America is strong, free after 9/11

Despite our imperfections, our stubborn hubris, our vulnerabilities, hope remains in our nation.

America in the weeks following the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil seems otherworldly now. It’s not just the impossible images of twin steel Everests reduced to rubble, or the dazed faces of New Yorkers caked in ash, or the 24-hour news vigil whose fresh horrors we could not turn off.

It is also the memories of unity that we have not seen since. Americans stood together against a common foe that we didn’t yet understand.

In October 2001, amid airstrikes by America and its allies against the Taliban and al-Qaida, 79 percent of adults said they had displayed an American flag, according to a Pew survey, and trust in the federal government stood at 60 percent. Today, it’s around 25 percent.

Trust, of course, is a double-edged sword. A nation needs it to flourish, but too much upends the delicate balance in a democracy, where We The People are relied upon to check government power, deter unjust wars and defend individual liberties, collective well-being and the rights of minorities.

Twenty years later, as we honor the selflessness of first-responders at ground zero, the heroism of passengers and crew on United 93, the infinite pain of families who lost loved ones, and the ultimate sacrifices of thousands of service members in the wars that followed, we also reflect on how Sept. 11 changed America and each of us, personally.

Sept. 11 shook us, scarred us, tested us, remade us but could not break us. As told through the eyes of several members of the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board, the America that endures in our hearts, memories and daily lives is as real as a healing fall evening at Shea Stadium, strangers dancing Zydeco, the patriotic dissent of Frederick Douglass, and the flicker of an American flag on a TV screen in the U.S. customs line.

America endures because enough of us believe she can. In that spirit that we share these stories.