On OpinionJournal, Peggy Noonan writes on the changes wrought by 9/11 from the perspective of of the present. She also finds some things that have not changed:
New Yorkers themselves have returned to fighting with each other. There's been plenty to fight over, from the new taxes to the mayor's new antismoking laws, which are not so much a policy as a non sequitur--New York is in crisis, let's ban smoking! And there is the declaration of the organizations of World Trade Center families-of-victims that there should not be a statue of the firemen at the WTC memorial site. Three hundred forty-three of them died that day, but to commemorate their sacrifice would be "hierarchical." They want it clear that no one was better than anyone else, that all alike were helpless, victims.But that is not true; it is the opposite of the truth. The men and women
working in the towers were there that morning, and died. The firemen and
rescue workers--they weren't there, they went there. They didn't run from
the fire, they ran into the fire. They didn't run down the staircase, they
ran up the staircase. They didn't lose their lives, they gave them.This is an important disagreement, because memorials teach. They teach the
young what we, as a society, celebrate, hold high, honor. A statue of a man
is an assertion: It asserts that his behavior is worthy of emulation. To
leave a heroic statue of the firemen out of a WTC memorial would be as
dishonest as it would be ungenerous, and would yield a memorial that is
primarily about victimization. Which is not what that day was about, as so
much subsequent history attests.But go tell some New Yorkers. They're all arguing. September 11 didn't
change everything.
I wasn't aware of this debate.
Posted by oscarjr at June 11, 2003 09:55 PM | TrackBack