Writing under this masthead for the past three months has been a great privilege, interacting with some really outstanding thinkers and writers in science, medicine, and society. We've got real journalists, scientists, physicians, students here, each of whom bring a unique and thoughtful eye to the issues of the day.
The 9/11 posts were no exception and everyone had something outstanding to contribute. (btw, I'm not fond of the term "9/11," mostly because I find it somewhat disrespectful to those in the 80 or so other countries who consider that they lost family members in the 11/9 terrorist attacks, but then I realized lacking 9/11 in my post caused it to be missed by search engines.).
However, my personal favorite came on 12 Sept on the US East Coast, from Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority, who writes from Manoa, Hawaii.
I obviously have some strong political views on the post-9/11 world but kept them out of my personal tribute to an old friend.
Dean Morrison and I both commented over at Tara's post on Aetiology about where we hope to go from here, but it was Mike Dunford's essay that I found best captured the sentiments in my heart:
As a nation, we have allowed ourselves to be turned into an easily-manipulated public, and we need to fix that. We need to truly remember that there is far more that we share in common than there is between us, and that we should define ourselves based on our similarities, not on our differences [my emphasis]. We need to accept responsibility for our destiny, and to remember that it is ultimately the American public, not the political parties, that bears the responsibility for shaping the course that the nation follows...
...Five years and a day ago, we saw that we were, as we remain, a nation populated by people who will run into the fire to save strangers.
As long as we have that, we are not hopelessly divided.
Read the whole post - it's great.
Thanks, Mike - I couldn't have said it any better.
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