A beautiful passage from some stirring remarks:

[kpete]

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/through-grief-not-around-it.html

"It has been a wounding decade. Our country is frayed, uncertain, inflamed. There is hardship and dread in the land. In significant ways we are a people in need of renovation. But what rouses the mourner from his sorrow is his sense of possibility, his confidence in the intactness of the spirit, his recognition that there is work to be done. What we loved and what we valued has survived the disaster, but it needs to be secured and bettered, and in that secure and better condition transmitted to our children. Our dream of greatness must be accompanied by an understanding of what is required for the maintenance of greatness. The obscenities of September 11, 2001 exposed the difference between builders and destroyers. We are builders. Let us agree, on this anniversary, that it is an honor to be an American and it is an honor to be free."



More:
http://www.tnr.com/article/94774/leons-remarks-911-event

[barbtries]

1. for me those words are really sullied

by the reality of all the lives lost needlessly between then and now - not just american lives, ALL the lives. and the freedom lost as well. and though i try not to be i'm still somewhat bitter that it was gw and not President Gore. but then imo if Gore had been allowed to assume the office he won, 911 would not have happened.

i guess i just can't let it go just yet.

[catbyte]

2. I'm stuck in the same place, barbtries

[tblue]

3. " We are builders." Really? Where?

In Afghanistan? Iraq? Here in the US? :shrug: