The way we were
By Mitchell Stephens

For the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians," in Falwell’s words, had encouraged, "God?to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve," as Robertson said.

This is difficult to take seriously, but secular and presumably more reputable voices have also been casting blame. Some on the Left assert that we were too insular — unaware of how hated the United States has become. Some on the Right charge that we had gone soft —hamstringing our intelligence agencies with civil liberties concerns. New York Times columnist Frank Rich concludes that we were "fat, daydreaming" — lost in stories about shark attacks and Gary Condit, and consumed with "vicarious battles" like television’s Survivor.

Behind these comments is the sense that a new, bracing truth arrived along with those hijackers on September 11. That is easy to think. Things have certainly gotten more serious as well as more awful. So many lives have ended. So many lives have been changed.

But what, I wonder, is so real and true about a gang of suicide pilots? Do they not represent, instead, a kind of madness? Why should the destruction and death these men have unleashed be considered more real and true than our long-lived contentments?

There are other questions as well: How can men who turned civilian planes into missiles be seen as representative? Why should we now turn to them, and those who sent them, for a sense of what the world thinks of us? (I’ve spent some time in recent months in a number of different places where I was the only American around; hated was the last thing I felt.)

And still more questions: Why are we embarrassed about the peace and freedom we had achieved? Shouldn’t we always be looking for opportunities to increase our civil liberties? Isn’t one of the privileges of a time of peace the chance to lose ourselves in frivolous news stories? Isn’t a society fortunate if its battles are merely vicarious?

Those hijackers have forced us to mourn. They will force us to respond (with great care and caution, I hope). But we do not have to allow them to change our view of what is important.

America on Monday, September 10, was working, in its clumsy way, toward constructing a mostly peaceful, mostly free, mostly affluent society. That strikes me as no less noble, no less true a purpose than our all too familiar, if in some ways more romantic, post-September-11 march toward mobilization and retribution.

Mitchell Stephens is a professor in the department of Journalism and Mass Communication at NYU. His recent books include The Rise of the Image the Fall of the Word (Oxford University Press, 1998) and A History of News (HBJ Paperback, 1998)