…

In a rambling manifesto on Lee’s website, believed to have been written by Lee, the writer rails against “disgusting human babies,” “parasitic infants,” and says people should “disassemble civilization.” The manifesto also calls on Discovery to “broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet.”

Furthermore…

“I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it,” the alleged manifesto reads, adding:

“Nothing is more important than saving … the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans.”

Shocked and saddened, two things came to mind rather quickly.

I recalled this MercatorNet article on the activist movement that really wants to save the planet by eliminating people.

And I appreciated again the fundamental message of Humanae Vitae: Once we go down the path of deciding that we can control the creation and elimination of human life, there will be no limit to the transgressions of the power over it.

The Obama administration promised to challenge the ruling last week forbidding use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. As soon as it came down, the scramble was on.

New guidelines were still being penned as lawyers headed into court trying to halt the changes.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — still reeling from a District Court ruling that blocked the use of federal funds for embryonic cell research — issued new guidance last night detailing how it will comply with the Court’s preliminary injunction.

Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, stunned the medical community when he issued the preliminary injunction against the federal funding saying it was in violation of a 1996 law that forbids the use of such funds when an embryo is destroyed or damaged.

As early as today, the Obama administration is set to appeal the August 23rd ruling.

They were already in the process as that news report came out.

The Obama administration urged a judge to allow federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research to continue while it appeals his decision banning government support for any activity using cells taken from human embryos.

The Justice Department today asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington to put on hold his decision pending an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. The government argued that Lamberth’s preliminary injunction changed the status quo and will itself cause irreparable harm to researchers, taxpayers and scientific progress.

Lifting the ban would allow the government to continue funneling tens of millions of dollars to scientists seeking cures for diseases such as Parkinson’s, spinal cord injuries, and genetic conditions.

Which is what this is all about, money and profit. While all these millions of dollars are funneled to controversial and unsuccessful embryonic stem cell research, grants have been denied or diverted from scientists working on ethical and successful adult stem cell research and therapies. That’s what produced the lawsuit in the first place, since federal law doesn’t permit federal funding of embryo-destructive research, and the Obama administration has skirted that law until now.

White House spokesman Reid Cherlin said in a statement that embryonic stem-cell research is a top priority for the administration. “We’re going to do everything possible to make sure to avoid the potentially catastrophic consequences of this injunction.”

That’s the kind of hyperbole surrounding the public opinion campaign marketing the idea that embryonic stem cell research is the only hope for sufferers of degenerative diseases and disabilities.

“The government is seeking a stay of the court’s injunction to prevent the irreparable harm and financial harm that could occur if these lifesaving research projects are forced to abruptly shut down,” Justice Department spokesperson Tracy Schmaler said in a statement. “The great potential for significant additional medical breakthroughs is at risk if this research is halted pending the appeals process.”

Lamberth’s injunction “causes irrevocable harm to the millions of extremely sick or injured people who stand to benefit from continuing research, as well as taxpayers who have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this research through public funding of projcts which will not be forced to shut down,” she said.

(presume that should have read “public funding of projects which will now be forced to shut down”)

At least this forces out details of the spending spree the government has been on with this controversial project.

In a declaration filed with the notice, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said the NIH had invested more than $546 million in the research since 2001 and that therefore the “anticipated financial loss to NIH and the taxpaying public is enormous and would include the hundreds of millions already spent on on interrupted projects and the administative costs of shutting down and restarting the NIH funding, Schmaler said.

The court order prevents the NIH from providing $54 million to 24 projects already underway that were expecting to be renewed by the end of September, Collins said….

In addition, $270 million that has already been spent on these grants “will have been wasted as investigators and labs can neither finish their curent projects nor pursue what has been learned,” the statement said.

Got that? Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars “wasted” on science that was unproven, unsuccessful and unlawful and unethical.

The court ruled that such research is likely to be in violation of federal law known as the “Dickey/Wicker Amendment” that prohibits federal funds from being used on research that involves the destruction of human embryos…

“If one step…of an ESC [embryonic stem cell] research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding,” the district court’s preliminary injunction order states.  “Because ESC research requires the derivation of ESCs, ESC research is research in which an embryo is destroyed.  Accordingly, the Court concludes that, by allowing federal funding of ESC research, the Guidelines are in violation of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.”

Such clarification from the Alliance Defense Fund helped make the case they presented to the D.C. Circuit Court, which led to this ruling.

“The American people should not be forced to pay for experiments – prohibited by federal law – that destroy human life,” says ADF Senior Legal Counsel Steven H. Aden.  “The court is simply enforcing an existing law passed by Congress that liberates Americans from paying for needless, destructive research on human embryos.

Some hundreds of millions of dollars, and countless human lives, later.

But the government is after the ruling and this is, for now, a temporary stay. Of execution, so to speak.

On Aug. 27, researchers inside the NIH who work with human embryonic stem cells were instructed to “initiate procedures to terminate these projects” in a memo from Michael Gottesman, deputy director for intramural research…

Better than terminating life. And better to give funding to the projects that are producing really promising and successful results.

The massive rally on the mall of Washington over the weekend has the media in a tangle. It was larger and more peaceful and more positive and less political than they expected, and this is all territory largely foreign to them. How to account for what they’re all calling ‘Glenn Beck’s rally’?

Though it was more about recovering personal virtue than replacing political parties, the CS Monitor suggests some politicians may have cause for concern.

Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington Saturday could not have been an encouraging sign for Democrats and the Obama administration.

The crowd was huge by any count – likely at least a couple hundred thousand people judging by aerial photos and the reported comments of some police officers – stretching from the Lincoln Memorial back to the Washington Monument.

And far from being a gathering of self-proclaimed rabble rousers carrying offensive signs insulting of President Obama, as has often been the case with “tea party” rallies spurred on by Mr. Beck, it was mostly a heartfelt and largely nonpartisan expression of civic concern, patriotism, and religious faith.

In other words, there may have been some Democrats in the crowd, but even they are likely not happy with the direction the country’s taking, according to recent polls – including the policies and programs pushed by the majority party in Congress and the White House.

And yet, this was a new Beck on a new mission, calling out Americans to change what’s wrong with the country by changing what’s wrong with themselves.

“We must get the poison of hatred out of us,” he told the crowd. “We must look to God and look to love. We must defend those we disagree with.”

This from a man who has called Obama “a racist” and likened Al Gore’s campaign against global climate change to “what Hitler did” in having scientists use eugenics to justify the Holocaust.

Which drives Beck’s critics nuts.

It’s driving them nuts partly because Beck is doing exactly what Obama did in 2007-2008, and doing it nearly as well. Most media don’t seem to be getting that, but in this NPR review of differing viewpoints on the rally, someone does.

At the widely read conservative webste HotAir.com, blogger “Allahpundit” thinks that “in a way, the rally … mirrored rallies held for then-candidate Barack Obama in 2007 and leading up to the election of 2008. Both this rally and many of Obama’s featured mesmerizing speakers, who chose to inspire audiences by rhetorically empowering them to take matters into their own hands.” But, Allahpundit adds, “while Beck’s rally emphasized belief in God, Obama’s generally emphasized himself as a savior of the American people.”

The comparison is both valid and important to understand. Obama was a masterful community organizer. The country has learned that skill from him and learned it well, and it’s working to galvanize individuals into a communal force for change.

That they rallied on this particular occasion where they did posed a problem, some say a huge offense.

The rally took place on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Beck is asking for a return to traditional American values, but the Reverend Al Sharpton accused him of trying to hijack King’s legacy.

“They want to disgrace this day. This is our day and we’re not giving it up,” said Sharpton.

With all due respect, I take issue with this claim. Dr. King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, took a prominent and active role in “Beck’s rally” at the site where her uncle delivered his impassioned rallying cry for the nation to ennoble itself and its citizens by recognizing the dignity of all humans. She has worked for years within the pro-life movement to promote King’s ideals and goals of realizing universal human rights across the spectrum, without exception. Her participation in Beck’s rally dignified it. Attacks like this disgrace the cause of unity King embodied.

“This is our day and we’re not giving it up”? What does this say? Dr. Martin Luther King said, passionately, that his dream is for a country that judges a person not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. It was an address about race as a highlight of the fundamental issue of human dignity. It dishonors Dr. King to narrowly and angrily claim that his rally belonged to one race and not the entire nation it sought to free from hatred and fear and rancor and division.

In Dr. King’s speech, just after he says

I have a dream that one day…right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

…he goes on to say what has far less been quoted:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

He was a Christian preacher. He quoted the Gospel, and called on the nation to recall and embrace the meaning of ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee.‘

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

Many people are trying to do that still…and again.

They call it “the Miracle of the San Jose Mine.” It is captivating.

This story could not have been scripted.

The collapse occurred at around at around 2 p.m., sending up a massive dust cloud…The day after the cave-in, civil defense officials had mustered a 40-man rescue crew to go in after the missing miners. But the mission nearly wrought another tragedy, as the rescuers confronted a cascade of falling rock and buckling walls. “Rocks, dust, darkness, heat,” said fire captain Rafael Gonzalez Perez. “It was impossible.”…

Unable to send in rescuers to fetch the miners, the government shifted to Plan B: Drilling down from the surface after the trapped men.

But after a couple of days, the effort was looking like a geological shot in the dark. Engineers were finding the maps of mine weren’t accurate. “The situation is very complex,” President Piñera said at the time. “The mine continues collapsing. It has a geologic fault. The mine is alive and that enormously obstructs rescue work.”

But that’s when the miracle happened.

A little after 6 a.m. last Sunday the probe broke through an underground chamber, a short distance from the miners’ main shelter. The 28-year-old drill operator, Eduardo Guerra, thought he felt some vibrations coming from below. Some engineers came over with stethoscopes and said they heard something, too. When Mr. Guerra pulled the probe out of the ground, a plastic bag had been attached to the drill tip with cable and rubber bands.

Inside the bag was a note painted in red: “We are well in the shelter the 33.”

It gives you chills. Did me, anyway.

They are affectionately, emotionally, known as “Los 33.”

The men have captured the attention of the world by surviving longer underground than all but a handful of mine accident victims.

And now that workers have crafted a delivery system to send supplies and receive communication from the trapped crew, we can see them and hear their personal accounts and we are locked in this tense human drama together. No matter where we are, we are all there.

One of Latin America’s most advanced economies, Chile has been a darling on Wall Street for its free-market ethos. Its capital, Santiago, is clean and modern, with a scaled-down version of the Chrysler Building. But despite the emergence of other industries, including finance and construction, mining remains the bedrock of the economy, accounting for the biggest share of exports and output.

But look at this…

The accident and rescue have allowed Chileans to get acquainted with people who are responsible for much of the country’s prosperity, but remain largely hidden from view due to the very nature of their work.

I read that line and thought ‘how many people this represents in the world.’

But now that they’re trapped underground, they are more visible to the world than ever. And what they show us about ourselves….or the capacity of the human spirit….is stunning.

When the miners broke out into a ragged chorus of the national anthem after the first telephone contact was made with them on Monday, it was as “as though we couldn’t believe that some countrymen are still that way, of that caliber and that timber,” wrote Daniel Mansuy, a professor of political philosophy, in the Santiago newspaper La Tercera.

It galvanized seemingly everyone.

Families at the site started hunkering down for a long haul, putting up tents or crude lean-tos made of garbage bags stretched above poles. Dubbed Campamento Esperanza, Camp Hope, the place took on a somewhat surreal air. The government started trucking in water and food, as well as sending counselors, cooks and kindergarten teachers. Shrines with votive candles and statues of baby-faced Saint Lorenzo, the patron saint of miners who is often decked out in a hard hat, sprang up alongside television satellite trucks and portalets…

They are relying as much on faith as on human endeavor now, in these desperate times.

Carolina Lobos, daughter of trapped miner and former football star Franklin Lobos, told reporters: “We have all changed because of this. Before it was not very common for people in my family to say ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’. Now I call my mum every night, I tell her how much I love her and send kisses. Now we are all valuing much more the people we have by our sides.”…

Meanwhile, a nation watches and does what it can to help. In this lost corner of the Atacama desert, one of the world’s driest spots, it is as if Chile had suddenly sprouted flags, tents and crude shrines to the 33 men. A spirit of solidarity has descended upon this rocky no-man’s land. Without a formal petition for aid or a website, volunteers throughout Chile arrive to bring support – moral, physical and monetary – to the families of the trapped miners.

“The country has shown a unity regardless of religion or social class. You see people arriving here just to volunteer, they have no relation at all to these families,” said Ivan Viveros Aranas, a Chilean policeman working at Camp Hope…

With experts ranging from Nasa doctors to submarine commanders, a team of 300 specialists co-ordinated by the Chilean government has spent the past week scrambling to design a programme of medicine, entertainment and exercise aimed at keeping the 33 men alive and stable for the duration of the rescue operation. Mañalich, one of the co-ordinators, admits he is often in virgin territory. “To my knowledge, this is a singular experience in human history.”

It’s still unfolding. And we’re in this inescapable drama together.