I was pulling my shoes on after my inspection, thinking how fortunate I felt that such precautionary measures were happening when a woman, pushing her feet into slip-ons said to me disgustedly, "That was interesting, wasn't it?" Her unspoken message, "Why are they wasting my time?"
I completely disagreed with that woman's disgust. I'm glad for the extra security at airports. And if that entails waiting in a long line as it did when my son and I flew back home from Washington's Reagan International Airport not long ago, so be it. (I suppose I'm a bit weird. When a friend learned that I was driving to Columbus over this past Memorial Day, they said, "There'll be lots of Highway Patrol cars out," all I could say was, "Good. They'll help keep us safe from the speeders." Comments like that cause people to question my sanity.)
Yet, I do hate all the measures we've taken because of September 11. I've been to DC a grand total of six times since I was five years old. The first visit was with my parents in 1959. On that first visit, it was so easy to stroll up to the White House, the Capitol, and the Smithsonian. Now, one must negotiate the barricades, guardhouses, and security checks at most sites in the city. I understand the necessity for these measures, of course. But sometimes they make me feel as though the terrorists won something on that fateful September morning four years ago. They seared fear into our national personality. I hate that!
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman talks about the "need" for a national commission to look at all the different ways in which 9/11 has changed America's personality. I don't think that will happen, but it would be worthwhile for us all to consider that question among ourselves. (You could begin the process here, by leaving your comments below.) Such a conversation might cause us to modify some of the things we're doing now.
Friedman recounts several conversations with overseas acquaintances in which foreigners that something fundamental about the American character--our traditional openness--was being lost in all the security measures. He mentions a conversation with a man from India:
In New Delhi, the Indian writer Gurcharan Das remarked to me that with each visit to the U.S. lately, he has been forced by border officials to explain why he is coming to America. They "make you feel so unwanted now," said Mr. Das. America was a country "that was always reinventing itself," he added, because it was a country that always welcomed "all kinds of oddballs" and had "this wonderful spirit of openness." American openness has always been an inspiration for the whole world, he concluded. "If you go dark, the world goes dark."America has always had to fight with itself whenever it has been threatened by foreign enemies in the past.
It was true during the First World War. I once interviewed a second-generation German-American for an article I did for the Columbus Monthly magazine. He'd grown up during the Great War and remembered vividly the danger to which he and his family and friends in Columbus' German village were subjected then. Once, in 1918, a young German-American, marching in a parade in Columbus, was gunned down by people who hated Germans. As I recall, the newspaper accounts I later looked up indicated that his murderer was never found.
During World War Two, of course, many Japanese-Americans were subjected to unjustifiable internment in camps.
The dawn of the Cold War brought irrational and un-American witch hunts for Communists and "fellow travelers."
Keep in mind that in each of these wars, America was truly threatened. But we had to figure out how to preserve our way of life--freedom within the context of mutual responsibility--without losing our way of life.
So, tell me what you think: How do we do that now?
UPDATE: Ann Althouse doesn't like a run-on sentence that appears in Friedman's column.
No comments:
Post a Comment