Twenty Years Later, 9/11 Heroes Teach Us About America

On the cusp of 9/11’s 20th anniversary, we hear more and more about American decadence. Some point merely to recent policies such as our foreign endeavors in the Middle East. Others, however, take their critique to deeper and darker depths. America was born to fail, we now hear. Scholars and pundits declare the classical liberal views underlying our Founding as fraudulent. America was destined to decline into wanton licentiousness and banal consumerism, all feeding a lonely, arrogant, yet yearning hyper-individualism. A country dedicated to the self-evident truth that “All men are created equal,” in other words, inevitably descends into suburban, materialist mediocrity.

Yet the anniversary we remember should give these deeper critics pause. Sept. 11, 2001 displayed something of the American character. We saw firefighters and policemen in New York City running into the Twin Towers – many never to return. We heard of citizens storming the cockpit of Flight 93 to stop the hijackers from reaching their intended target (revealed later to be either the White House or the U.S. Capitol). In the tragedy’s aftermath, we saw Americans rally around each other financially, physically, and spiritually. Our citizens, moreover, fended off various temptations, including animosity against fellow citizens of the Muslim faith.