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 he
first thing I saw when I walked out of my apartment yesterday morning
was a red, white, and blue bandanna stuffed in someone's back pocket.
Flags are being
sold on the street. They are plastered on the back of trucks and
hang out of windows, or are draped around the shoulders of people
walking. Tiny ones are waved in people's hands.
One of the
more heartening things about the reaction to Tuesday is that so
far this is a flag-waving "crisis" — not a yellow-ribbon,
pink-ribbon, or black-ribbon crisis. The one lapel-ribbon I have
seen was worn by Sen. Barbara Mikulski last night, and it was red,
white, and blue.
This is an
important symbolic matter because the flag is redolent of honor
and country. The ribbons reek of sentimentality and victimology.
They were popularized, after all, during the Iranian hostage crisis,
a period of national humiliation.
In general,
there has been a remarkable lack of public weepiness, given the
horrific circumstances. Even after this heartbreaking catastrophe,
the public storyline has featured duty, not emotions; resolve, not
powerlessness.
We have heard
of the firefighters who sacrificed their lives so that others might
be saved, of Barbara Olson calling to ask what she could do after
her plane was hijacked, of the awe-inspiring acts of heroism of
the passengers on the plane that crashed near Pittsburgh.
NR has
complained often about the feminization of America, the softness
that characterizes our culture. But wars can change everything,
and it may be that these attacks have burrowed deep into the national
character, where beneath the layers of blather and psycho-nonsense,
something sterner and stronger still exists.
We, and the
rest of the world, will know soon enough, as the country begins
to wage its war, as Paul Wolfowitz put it this morning, "to
end" terrorist-sponsoring states.
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