It is easy to look at September 11th and wonder, ‘What horrible person could turn a commercial airplane into an enormous missile?’ ‘Why would anyone want to take away so many innocent lives?’ These are fair questions. Ever since the incident, I always viewed 9/11 as caused by pure insanity.
Clearly, I still think of those terrorist as psychotic bastards (excuse my French). But just recently, a disturbing thing entered my mind: They never looked at themselves as the enemy. In their minds, they were fighting for what they believed in, which sounds an unsettling amount like what teachers and parents have been telling me to do all my life. Perhaps they were even convinced that this is what their God was telling them to do.
Now OBVIOUSLY I am in NO way justifying what they did, but I am becoming curious about where we can fairly draw the line of 'fighting for what you believe in' in other situations. If you are walking around picking up trash to fight pollution, sure that’s great. If you are fighting for your first amendment right by using profanities in the classroom, eh... Would you steal a pack of cigarettes from someone if you were passionate about saving the environment? Would you free all 13 of an old lady’s cats into the wild if you were a strong believer of animal rights? What is ‘right’? Where can we draw the line?
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