I am not interested in political statements or warnings or diatribes on this anniversary of 9/11.

I’m not inclined to write a post about how we’ve lost our way in the years since then, about how the terrorists have won if their goal was to irretrievably break this country apart and allow fundamentalism to take root in the gaps left by horror. No.

Still, all those American flags after 9/11. On cars, doors, houses, mailboxes, buildings, lapels. I don’t see them so much anymore. Our hatred of...