Arthur Brooks writes that he was in New York on the morning of September 11, 2001, when he saw the North Tower explode from a cab on the Long Island Expressway. In the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, he learned on the taxi radio that an airplane had hit the North Tower and that the South Tower had been struck as well. After he got out near Fifth Avenue and 37th Street, he had a direct view of both towers as they burned and, later, watched them collapse.
That memory is not only personal. Brooks argues that the country’s immediate response showed something rare: Americans came together. He points to Pew Research Center data showing that, right before the attacks, 31 percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do what was right 'just about always' or 'most of the time.' Shortly after, that figure nearly doubled to 60 percent, a 30-year high.
Brooks also cites the elevation of Rudy Giuliani, then New York City mayor, as 'America's Mayor,' and the 90 percent favorability rating President George W. Bush held by late September 2001. He says trust in government and leadership is closely tied to how positive and engaged citizens feel about their larger community. He adds that volunteering rates rose sharply, not only for 9/11-related charities but for causes unrelated to the attacks as well.
The record matters because it shows that national unity is not just a mood; it is an institutional fact with measurable consequences. When people trust leadership and one another, they give time, money, and attention to the common good. When that trust falls away, the incentives point in the opposite direction: suspicion, fragmentation, and civic exhaustion.
Say it plainly. A country cannot grieve together for long if it no longer believes in shared institutions. The events of 9/11 briefly reversed that drift, but the numbers Brooks cites also show how exceptional that moment was. It was a surge, not a permanent settlement.
What remains is the harder lesson. Civic solidarity does not come from slogans. It comes from institutions that earn trust and from leaders who do not spend it carelessly. That is the trade-off Americans still face: either rebuild the habits of public trust, or keep watching the common life thin out one crisis at a time.
