Joel Mathis

I've probably said enough about 9/11 over the years. Long story short: My first-ever visit to New York City was a few weeks after the attacks. There was still smoke rising from the bowels of the World Trade Center. The makeshift memorials -- on fences around the perimeter, in subway stations -- were still fresh and full of living pain.  Also: The city was still, unmistakably alive and vibrant. I drove across country to get to New York that week, stopping in Shanksville along the way. It was the first time I'd driven so far by myself. I realized how big this country is. And how much New York differed from the world I'd grown up in. And I loved it.  9/11 made me back away from the pacifism I'd grown up with, and in retrospect I think I was wrong to make that choice. The wars that grew out of the attacks have not created much safety, but they have increased the total amount of misery in the world. What a shame. Time passes faster than you think. I was still young when 9/11

For a few years now there's been a fond hearkening back to the so-called "9/12 moment" — a memory of the last time the United States responded to a terror attack with something like unity. Now, whenever there's a man-made disaster, everybody retreats to their usual battle lines and starts throwing grenades.  David French laments this today at National Review : I can’t recall a better time to be an enemy of the United States. The message to the jihadist world is clear: Not only is it open season on Americans wherever they live, work, and play, but jihadist attacks will have the added strategic benefit of further dividing a polarized country. So what happened? My guess: Politics, of course.

More than most American leaders who might run for president someday, Sarah Palin has made a career of dividing "us" and "them." Most famously, she spent parts of the 2008 dismissing her opponents and their allies as residing somewhere outside the "real America" -- and while she apologized for it , her constant grievance-mongering suggests she sees the world, and this country, mostly in terms of its divisions. Don't get me wrong: Other leaders can be "divisive." Palin is different: The divisions animate her. I mention all of this because of a recent posting to her Facebook page, which features this title: " An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground ." She is, of course, talking about the proposed mosque to be located 600 feet or so from Ground Zero in New York. I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pi