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We typically use
this space to discuss court decisions or legal trends. But like
everyone else, our thoughts have been directed elsewhere since
September 11. The world really did change that day and it
continues to change as the political, economic, and emotional
aftershocks of that unimaginable and unimagined attack register in
ways we are still trying to understand.
Economists are
debating the long- and short-term impact on consumer confidence
and economic growth. A recession that some thought we
might avoid now seems inevitable. An economy built on
mobility has been almost immobilized by a fear of flying that has
grounded business travelers and tourists alike. Stock
values have plummeted, unemployment rates have soared, and
protecting the budget surplus is no longer the public policy
priority it was just a few weeks ago. Deficit spending seems
poised for a comeback.
Statistics
provide the yardsticks we need to measure those economic impacts.
But other changes, though more difficult to measure, may prove
even more significant and long lasting in their effects.
The collapse of
the twin towers that instantly redrew the New York skyline
produced a no less dramatic reordering of personal priorities.
Against the background of all those shattered lives and splintered
dreams, making more money, winning another promotion, acquiring
more clients, and closing new deals suddenly seemed less important
than getting to soccer games, scheduling vacations, and making
time for friends. The staggering loss of life forced many of
us to examine the value of our own lives.
| One professional
football player said watching the heroic efforts of rescue
workers made him question for the first time the value of his
chosen profession. It’s not clear where that sort of
self-examination will lead, but if it produces proportionately
more firemen, policemen, teachers, and Peace Corps volunteers,
and proportionately fewer investment bankers, consultants, and
attorneys, that wouldn’t be entirely bad.
The terrorist attack also has
made us look at our country in new ways. In the
hours and days following the attacks on the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center, American flags sprouted by the thousands,
from automobiles, houses, store windows, and lapels.
Strangers wept together – around television screens and at
memorial services – for people they didn’t’ know.
Charities collected more than
$500 million for victims and their families in less than three
weeks; blood banks overflowed with donors, and volunteers came
from all over the country to aid in the recovery effort at
“Ground Zero” – the site where the World Trade Center towers
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From “Me” to “We”
A nation known
for its commitment to special interests discovered that it had a
common interest after all. In our shock and grief and anger,
we revealed the humanity we share. The “me” generation
rediscovered “we” – as in, “We the people of the United States of
America.”
For the baby
boomers who came of political age during the Viet Nam War, flag
waving was not just a foreign concept but a faintly distasteful
one, suggestive of the old-fashioned, discredited militarism they
had spurned. Veterans of the anti-war protests lost the
habit of being patriotic, and the generations behind them never
acquired it. If people had patriotic thoughts, they didn’t
express them, at least not very often, and hardly ever in public.
World War II vets growing teary at the sight of a flag on Memorial
Day seemed out of place – anachronistic and a little embarrassing
in their responses to emotions we didn’t understand and with which
we couldn’t identify.
For many of us, September 11 provided
a crash course in patriotism. An oral surgeon described a
“tough, older” patient who told him tearfully the day after the
attack, “We fought World War II so this would never happen in the
United States.” We understand those feelings a little better
now; they no longer seem so far removed from our own.
As we sang songs many of us have not
sung since childhood, if we’ve sung them at all, we discovered
that we remembered the words – and believed them. America
is
beautiful; it is a land of the free and the brave.
It is my country, and never so clearly as after those
planes smashed into the twin towers and the Pentagon.
Patriotism is “in” again, and it feels
good. When Dan Rather said that he could no longer sing or
listen to the words to “America the Beautiful” again without
experiencing an explosion of emotion, he expressed a sentiment
many of us share. For the first time in a very long time in
this country, we are singing from the same page with a harmony we
haven’t often achieved, at least, not in recent memory. The
terrorist attack that killed so many people and destroyed so much,
didn’t just open our hearts and our wallets – it opened our eyes
to the blessings we have, the values we share, and the threats we
face.
A Powerful Force
These are heady
emotions. They have the potential to bring us together, but
they also have the power to sweep us away and deposit us in places
we may not want to go. “My country,” is a healthy sentiment.
“My country right or wrong” is not. We can stand firmly
against terrorists and the countries that harbor them, as
President Bush has exhorted. We can support a sustained war
against terrorism. But we also can and should question how
that war is to be fought. It should be possible to oppose
terrorism without supporting every proposal for combating it. We
can agree that the U.S. must respond firmly and aggressively to
the September 11 attack, but we also should insist that the
response be measured, reasoned, and effective, with justice, not
vengeance, as the goal. We should be able to question
policies without being deemed unpatriotic. We can support
government efforts to improve security; but we also should
carefully balance the need to ensure safety and to protect civil
rights. And we should recognize how easily the war against
terrorism can become a vendetta against anyone who resembles
terrorists, or our notion of what terrorists look like.
The incarceration
of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and the McCarthy-era
pursuit of Communists and their “sympathizers” are not among
America’s finest hours. We should keep that not so ancient
history in mind as we seek ways to defeat terrorism without
crushing the principles we are trying to protect.
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There are few
among us who would not sacrifice a fortune, or the promise of
acquiring one, in order to turn back the clock and erase what
happened on September 11. We can’t rewrite history, but we
can determine the way history will be written by the actions we
take in the days ahead -- by what we do and don’t do; by what we
feel and by the ways in which we act on those feelings.
We can’t undo the
terrorist attack, but we can channel the torrent of emotions it
unleashed to make us stronger as individuals and as a country. And
we can say with new meaning, with a renewed sense of purpose, and
with deeper understanding, “God bless America.”
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