Nor did 9/11 prompt a great debate and rethinking of what risks freedom entails, what its nature is, and what the need for heightened security demands from our government and from us. What does it mean that government exists to secure our liberty, and what should we do with that liberty, once secured? Today people take it for granted that we will be frisked, poked, and prodded in all sorts of ways, but that it mostly amounts to pointless security theater. They take it for granted that our established security state is so unsecure that it can be easily penetrated by foreign governments with no consequence for them. They assume our government spies on us, but also assume that it is not very good at it.

Think back to other epochal moments in American history: the moment Americans learned of Lexington and Concord, or Fort Sumter, or Pearl Harbor. What did Americans do on hearing that news?

At bare minimum, they were forced to take a stand within their communities in reaction to the great event. They had to make a choice. They had to change their lives.

Nothing like that happened on 9/11. It came and it went. We wept and we forgot. The indictment of our society today is that 9/11 wasn’t a date that changed everything for us, not for the elites, and not for the people.