11 Years Later (what happened to love thy neighbor?)
I’ve spent all day trying to decide what I wanted to write about 9/11 or even if I wanted to write about 9/11.
There was a report yesterday in the NY Times about all the intelligence President Bush ignored. I read it, but I can’t seem to get too upset about it. There’s a lot of would have, could have, should have in life and I’m not sure President Bush’s mistakes are worth rehashing this week.
Then I think about who we were on September 12, 2001 and it makes me sad that in 11 years we’ve gone from love thy neighbor to outright hate of people with differing political, religious, or social views. I saw an episode of The West Wing –“Isaac & Ishmael”- where Josh is talking to a bunch of high school students. He tells them that ours is a plural society and that if we want to really get to the terrorists we should keep accepting more than one idea. From where I stand it seems to me that we’ve become the terrorists. When you hate your neighbor, when you decide the same sex couple next door cannot get married, when you decide that Catholics and Mormons aren’t Christian enough for your taste the terrorists win. It’s 2012 and Bin Laden might be dead but we are so much worse for wear then we were on September 10, 2001.
I am disappointed in us, I thought we were better than that.