Everything has changed. Hasn’t it? This week, we begin by taking stock, weighing the events and emotions of the past year, reckoning the loss. Still, we sift the ashes and wonder at, sometimes worry at, signs of new life, the familiar and the startling. And above all, we try to learn the lessons offered. One year ago, death, sickening, enormous, arrived. Then came the heroes, firefighters and others, giving the “full measure of their devotion,” sweating and digging and giving human form to the patriotism that filled so many in this country.
“Welcome to the new normal,” some said, “Irony and innocence are dead,” some said. Seriousness, worldliness, generosity were to be the new national watchwords.
Guests:
Fouad Ajami, Director of Middle East Studies, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
Geneva Overholser, professor, public affairs reporting, Missouri School of Journalism, Washington bureau
P.J .O’ Rourke, writer for The Atlantic Monthly