09/11/01
There will never be a day like today.
Not for my parents, not for my grandparents, not for my daughter, and not
for my fellow generation of around-30-year olds.
Someone said that this was one of those days where you'd remember exactly
where you were, what you were doing, when you heard about the attacks on
the World Trade Centers. TV polls say that 87% of Americans think today is
the most tragic day in American history.
And while I sit here and struggle to comprehend the enormity of the day,
I'm struck by the sense that today is the beginning of a new era for
American self-identity. Wiped away are the academic or political arguments
about security versus personal liberty, profiling versus prejudice,
violence versus peace. The only questions now are what it means to be
American.
My generation, raised post-Watergate, post-Kennedy, and largely
post-Vietnam has lived primarily as adults with the sanitized experience of
wars fought by guided missiles, unbounded prosperity, and political leaders
whose sexual escapades are more important than their leadership. We've come
to believe in the infallible fortune of the United States because we
haven't worried about our personal safety, finances, or corrupt government.
Yet even recently, we have had tests challenging our "beautiful American
life" - the Gulf War, riots in Los Angeles, the first bombing of the World
Trade Center, the bombing of the Murrah Federal building, the African
Embassy bombings, the bombing of the U.S.S Cole. We've learned to live with
this dark edge to our existence - we've developed a certain level of
cynicism about our way of life. We've come to believe that our government
can miraculously save our way of life simply because it is our government
and we don't know anything different. In other words, we have an unstated
assumption that it has a miraculous ability to maintain the status quo. The
flip side of this belief is that we've also learned to accept its problems,
its warts, and its corrupted sense of purpose as unchangeable truths.
Today, we've experienced something that I believe was qualitatively
different than anything we've seen before. Today was a test at a new level
of seriousness. And we have a choice. My generation, which is poised this
century to take over the mantle of leadership of the free world, can see
this test as a validation of our American spirit and dedication to American
ideals of justice, equality, and opportunity. Or we can let this be the
moment we yield cathartically to momentary urges for unprincipled, fearful,
and cynical responses to terror and those who don't believe in our way of
living.
My generation, which has never had a threat to true freedom and true
openness, now has the excuse to give up on these lofty yet very familiar
ideals. My generation, in many ways, has taken our way of life for granted.
We don't have that luxury any more. We have been given a horrible
opportunity to make a statement on behalf of the American people - we must
now appreciate what we have had and rise to the challenge of preserving and
holding high these ideals in our most difficult moment.
We feel sorrow, we feel fear, we feel anger. But a tragedy like this is a
time to make our country greater. I especially invite my generation to
slough off the cynicism we've grown up with and make the choice of building
a stronger nation at its darkest moments. We must keep America from being
pulled into nationalism borne out of fear, anger, and calls for revenge. We
need to believe in ourselves, in our nation, and in the goodness of our
ideals. We have an opportunity, if not a duty, to preserve the best of our
way of life - if not for ourselves, then for our children and our parents.
This is a war of ideals, not a war of weapons. This is serious, and the
time to act is now.
