Terrorism and Patriotism :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

Terrorism and Patriotism The lodge between war and patriotism-or better yet, between war and the making of patriots-is evident, mayhap even self-evident. But, is a war really required? The answer is no, non as long as we remember past wars, and use those memories to disturb current challenges. To help us remember, we relieve oneself a Memorial twenty-four hours (Decoration Day when I was young), and the Lincoln, Vietnam, Korean, and (eventually) World War II memorials. To the same end, we have raceal cemeteries filled with the graves of patriots, and a national anthem dispassionate during a long-past war. This nation was born in a war, and Abraham Lincoln referred to those who fought it as the patriots of 76. We were one people then-we said so. We were made one because King George terzetto and our British bretheren were deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. What those foes did to rally patriotism in 1776, the terrorists did on Sept. 11. The signs of this upsurge are everywhere. The grass-roots response of the American people has been phenomenal, a display of bottom-up public patriotism unseen in this nation in at least half a century, slicing across boundaries of race, class, age, and gender. American flags gasify from the antennas of battered pickup trucks, from stately Victorian porches, from military position windows. An Indiana flag company reports it has never had this many orders, 25 measure the norm, in its century-long existence. The flag is everywhere, and so is the need of the people to display their dear of country. It was only a few years ago that the US autocratic Court ruled that Americans were entitled to burn the flag, that they had a constitutional aright to do so. Of course, the ruling did not deny Americans their constitutional right to fly the flag, and millions of people proceeded to do so. Those who did not own a flag pelt along out to buy one, in such numbers that supplies were soon exhausted. Americans are fl ying the flag again, and they are showing their patriotism in separate ways. Told that blood was in short supply, they rushed to give their own volunteers from nearly the country raced to the scene of devastation in New York with food, blankets, gas masks, some(prenominal) they thought was needed. Americans grieved for the dead there, in Washington, and in Pennsylvania as their own, and prayed for the bereaved left behind.