I am drawn annually to the column Leonard Pitts wrote in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
A Pulitzer Prize winning author, Pitts wrote eloquently on a day that rendered nearly everyone else speechless. I used his piece for years in my high school journalism classes as an example of excellence under pressure.
I’ll link it here.
On the 25th anniversary of that terrible day, I still find his words compelling and his description of our county astute.
“We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless,” he wrote. “We’re frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae – a singer’s revealing dress, a ball team’s misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We’re wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though – peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.”
We’re still a vast and quarrelsome family, and I believe we’re also still fundamentally decent.
On this grim anniversary, as we honor those who lost their lives, those who gave their lives in the line of duty, and those who have suffered in the years since, I hope we hold on to that truth. At our heart, Americans are good and generous people.
And, as Pitts wrote 25 years ago, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.
God Bless America.
