Lack of outrage

"Perhaps now America will finally grow up," wrote a French friend at the end of a sympathetic e-mail.

The fatuousness of that little postscript--from a citizen of a country we rescued from Nazi imperialism at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives in 1944 and 1945 and protected from Soviet imperialism for the next 44 years--has been exceeded only by what I have heard all around me for the past week here on the Duke campus. A class begins and the voice from the front of the room says, "We only got what we deserved. We've been bombing and invading other countries at will." In a seminar a student says, "The level of patriotism in America is scary." As two students enter a classroom, I hear one say to the other, "The most horrible part of this whole thing is all the racial profiling." I hear others saying, "You have to separate the political from the personal" and "I'm getting sick of all the sob stories."

It's comments like these that make it harder for me, a native New Yorker, to face this tragedy from Durham. College campuses are probably the most liberal, politically correct havens in America, and here at Duke the PC response to the attack is rampant. Such sentiments, and others on the Bryan Center board, are the result of a liberal education gone awry. The only comfortable part of dealing with the event in North Carolina is the knowledge that the tobacco town is an unlikely target for the next terrorist attack.

While I, like many other students, fear the idea of World War III and flinch at even the suggestion of genocide, I just can't get my mind around the idea that we "deserved the attack" or that the horror of it all is "racial profiling." This happens to be a country that for 150 years, with a generosity unparalleled in history, has opened its arms to immigrants of every sort from all over the earth--quite a few of whom attend Duke today. The predicted "wave" of bias attacks against America's two million Muslims never happened. In fact, such incidents have been extremely rare. And sure, we have intervened all over the world, but we've done so for economic or diplomatic reasons--motivations far more tangible than jealousy or religious fanaticism.

I can't get my mind around the idea that "the level of patriotism is scary," referring no doubt to such things as the flags painted on the benches and the red, white and blue decorating every storefront and restaurant. If this display of unity in the face of attack is frightening, I urge these PC sheep to go back to the roots of their political correctness and ask themselves, "If my brother died last Tuesday, would I be the one saying, OWe got what we deservedâ and we have to separate the personal from the political?'" If anything is "scary" inside Duke's cozy nest, it's the wave of fashionable self-loathing.

I particularly resent that it's fashionable to complain that one has had a bellyful of the "sob stories." I spent a good portion of last Wednesday and Thursday talking to high school friends who have lost their parents. I spoke to one friend's mother, whose husband has undoubtedly perished. Yet she still whispered into the phone in a hoarse, tremulous voice, "We're going to find him. I know he made it out. He's one of the most resourceful men you can imagine. I'm on the Internet right now looking at the survivor lists."

I did not talk to a 23-year-old girl I grew up with--and met for dinner just three weeks ago. The attack on the World Trade Center either incinerated her or blew her to bits. She no longer exists. Am I being advised to "separate the political from the personal" in order to trumpet the fashionable liberal slant?

For many who have no connection to New York, the event is understandably more symbolic than personal. But what does it symbolize? That even the world's only superpower can be dealt a lethal blow, killing 5,500 utterly innocent civilians in half an hour? Yes. But the aftermath symbolizes something else. Our attackers can explode buildings but not our ideals.