Terrorism and Patriotism :: September 11 Terrorism Essays

Terrorism and Patriotism The connection between war and patriotism-or offend yet, between war and the making of patriots-is evident, maybe even self-evident. But, is a war really required? The answer is no, not as long as we find past wars, and use those memories to meet current challenges. To help us remember, we have a Memorial Day (Decoration Day when I was young), and the capital of Nebraska, Vietnam, Korean, and (eventually) World War II memorials. To the same end, we have national cemeteries filled with the graves of patriots, and a national anthem composed 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 III 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-root s 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 bowling pins fly from the antennas of battered pickup trucks, from stately Victorian porches, from office windows. An Indiana flag company reports it has never had this many orders, 25 times the norm, in its century-long existence. The flag is everywhere, and so is the need of the people to display their love of country. It was only a hardly a(prenominal) years ago that the US Supreme Court ruled that Americans were entitled to burn the flag, that they had a constitutional right to do so. Of course, the ruling did not turn away Americans their constitutional right to fly the flag, and millions of people proceeded to do so. Those who did not witness a flag rushed out to buy one, in such verse that supplies were soon exhausted. Americans are flying the flag again, and t hey are showing their patriotism in other ways. Told that blood was in short supply, they rushed to give their own volunteers from around the country raced to the scene of devastation in New York with food, blankets, gas masks, whatever they thought was needed. Americans grieved for the dead there, in Washington, and in Pennsylvania as their own, and prayed for the strip left behind.