A call to serve your country on 9/11
Posted: Thursday, September 11, 2008 4:26 PM by Cathy Finkler
by Chris Matthews
Today has been a day of reflection throughout our country, a truce between candidates. There were tributes and prayers at Ground zero Zn downtown Manhattan. Barack Obama and John McCain, both at Ground Zero today, agreed to share the stage at Columbia to talk about national service.
I think it's good that September 11 is shifting, if slowly, from a day for grief to a call for patriotic action, from touching sorrow to tough commitment.
John F. Kennedy, who said many wonderful things, said that "our problems are man-made -- therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable and we believe they can do it again."
I think both presidential candidates are committed to this proposition. Obama and McCain both are committed to encouraging and expanding national service among our people.
In that, we're lucky.
Neither the Democrat or the Republican is trying to buy us with easy promises of fat new tax returns or fat pork or other federal bennies flying forth from Washington. No. Both want to ask Americans to give, to help, to serve. Both "get it."
"Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country."
That's still, especially in these years after terrorism hit us at home and hit us bad, a great way to look at things. The biggest failure coming out of 9/11 has been the failure of our leaders to enlist as many of us as possible in the healing work of helping our country.
The two great memories I hold dear from the hell of seven years back was that look on the firefighter racing up the stairs of the World Trade Tower past the scared faces racing down. "It's my job."
And, yes, too, the picture I treasure of those passengers on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, knowing the trouble they were in, fighting their way into the cockpit as the killers charted their way here to Washington, this capital of freedom. Let's never, any of us forget, that the only victims of 9/11 who knew what they were up against did us so proud.
Watch the complete video of Matthews' commentary.
