For almost 12 years, I served as the founding CEO of the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a role that invited countless strangers to share their stories from that terrible day.
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that → serve → day
On planes, at gas stations, in meetings or on street corners, the mere mention of my work unlocked solemn reminiscing, and I always felt honored to listen.
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I → unlock → reminiscing
Over time, I have noticed a pattern.
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I → notice → pattern
The stories typically begin on 9/11, but rarely end there.
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stories → begin → 9/11
They drift into the weeks and months that followed: people who tossed duffel bags into their cars and drove hundreds of miles to volunteer at Ground Zero; sons and daughters compelled to enlist to fight in the names of the innocent victims; strangers who welcomed stranded travelers into their homes.
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who → drift → homes
Americans channeled grief and fear into acts of service and unity of purpose.
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Americans → channel → purpose
I’ve always found it telling that even years after the attacks, these are the memories people chose to share with me.
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people → find → me
Tempting though it is to recall pre-9/11 America through sunny filters, America seethed with partisan animus even then.
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America → recall → animus
Nine months before the attacks, the Supreme Court had decided Bush v. Gore; three years earlier, the Clinton impeachment had rocked the country.
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impeachment → decide → country
But in the wake of 9/11, the chasms we once shouted across became neighborhoods again.
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we → shout → 9/11
It’s not that Americans suddenly agreed on all that divided them.
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that → ’ → them
And to be sure, we must continue to address the hate that some wrongly embraced in the aftermath of that tragic day.
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some → continue → day
But 9/11 largely clarified an essential truth: beneath our disagreements lay common cause.
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cause → clarify → disagreements
The 2,977 people murdered that day hailed from 92 nations.
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people → murder → nations
They were rich and poor, religious and secular, native-born, and immigrant.
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They → bear → ?
They practiced different faiths, subscribed to different political views, and lived very different lives from even those seated right next to them on that fateful day.
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They → practice → day
But in those differences, they represented the American experiment itself, and in putting aside our conflicts, Americans tacitly acknowledged that it was worth protecting.
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it → represent → conflicts
Twenty-five years later, I am alarmed not by the solidarity we’ve lost, but by the erosion of consensus about the terms under which we disagree.
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we → lose → which
Democracy itself has become debatable, especially among young people.
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Democracy → become → people
Only 66% of Americans now say democratically elected government is “extremely” or “very important” to the nation’s identity, down from 80% in 2021.
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government → say → 2021
Another recent survey found roughly one in five Americans endorse harassment, doxxing, or even violence against their political adversaries.
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Americans → find → adversaries
Those figures belie a disturbing trend in our political discourse: moral absolutism.
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figures → belie → discourse
A healthy democracy makes space even for fierce dissent.
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democracy → make → dissent
The danger comes when political clashes become crusades, and the self-declared righteousness of the cause becomes license to abandon democratic restraints.
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righteousness → come → restraints
Almost nothing went uncontested while we built the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
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we → go → Memorial
We fought over how to arrange the names of the dead, how and whether to represent the hijackers, and what would we delve into about America’s response.
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we → fight → response
They were real conflicts waged by people of all backgrounds, laden with grief and anger, bound by deeply held personal, emotional, and political convictions and competing ideas about what America owed the dead and the living.
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America → wag → dead
Yet we still had to build on sacred ground.
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we → have → ground
The experience taught me that pluralism doesn’t require agreement.
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pluralism → teach → agreement
It requires something harder: accepting that sometimes you will lose the argument, but you stay at the table anyway.
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you → require → table
Our job wasn’t to make disagreements disappear.
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disagreements → make → ?
There was no universe where that was possible.
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that → be → ?
Instead, my job was to help determine which differences the institution had an obligation to accommodate and where it had an obligation to draw a line.
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it → help → line
We could tell the truth about American failures without concluding that America itself was a failure.
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America → tell → failures
We could explain why the terrorists hated this country without adopting their indictment of it.
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terrorists → explain → it
A democracy depends on the same distinctions.
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democracy → depend → distinctions
The rule of law, free expression, and equal citizenship are not partisan preferences to be renegotiated after every election.
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rule → renegotiate → election
Protecting someone’s right to reject the American experiment is different from treating that rejection as simply another interpretation of it.
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Protecting → protect → it
A pluralistic society can tolerate almost limitless disagreement precisely because there are some principles it cannot and should not surrender.
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it → tolerate → disagreement
Now, this 25th anniversary demands more from us.
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anniversary → demand → us
…and 2 more, not listed.
The Aporia
