by Deborah M.

Created on: September 08, 2008

I clearly recollect, as many of you who are reading this, the date of September 11, 2001. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the Pearl Harbor attack, it is a day that shall live in infamy. I recall the sick feeling as my knees gave out and I collapsed into the chair at my desk even as the first of the Twin Towers collapsed to the ground. I recall the grief stricken horror as it became apparent that classmates, friends, and instructors of mine at the small college I attended had lost family members and people they loved in a single moment of horror.

I suppose on one hand, I do understand how '9/11' has become a rallying cry and the 'War on Terror' is the cause of the day. At the same time, I can not help the feeling of stricken horror as I look at the changes which have swept thru the nation I live in in the wake of that fateful September day nearly ten years ago. Indeed, that feeling of horror is almost of the same timbre as what I felt as the city of Baltimore became unearthly quiet as the state of Maryland was declared to be in a State of Emergency.

As a person who was raised and prefers living in the rural area, it was not the silence of the city that disturbed me. It was the quality of that silence. It was an anxious silence that screamed of fear. That silent cry of terror has echoed and swelled over the last ten years in such a fashion that it now threatens to choke the very life from our nation here in the United States. When the religion and ancestry of a man are being upheld as supposedly valid reasons to deny him the opportunity to hold elected office in this country, I am troubled.

When the greatest insult that can be slung is to declare that the other person is an appeaser or an enemy sympathizer, I am troubled. I am especially troubled when this insult is hurled because one is exercising their rights as secured by the Constitution of the United States of America. How is it that a nation with the freedom of religion and of expression can find itself in a position that it is engaging in pressuring the people via cultural influences to be prejudiced against someone because of their faith or to be demeaning and chastising those who speak out against open prejudice of this nature?

I can not say that the events of September 11, 2001 did not injure the nation. I can not say that it was a moment of change which birthed the awareness of something terrible. I would be lying if I said those things. I question, however, if the wounds of September 11,

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>