The Blogs: Remembering 9/11

AI rendering created for this article, inspired by the story of a man who stayed behind in the North Tower because his friend could not walk.

On September 11, 2001, a Jewish man reportedly remained in the North Tower because his friend could not walk.

Think about that.

In the final, terrifying moments of his life, the question was not, “How do I save myself?” It was, “How could I leave another human being behind?”

I share this story not because every Jew is a hero. We aren’t. No community has a monopoly on courage, decency or sacrifice. And certainly, the crimes of Islamist terrorists should never be assigned collectively to Muslims, millions of whom reject their ideology.

But there is something about the moral clarity of September 11 that America seems increasingly determined to forget.

The people who flew airplanes into buildings that morning were not misunderstood activists. They were not victims of American intolerance. They were Islamist terrorists animated by an extremist ideology, and they deliberately murdered nearly 3,000 innocent human beings.

Twenty-five years later, something extraordinary has happened. In parts of our cultural and political mainstream, we have become so frightened of appearing intolerant that we sometimes struggle to speak plainly about the intolerance of extremists themselves. The language gets softened. Terrorism becomes “resistance.” Fanaticism acquires an academic vocabulary. And people who insist that civilization has a right to defend itself are sometimes treated as though they are the moral problem.

That is not tolerance. It is moral confusion.

So this September 11, remember the firefighters who climbed while everyone else was running down. Remember the police officers, first responders and ordinary Americans who helped strangers. Remember Muslims who condemned the attacks and rejected the extremists who claimed to act in the name of their faith.

And remember this Jewish man who, according to the story, could have tried to leave but would not abandon his friend.

There is evil in this world. There is also extraordinary goodness.

The obligation of a decent society is not to pretend it cannot distinguish between them.