For a full week on NPR there was nothing whatsoever to be heard but reflections on the World Trade Center disaster. Did television do the same thing? Does it seem that this is too much? Someone mentioned that one year after Peal Harbor, the bombing was commemorated by a moment of silence and the tooting of a whistle, and not much more.

One day after the bombing, all the pundits were saying it was a "defining moment" and that the world would never be the same. I personally have not noticed the world changing all that much. It has been my observation that people are changed by their own experiences over a prolonged time. The Depression, World War II, and the Vietnam war really changed people's attitudes. Disasters change the world for people who experience them.

Perhaps I am an old curmudgeon. But to me it seems like a great nation so sunk in self-pity and self-congratulation is maybe a bit decadent.

The disaster was terrible. All disasters are terrible, especially for those who experience them. But disasters also happen every day. Much worse things have happened in our lifetimes. For example, in Ruanda, and at Bhopal, and in Bosnia. No one has ever said Bhopal is "hallowed ground." Really horrible things are perpetrated every day Israel. Real people are dying in Afghanistan. Maybe that's war. Maybe it is inevitable. But those people are just as human as the ones in the World Trade Center. Have we completely lost our sense of proportion?

I'm sure what I've just said will be offensive. But am I wrong?