Send to a Friend <% dim printurl printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Version

September 11, 2002, 8:00 a.m. September Sentimentality In praise of gentleness. By Roger Kimball

ow that the anniversary of September 11 is upon us, two words have been echoing through my mind. One is Hallmark. The other is Aristotle.

I think of Hallmark because of the pullulating ocean of sentimental rubbish elicited by the event, the fetid current of fake emotion, alternating wildly between the lachrymose banalities of professional "grief counselors" and the hollow solemnities of journalists straining to package and repackage the event for this evening's ratings game.

Driving down I-95 the evening of September 8, I listened with a mixture of disbelief and nausea as a radio broadcast of 60 Minutes set about bringing listeners up-close and personal into the shattered lives of several widows in a New Jersey town. Every few minutes one of these poor women would start sobbing as a treacle-voiced interviewer asked her to remember just when it was that she realized that her husband would not be coming home from the World Trade Center. There were interviews with young children, who were patiently coaxed to tell us about life without dad and what they were doing to help mom. There was even a visit to a support group where brave faces were interrupted with tears and put back together with make-up lessons: the cosmetic consultant told listeners that she had never understood what sadness could do to one's face.

It was pretty horrible: saccharine, cynical, manipulative. It was also completely consonant with many other expressions of September Sentimentality.

Of course, for many of these journalists, personalizing the event is the only way they can deal with it. They are so accustomed to casting America as the evil aggressor that September 11 left them in a state of despondent confusion. Few reputable outlets allowed them to blame America overtly, so they took the only other course open to them: They cast America as the victim.

From a politically correct perspective — i.e., the perspective of institutions like The New York Times, 60 Minutes, the network news shows, and the national teachers' union — victims by definition deserve sympathy, sufferance, and government subsidy. So long as America could be portrayed as a victim, all was well. The problem is that not all victims are content to remain victims. Some refuse to remain helpless. Having been victimized, they retaliate. Which means, of course, that in the eyes of the New York Times, 60 Minutes, etc., they cease being victims.

Which brings me to Aristotle. If the anniversary of the terrorist attacks brought forth an abundance of nauseating sentimentality, it also, in some quarters, precipitated a new clarity. In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses the qualities that define gentleness, praotes. Today, we are apt to think of a gentle character as a pacific one: a sandal-wearing, non-smoking, cosmic vegetarian, eco-sensitive type. But Aristotle knew better. True gentleness is not pacifism but "observance of the mean in relation to anger." Consequently, "we praise a man who feels anger on the right grounds and against the right persons, and also in the right manner and at the right moment and for the right length of time."

Those who lack gentleness can err in one of two ways. Some are irascible: they anger too quickly, for the wrong reasons, or in too implacable a manner. Others are deficient in anger: They are aorgesia, "lacking in spirit." Such people are blamed, Aristotle notes, because "those who do not get angry at things at which it is right to be angry are considered foolish, and so are those who do not get angry in the right manner, at they right time, and with the right people."

For example, let's say you are unhappy about the end of the Caliphate and the increasing irrelevance of Islam to modern life. Let's further suppose that you are an anti-Zionist fanatic who has never been able to accept the existence of the state of Israel. Finally, let's say that you are profoundly irritated by the spectacle of American influence in places like Saudi Arabia — not all American influence, of course, since without American technology most Arabs would still be sleeping in tents and moving about by camel. You just hate the really bad stuff: treating women as human beings instead of chattel, allowing people to practice infidel religions like Christianity and Judaism, condoning unsettling institutions like representative democracy and freedom of speech. You carry these grudges around for a few decades and then start blowing up American embassies and battleships. Eventually, you graduate to enticing a few fellow fanatics to fly some American airliners into the World Trade Center.

This is not how a gentle person acts. But what if you are on the other side and someone starts dragging the bodies of your soldiers naked through the streets of Mogadishu, or planting bombs in the basements of your skyscrapers, or blowing holes in your warships? Are you being angry in the right manner, at the right time, and with the right people when you wring your hands in public, talk about peace in the Middle East, and, when an election looms, launch a few cruise missiles against an aspirin factory in Africa? I don't think so.

Or consider where we are now. Minions of a crazed Islamo-fascist destroy a large chunk of downtown Manhattan and part of the Pentagon. The United States declares a war on terrorism, obliterates one important base of operations in Afghanistan, and publicly sets about planning to eradicate other sources of support. These are the acts of a true gentleness, because without them barbarism and savagery would triumph over civilization. As of this writing, Saddam Hussein has not yet has not yet made his conge. But if you haven't yet said goodbye, don't tarry. He is going, and soon. Only a few privileged people know who is next in line. If America's gentleness persists, as I expect it will, those 7,000 Saudi princes would be well advised to be sure their Swiss bank accounts are in good order.

— Roger Kimball is managing editor of The New Criterion. He is author, most recently, of Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity.