Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea1 one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?2 In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

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The American Idea

Scholars, novelists, politicians, artists, and others look ahead to the future of the American idea.



Also by David Foster Wallace:



Host

"The key to the John Ziegler Show," says the angry, outraged, and apocalyptically gleeful talk-radio host John Ziegler, "is that I am almost completely real." A report from deep inside the mercenary world of take-no-prisoners political talk radio. Scholars, novelists, politicians, artists, and others look ahead to the future of the American idea."The key to the," says the angry, outraged, and apocalyptically gleeful talk-radio host John Ziegler, "is that I am almost completely real." A report from deep inside the mercenary world of take-no-prisoners political talk radio.

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?