With 911, we lost something we have never been able to find

I really wasn't going to write about what happened 12 years ago today.

Yes, it was terrible. Yes, many innocent people lost their lives. And yes, police officers and firefighters showed amazing courage, many of them making the ultimate sacrifice and giving what President Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion."

For a month or so after the attacks, we stood united against the world.

Then all that changed.

Without blaming either side, the two parties now find themselves in such opposing places that for the first time in my lifetime, there doesn't seem to be any willingness to find middle ground.

Indeed, those on one side don't even think there should be a government, a position that goes far beyond Ronald Reagan and other conservatives of the modern era.

Neither side seems willing to accept that the other is operating in good faith.

Neither seems willing anymore to accept their opponents as good Americans, or even as reasonable people.

I can't help but wonder that the police and firefighters who rushed into the burning buildings to try and save lives would think of us if they were alive today.

I somehow doubt they would be proud of us.

Everyone has their own image that says 9/11 to them. For some it's the iconic shot of the three firefighters with the flag, for others it's President Bush on the bullhorn.

The picture that won't leave my mind is of the people who gave up on being rescued and decided to die on their own terms. They jumped, some alone and some together, and they fell all the way to the ground. Someone asked me how long I thought it took. I said it took a very long time. It took the rest of their lives.

And it has stayed with us ever since.

I honestly don't know if we can ever get back to where we were on Sept. 10th, 2001, but I do know one thing.

We damn well better try.