What to say...

Of the flood of words that have splashed against the modern psyche over the past ten years, there are few that I can add that would be as heartfelt, or incisive or profound as those that have preceded mine.

I spend much of my month teaching others within (what is roughly referred to as) the Financial Services Industry.   Brokers.  Insurance Reps.  Financial Planners.
Sometimes I teach "Sales."  Yet, I often teach CE (Continuing Education) to grizzled industry veterans.   These classes are often much more unstructured than my other classrooms.  I often serve merely as moderator; running from desk to desk, with a microphone a la Jerry Springer.  We have fun.  And although I am specifically warned to keep the classroom non-political, often students' opinions spill out.

We spend no small amount of time on the circumstances and results of September 11th.   One of the reasons for this is that this incident was largely responsible for a piece of legislation called EGTRRA (...more commonly referred to as the evil Bush-era Tax Cuts), which has altered many financial efforts over the past decade.
However, a 2nd reason is that (under current federal legislation) Life Insurance Companies do not have to compensate victims of "Mass Catastrophes; War or ...Acts of Terrorism."  This, invariably, leads into a heated discussion of compensation for the victims of 911.

Every month or so, I encounter people who were in New York on the day. Actually in the Financial District, on September 11th.   Without fail, they will stun the class with their passion, and often bring the room to tears with descriptions of what really happened.

There are any number of stories of co-workers lost.

Prior to this, my generic mental image of someone who lost their life on 911 was the image of a 40-something bond trader.  Male. Well dressed.  Probably overpaid and certainly overfed.  (I must confess, I know too many New York traders to blush at the stereotype.)

However, recently, my class was brought to a screeching halt by the story of Angie.  Angie was a 22-year-old newlywed that worked as an SA (technical jargon for a Sales Assistant; a very well-trained assistant broker).  Angie's husband is a Cop. Angie was 3 months pregnant.  A grinning Angie often brought bagels as a gift for "The Boys."  Angie sang to herself constantly and often danced (with a disturbing abandon) at her desk. When asked where she lived, Angie would smile, adopt an attitude (completely artificial) and whine, "LawnGoiland!"
On September 11th, when the office was instructed to evacuate, Angie, embarrassed, had to make one last trip to the ladies room (...she explained that she couldn't walk down 60 flights of stairs with a full bladder).  Angie apologized and told everyone "Not to wait for me... we'll get together across the street."

...Angie (and her unborn baby) never made it out.  It is assumed that Angie and her child burned to death.  Alone.  In the dark.  And never knew why.

Or Jimmy; who was managing an office of 90 souls. Jimmy had been present years earlier when the Twin Towers were first attacked. When the call came to abandon ship this time, Jimmy wasted no time.  He did a quick head count and managed to get all of his people down to safety.  As they were exiting the building, a policeman was instructing the employees to turn to the left and run across the street.  Surreptitiously, the cop looked at Jimmy, then skywards, and shook his head. Jimmy understood.
However, Jimmy's assistant, an elderly woman who had just crawled down 80 flights of stairs, was furious.  She was equally indignant because (she assumed) firemen were tossing sandbags into the street nearby.   It was only when one of the "sandbags" landed near her that she understood.
She was splattered with hundreds of bits of bone and blood.  She looked up, horrified, and watched another "sandbag" as it fell, screaming, from the sky and exploded before her eyes.
She turned to Jimmy with a child's eyes, vomited uncontrollably, collapsed, and has never been able to return to work. Jimmy maintains communications with the woman, but she will always suffer from PTSD and cries, unprompted, at unexpected moments.

My students are well educated.  My students are worldly.  My students are (often) East-coast liberals.  Yet, to this day, they are confused with a country that has dealt with these incidents as "crimes."  As "Overseas Contingency Operations."  
I had a student explain that, until that day, he was aware of "Evil" as a concept; just not as a reality.  911 changed all of that.
He explained that, he bears no animosity to any religion; in this country all religions are treated as equals.  That is our beauty.  That is our strength.
However, cultures are not equal.  All cultures may have value, but we each make value judgments, every day, that say "Our culture is better. Our culture values this.  Our culture declares this thing as 'good' and another thing as 'evil.'"  That is why, ultimately, people risk everything to get to this country; to this culture.
To watch as people in other cultures celebrated as the towers fell was a wake-up call to him and many of his friends.  There are (to use a loaded phrase) "Evildoers" in the world.
Occupants of Treblinka understood this.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn understood this.  Orwell understood this.  Too late, Neville Chamberlin came to understand this.
You cannot coexist with evil.  It is not a function of poverty, or opportunity, or even a type of mis-understanding.  Evil is.   Sometimes it is necessary to eradicate evil (yes, even preemptively).

We have come to a juncture in our existence as a culture where we have to decide if we will behave as intelligent, benign aristocrats (who assume that reasonable people will eventually see things our way if we can only talk to them) or the ill-mannered ruffians who (in past generations) marched under banners that bragged of phrases like "Don't tread on me!" or "Come and Take It!"
In my Texas, the "ruffian culture" is (thankfully) still alive and well.
This is not a pleasant set of alternatives, yet not to choose is to forfeit the future to the cultures that have decided against us.   To the evildoers.

If we are to remain "That City on the hill" we must recognize evil for what it is. And stop it here.  Stop it now.

For the future. For Angie's unborn baby.