A terrible beauty

[pde]

Then the first plane hits the towers. Then the second, followed in turn by the dreadful collapse. Within a very short time you make the joyful discovery that you are not a misanthrope after all. Phoenix-like, your heart is reborn from the ashes, bouyed in part by the shameful sensation of lightness that comes from knowing they were somebody else's ashes. You love the human race. At least you love Rudy Giuliani. And firemen. And New Yorkers. How could you not? Everybody on earth, in fact, except terrorists, and those who harbor terrorists, and those who support terror, and those who might be doing any or all of the above, and perhaps also those too squeamish to see the wisdom of the articles that begin to appear in respected national publications discussing the imminent necessity of torture, and all of a sudden, in the words of Yeats and in the manner of Celine, "a terrible beauty is born."

-Garret Keizer, "How the Devil Falls In Love: Misanthropy, Prejudice, and Other Follies", Harper's Magazine, August 2002.