I've put aside the New York Times, and spent most of the morning browsing Glenn Reynolds from this time last...

I've put aside the New York Times, and spent most of the morning browsing Glenn Reynolds from this time last year. There's none of the sentimentality and purple prose that infected the mainstream news media then, and does again now, on the anniversary. But Reynolds, and the articles to which he links, display a level of political wisdom no other country, even the UK, can match.
It's all there: quiet resolve; the need for a proportionate response; satisfaction in the least-bad rather than the dangerous search for perfection; an understanding of human and organizational frailty; confidence in individuals, and their self-organizing properties; an unerring instinct for self-serving cant; a permanent state of alert to the danger of over-mighty government; the readiness to use force; and the reluctance.
Nothing has happened since, except events. The intellectual response emerged, fully-formed, within days, within hours, of the attack on the Twin Towers. Foreigners forget: the US may be a young country, but it is an old democracy. And the foundation of that democracy is, not the formal separation of powers, but a race-memory which emerges in these posts from twelve months ago.
Archives for 9/9/01 [Glenn Reynolds]