It’s been 22 years since the 9/11 attacks. We have an entire generation, and are starting a second, that has no memory of the event.
Last year, or maybe in 2021, I despaired that the nation had not learned the necessary lessons from 9/11 – or, worse, had learned the wrong ones.
Or maybe our political class has succeeded in ignoring them. They were not, indeed, the ones that paid the price that morning in NYC, Washington or Pennsylvania, or in the two decades of war that followed.
Of course, entropy is real – especially when combined with a failing education system. Significant numbers of Americans don’t believe the Holocaust happened, to say nothing of having any serious knowledge about 9/11.
Either way – Barack Obama’s greatest triumph maty have been convincing a plurality of Americans that its greatest enemy was not from outside, but was America itself.
I’m going to recap something I wrote on this date 14 years ago, when the clear moral lens was fogged for different reasons.
Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
You’ve heard a bit about it today, no doubt. You’ve read a bit about it on this blog over the years. Along with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s the single most pivotal event of my adult lifetime.
And, as my radio colleague/partner Ed Morrissey notes over at Hot Air today, his as well:
While New York City and Washington DC (and Shanksville, PA) are far removed from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, that really only mattered in our sense of impotence as the towers collapsed and the Pentagon burned. We knew that the terrorists didn’t attack New York City for being New York City, or Washington DC for being Washington DC. They had attacked America for being America — and that made it all local and personal.
Which is something some Americans – on all sides of our political “aisle” – have forgotten since then. They didn’t attack cities, or coasts, or electoral blocs; they attacked America. And all of America responded.
And continues to.
For me? It wasn’t just an attack. It was the world sinking back into some very bad habits. I wrote this on March 11, 2002 – a month into this blog’s life, six months after the attacks.
I grew up in rural North Dakota, not far from the vast fields of Minuteman III missiles, close to the glide paths of the B-52 bombers,. all of which were on alert for my entire cognitive life. I was keenly aware of the presence of all of those first strike targets, forty miles away. And while I may have been one of a minority, growing up around all of that did affect me – there was a long-standing anxiety that my life and the entire world around me could be incinerated in seconds, or irradiated away, without warning.
The Berlin Wall fell about the time my oldest child was born. It would be easy and melodramatic to tell you that knowing my daughter would grow up in a world without that tension hanging over her was a wonderful, liberating sensation – but it’s the truth.
I was driving to work on September 11. I was on 394, by Xenia/Park Place. I’d just flipped over from KQRS’ interview with PJ O’Rourke to MPR’s live coverage of the attacks, without warning. And as the day wore on , and the shock sank in, that exhilaration – covered by the many other emotional layers of an adult’s life – sank away. The threat is different – but it’s still the same.So my kids are growing up in the same world I did, now. The threat is less omnipresent – I dont’ suspect the Twin Cities are high on any terrorist’s hit list – but more visceral. Maybe that’s a good thing – it’s harder for this threat to fade into the background of daily life.
Like Ed, I wanted to do something. But I was a 38 year old newly-minted single father with a bum knee and a bad eye – not the kind of person the military was going to be bidding for. I had no job skills the military needed, even as a civilian contractor (unless I got a PhD in usability and human factors – and that wasn’t going to happen).
The blog was as close as I got to something remotely useful. I started it five months after 9/11, the very day I learned what a “blog” was and how I could do one.
But I changed some other things. I’ve always loved shooting -and I got more diligent about it since 9/11. I’ve come to believe it’s the duty of a law-abiding citizen to have the knowledge and means to defend themselves, their families, their communities and their freedom. And while I don’t rationally believe there will be terrorists skulking through that shadows of Saint Paul, ever (even though “domestic terrorism” has bounced off the far corners of my life, once), the knowledge that I can pile a few of ’em up like cordwood if I need to helps with one of the most important things a human can do; replace fear with purpose. It doesn’t matter if evil wears a turban, s**tkickers or anything in between; the ability to shoot it in the face equalizes a lot. It’s not fear (I keep having to explain to lefties, who too often just don’t get it); it’s pre-empting fear.
I have also gotten more proactive about making sure government leads, follows or gets out of the way. In the wake of 9/11, before the blog, I asked my kid’s principals, adminsitrators and other school officials “What would you do if, say, a tank car of anhydrous ammonia blew up at the Empire Builder yard, and a cloud of poison were heading toward the school?” I was distinctly underwhelmed with their answers – but no moreso than those of the nameless bureaucrats at the World Trade Center who told everyone to stay in place. I’ve marveled – and found immense comfort – in the stories that showed that Americans do maintain our tradition of not needing authority and officialdom to react properly to events, in ways big (United Flight 93’s passengers’ counterattack) and small but profound (the people in the WTC who organized their own orderly evacuation, long before the firemen got there; absent the thousands of office-dwellers who thought for themselves and took care of each other, the death toll would have been vastly higher). And as best I can, I’ve tried to bring my kids up with the idea that this nation,l it’s ideals, its people and its history, is something exceptional – even more worth defending than it is worth attacking. Has it stuck? We’ll see, I’m sure.
So on this eighth anniversary? It’s a good time to remember.
And head to the range. And send the world’s scumbags a message.
Actually a box of messages.
