Sorry Howard, Steven wins

For days, this page has been filled with the writings of those attempting to come to terms with the events of Sept. 11, 2001. That was also the day that my column bemoaning my terrible misfortune at achieving 30 happy, healthy years appeared. Believe me, I see the irony, and I stand humbled. \nI find in the aftermath that I was affected on several different levels. First of all, as a New Yorker, I can't begin to express how fundamentally wrong the skyline of Manhattan appears now. As a human being, well, the human side of the tragedy has been borne by all of us. No need for me to dwell there. But what I would like to dwell upon was how I was affected as an American. \nFor two days before that Tuesday, I had been mulling over a subject that proved tragically relevant. I had just been exposed to two diametrically opposing views of American history, and I was indulging in a little casual reconciliation of the two. I'm in the process of reading Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and I'd just seen the first segment of Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers on HBO.\nWith apologies to Mr. Zinn, whose book I'll admit I've not finished, I'd sum up it's main theme as follows: America was built through the exploitation of it's masses by an elite few who manipulated the populace into performing their labor and fighting their wars through brilliant use of hollow concepts such as "patriotism" or "freedom," for example. So says Mr. Zinn. And he makes some compelling arguments. \nWith his ideas fresh in my mind I tuned in to see "Band of Brothers" that Sunday night. (I have a huge war movie thing. I've lived complacently Soprano-less and Sex in the City-free, but I signed right up for HBO when "Band of Brothers" came along.) As interpreted by Steven Spielberg from Stephen Ambrose's book, it's a miniseries about a unit of paratroopers in World War II called "Easy Company." The show isn't so much "based upon" their experience as it retells their entire story. \nWatching it, I saw young men leap from airplanes into a night sky teeming with deadly artillery fire only to land (assuming they survived the jump) on foreign soil surrounded by hostile enemies. And, as Zinn suggests, they did leap to fight for ideas like "freedom" and "country." But Spielberg and Ambrose obviously feel that these men were heroes, not brainwashed lemmings seduced into battle by poetic words. \nWatching, I wondered if my generation, educated, jaded and spoiled as we are, would be willing to die fighting for those concepts. I decided, with a twinge of melancholy, that the days when Americans would lay down their lives to defend mere ideas have probably passed.\nTwo days later America proved me wrong with a vengeance. Americans responded to the brutal attack on our identity with a unity and enthusiasm that confirmed for me beyond a doubt that any generation, at any time, is willing to defend this way of life. \nSo apologies again to Zinn, but I think Spielberg and Ambrose got it right. "Patriotism" and "Country" aren't abstract concepts waved around by the powerful to incite the populace. Patriotism, Country, Liberty, all those ideals we Americans hold dear, are the tangible foundation upon which our entire nation is built. And until Sept. 11, 2001 I never really understood that.