Liberty or Death

On September 11, 2001, I had just started my senior year at MIT. I was up early that morning, and if it hadn’t have been one of the first weeks of class I probably wouldn’t have been. After the first couple weeks of a semester, I hardly ever went to any of my classes unless there was a test, I had to turn in my homework, or it was my fiction workshop (the only class I actually wanted to go to). I was wandering through the halls of my dorm when one of my friends came out of his room and told me that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. At the time neither of us realized that the act had been intentional. We both assumed that somehow a small craft had lost control, and that it was just a tragic accident. Then another plane crashed into the other tower.

To be honest, everything after that is kind of a blur. I have the impression that I watched the news more that week than I ever had in my entire life combined, but I don’t have any evidence to back that up. All that really remains with me from that time are feelings and emotions, the same feelings and emotions that almost all Americans and many other people around the world had – shock, anger, sadness… and fear.

And it’s that last feeling that is September 11’s lasting legacy. It’s the day that I believe this country lost its way. Fear took hold of the American public and changed our way of life. From a war that likely created more enemies of our nation than it eliminated, to the revelation that our own government is spying on its own citizens (though I think you’d have to be fairly naïve if you needed Snowden to tell you that), America is now a country that is influenced too much by fear. While our diversity should have been our greatest strength, an entire group of people became hated and feared by many just because the attackers shared their religion. We’ve forgotten the words of one of our greatest presidents, that all we have to fear is fear itself.

Look at the damage that fear has done. Freedom and liberty are the bedrock principles on which our nation was founded. Yet our civil liberties were eroded by laws such as the Patriot Act, and we stood meekly by. It is easy to blame politicians and forget that America is still a republic, and as such we have no one to blame but ourselves. I don’t absolve myself of this responsibility. In the wake of the attack, I was as angry and afraid as anyone. Despite a lifelong belief in non-violence, I initially supported our invasion of Iraq. I can understand how easy it is to support security over liberty. We all want to live long, safe lives. Yet in doing so, we lose something very important, one of the things that used to make America the greatest country in the world. Our belief that freedom and liberty are principles worth dying for.

If we didn’t believe that, there wouldn’t be an America in the first place. If we didn’t believe that, the union would not have survived. We fought a revolution because of that belief. We fought a civil war because of that belief. If the price of liberty and freedom in America is an added risk of terrorist attacks, I believe we have to live with it. If we change our way of life, if we live in fear, it won’t make us safe. But it will damage our country’s future, and it dishonors every American who has given their lives to earn and protect that freedom, including the victims of September 11. Every schoolchild in American learns the words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Now those words just ring hollow.