Freedom and 9/11 - Harvard University

Issue #21, Summer 2011 Freedom and 9/11 Orlando Patterson One of the major consequences of 9/11 has been its dreadful impact on the nation s conception and experience of Freedom , its core secular value. Nearly all Americans consider themselves to be very free regardless of class and ethnicity, although what exactly this means, and how it is experienced, has always been strongly contested. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 severely exacerbated these differences and contradictions, and have provided the opportunity for the greatest threats to civil liberties since the McCarthy era, threats perversely carried out, as in that era, in the name of Freedom itself. To understand these effects one must first recall the pre-9/11 complexities of Freedom in America. Since the nation s founding, two broad traditions of Freedom have competed for hegemony: a more public and increasingly liberal progressive tradition, and a conservative one that has become more and more privatized.

Issue #21, Summer 2011 Freedom and 9/11 Orlando Patterson O ne of the major consequences of 9/11 has been its dreadful impact on the nation’s conception and experience of freedom…

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