On September 27, 2001, in remarks made to O’Hare International Airport employees the President of the United States told Americans to go shopping:
 
“When [the terrorists] struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear.  And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry.  It's to tell the traveling public:  Get on board. Do your business around the country.  Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots.  Get down to Disney World in Florida.  Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.”
 
Is shopping a form of patriotism? Is it an act of civic duty? Maybe. Consider what drives our economy in the 21st century: consumerism. We are a nation of shoppers. We buy a lot, we buy often, and we buy big. We live in an era of non-durable goods. If it’s broken, don’t fix it. Just buy another one. There’s a Target or WalMart just around the corner.
 
In some ways, the president’s remarks were understandable. The thought was that Americans should not be cowed into altering their lives. To do so would be to concede a sort of victory to the terrorists.
 
At the same time, however, Americans and our politicians all seem to agree that “everything changed” after September 11, 2001. Our day-to-day lives would seem to fall under that all-inclusive term, “everything,” and our day-to-day lives have included consuming. The inference should be clear.
 
To be fair to the President, there was not only a call to consumerism in those days after September 11, 2001, there were also calls to “uphold the values of America.” (This and the following remarks were made to the nation and before a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001.) The President asked Americans to support the 9/11 victims financially and with other types of practical aid such as blood donations. He also asked Americans not only to pray, but also to be on alert:
 
“The thousands of FBI agents who are now at work in this investigation may need your cooperation”. Later, he said, “It is my hope that in the months and years ahead life will return almost to normal. We'll go back to our lives and routines and that is good.”
 
In November of 2001, in his Ellis Island address, President Bush also encouraged service:
 
“All of us can become a September the 11th volunteer by making a commitment to service in our own communities.  So you can serve your country by tutoring or mentoring a child, comforting the afflicted, housing those in need of shelter and a home.  You can participate in your Neighborhood Watch or Crime Stoppers.  You can become a volunteer in a hospital, emergency medical, fire or rescue unit.  You can support our troops in the field and, just as importantly, support their families here at home, by becoming active in the USO or groups and communities near our military installations.”
 
All this is good, but is it enough, and does it really reflect citizenship – especially citizenship in a time of war? And does the American citizenry really understand just what sort of war this is? When we look to our leader, the President of the United States of America, we do not get the answers.
 
In his remarks to the nation in November, 2002, a little more than a year after the attacks, the president stated, “Now and in the future, Americans will live as free people, not in fear, and never at the mercy of any foreign plot or power.”
 
He told us that terrorists can’t win against freedom or democracy. But, so far as I know, the president has never articulated precisely what freedom and democracy mean in the 21st century. Part of the responsibility inherent in the Office of the President is to define America and reflect the ideals of the Constitution. To do so is to lead the country by reminder and reinvigoration.
 
In his September 20, 2001 address to the nation and a joint session of Congress, President Bush asserted: “[Terrorists] hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”
 
It’s pretty well been established that people who blow up themselves in order to kill others, people who fly planes full of people into buildings full of people, and people who saw off the heads of other people are not interested in mere hate. They are interested in annihilation. They are interested in the genocide of all “infidels,” not simply people who are free. There are people who aren’t free, and they hate them, too. Notions of freedom as expressed by the president – and pretty much by any American – are residuals of Enlightenment era thinking that emerged from Britain and the Continent from around the 16th to the end of the 18th centuries. Terrorists raised by repressive religious fundamentalists are concerned with such notions only to the extent that they wish to eradicate them as a collateral benefit of eradicating theso-called “infidels” (which, by the way, is not to say that the religion from which these people emerge is, as a whole, anti-intellectual. Let us not forget that Aristotle would most likely have been lost to history had it not been for 13th century Muslim scholars).
 
While the long-term goal of establishing free societies is arguably an imperative, we have an equal imperative in our own country to make sure we are the sort of citizens that constitute the ideals of a free society. It is not at all clear that we are such citizens, and we have not, at least to my mind, been led by our president in any clear-cut direction of citizenship as 9/11 fades into history.
 
“Citizenship” is not a word much in use these days. The concept is even more vague. Part of the original intent of a public education was to prepare children to become citizens, to cultivate skills not just for the purpose of securing steady work, but also to be able to actively participate in the community, and to grasp and shape American culture. Citizenship does not simply mean being free to say and do what you want with few limitations, it means, at the very least, saying and doing with a modicum of social, political, economic, and cultural intelligence, circumspection, and thoughtfulness. As cultural and societal practices clash, we have to be able to understand others while not resorting to a facile resignation that “it’s all relative.”
 
In what President Bush has said since 9/11, it seems to me that he hints at what citizenship is all about, but does not clearly call us to our best selves. If he can’t do it, then we’ve got to take on this responsibility ourselves. The first step is to ask, ‘What is it to be an American?’

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