Notes

Perhaps they understand it at
this moment [in the aftermath of 9/11], when enormous tragedy, as it so often does,
demands a time of reflection on enormous blessings
Once these disparate parts were held together by a common enemy, by the fault lines of
world wars and the electrified fence of communism. With the end of the cold war there
was the creeping concern that without a focus for hatred and distrust, a sense of national
identity would evaporate, that the left side of the hyphen--African-American, MexicanAmerican,
Irish-American--would overwhelm the right. And slow-growing domestic
traumas like economic unrest and increasing crime seemed more likely to emphasize
division than community
Tolerance is the word used most often when this kind of coexistence succeeds, but
tolerance is a vanilla-pudding word, standing for little more than the allowance of letting
others live unremarked and unmolested. Pride seems excessive, given the American
willingness to endlessly complain about them, them being whoever is new, different,
unknown, or currently under suspicion. But patriotism is partly taking pride in this
unlikely ability to throw all of us together in a country that across its length and breadth
is as different as a dozen countries, and still be able to call it by one name. When
photographs of the faces of all those who died in the World Trade Center destruction are
assembled in one place, it will be possible to trace in the skin color, the shape of the eyes
and the noses, the texture of the hair, a map of the world. These are the representatives of
a mongrel nation that somehow, at times like this, has one spirit. Like many improbable
ideas, when it actually works, it's a wonder.