Word: vitalness
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...great show of declaring that no terrorist is going to make Americans alter the way they live. And while such swagger has served us well in the past, this time it may simply be discouraging us from admitting how downright scared we are. Doing so could be a vital step toward recovery...
There is a message in this for President Bush as well. At a time when the world is teetering on the brink of further violence, it is vital to strengthen all those institutions for peace. The law of unpredictable results means that violence may produce untold further violence in the future. This is particularly true in connection with the military strikes naturally being contemplated at the moment. If we were to spend even a fraction of the sums spent on defense budgets both in the U.S. and in the Middle East on serious peace initiatives, we would get much better...
This timidity may have been a response to the trouble Harvard rallies often have in keeping their causes straight. But the variety of rallygoers’ agendas does not excuse the blurring of vital distinctions that marred the rally’s message. In discussing the Bush administration’s warning to countries suspected of harboring terrorists, one speaker raised the example of domestic militia groups and the Ku Klux Klan. “We harbor those people,” he announced, and we harbored Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh—who, coincidentally, was executed last June...
...rally’s true purpose. Many of the messages conveyed were needed contributions to the public debate—especially the importance of peace-building, diplomacy and working as allies with the people of the Middle East who abhor terrorism. But on some of the most vital issues, the rally so restricted its message that it no longer spoke to the actual questions that policymakers—and the American public—are facing. Platitudes about the “cycle of violence” will not tell us how to respond if diplomacy fails...
...image of the World Trade Center will also have the vital power to tear us away from any inclination to forget our vulnerability, the hatred for America that exists in so many other parts of the world. Just as pictures of the Berlin Wall remind us of a time when political division and fear brought the world to the nuclear brink, images of the World Trade Center will focus our anger and sadness into action against terrorists. To erase those images would allow America to push last week’s tragedy from its immediate consciousness, thereby diminishing its long...