I want to build on an aside mentioned in Ben’s great post on remembering 9/11. He noted Susan Sontag’s dissent from the collective response to 9/11. While President Bush believed 9/11 had nearly revealed a union between heaven and earth; Sontag thought something less glorious had emerged—the kind of “soft despotism” theorized by Tocqueville. Below is an excerpt from Sontag’s devastating analysis: Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is Read more