25 Years After 9/11, Americans Must Remember What Binds Us

Tempting though it is to recall pre-9/11 America through sunny filters, America seethed with partisan animus even then. Nine months before the attacks, the Supreme Court had decided Bush v. Gore; three years earlier, the Clinton impeachment had rocked the country.

It’s not that Americans suddenly agreed on all that divided them. And to be sure, we must continue to address the hate that some wrongly embraced in the aftermath of that tragic day. But 9/11 largely clarified an essential truth: beneath our disagreements lay common cause. The 2,977 people murdered that day hailed from 92 nations. They were rich and poor, religious and secular, native-born, and immigrant. They practiced different faiths, subscribed to different political views, and lived very different lives from even those seated right next to them on that fateful day. But in those differences, they represented the American experiment itself, and in putting aside our conflicts, Americans tacitly acknowledged that it was worth protecting.