Kathleen Parker, during that week in 2001:

Though a nation of fiercely independent individuals, we are capable of unity. Ironically, our relative prosperity has permitted us to forget that defining fact. Our behavior toward one another in recent years – our splintering into groups and bickering over blame – now should be a source of embarrassment as well as an inspiration never to go back. Some observers of America have predicted that we eventually would defeat ourselves from within. They were almost right. Effective Sept. 11, we are again one people, one body united to honor the dead, to defend liberty and the living. To look terrorism in the eye and say: “Over our dead bodies.”