Soule America

She sits by her window in the June twilight, the numbness of despair taking possession of her. On the table lies all the money she owns in the world. It is sufficient to cover the few bills she owes, the salary of the woman who has traveled with her as maid and companion, and pay her passage back to her native land. But what then America once reached, where can she go, to whom can she turn The distant relatives, the friends who crowded around her in her days of success, anxiously seeking a smile, a word, a token of her favor, how will they receive her if she goes to them a pauper, a dependent upon their charity There is no one to whom she can turn, no place to which she can go, and as the twilight deepens a heavier blackness settles upon the soul of the girl. 

Maybe we ask post-9/11 -related questions because of who we are, what we are, and what we are not. That is, because we are Americans we are free, uninhibited thinkers who think what we say and say what we think—isn t America great Most Americans are soft-hearted and sympathetic to those in need—compassion is the very nature and soul of being American. Americans are not born terrorists they are not born into a terrorist regime they are not raised with fear in their hearts—they are not afraid every time they leave their homes and go about their daily business. Suicide bombers and other like terrorists are those that occupy some other faraway place, definitely not America, and they are definitely not American. Right ... 

One of the central claims of practically all religions is that we each have some kind of soul, a nonphysical center of being and consciousness that may or does survive physical death. Although the majority of people in America and in the world today believe they have a soul, the idea has been totally dismissed by science as something certainly not fit for scientific inquiry. 

Yet nol America, whose soul aspires To warm her sons with Europe s brightest fires,... 

America s drift toward pharmacracy has not escaped the attention of perceptive social commentators. Our politicians, observes Andrew Ferguson, are transcending politics. How is it... that politicians who for years promised to keep government out of our bedrooms now see fit to invite their way into our souls They have cast themselves as empaths soul-fixing is their job.. . . Their bet is that America today wants a Therapist in Chief j deed, the medical metaphors regularly used by our leaders—and their wives and cabinet members—have made them seem such. 

This scurrying around for a causal theory - or, at least, a language for making sense - is found in all moral panic texts. If indeed, in President Clinton s words. Columbine had pierced the soul of America we must find out why this event happened and how to stop it happening elsewhere. Moreover, if this happened in a place like Columbine (and most school massacres do happen in such ordinary places) then it could well happen elsewhere. 

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