What have we learned since 9/11?

Tim Dalrymple, at Patheos, has a post asking the question “What have we learned?” and I hope you can read it. Here’s a good observation and then a potent concluding clip:

We stand before the ninth anniversary of a day in which three thousand Americans were slain by a hateful and bloodthirsty terrorist organization — an organization that still exists and still seeks our destruction, and that has inspired countless attacks around the world, including several successful small-scale attacks within the United States in recent years. Are we discussing the three thousand Americans who lost their lives? Are we discussing the American soldiers, and soldiers from other nations, who have responded to the threat? No. We’re discussing a bizarre Floridian pastor with a handlebar mustache and delusions of grandeur who proposed, to the fifty people who ostensibly attend his church (locals report a number closer to twenty), that they should burn some Korans as an act of defiance against Muslim encroachments on western values.

I am left asking, as I have often asked in recent years: Where are the adults? What ever happened to wisdom? Why do we seem to have so little perspective, so little ability to discern what is significant and what is insipid? If we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are in dire trouble.