From The Boston Globe
By Steven Biel

Approaching the fifth anniversary of 9/11, there seems to be something close to national unity in mourning the loss of national unity. A survey released last month by the nonprofit myGoodDeed.org concluded that 68 percent of Americans “feel that the climate of national unity and compassion that existed after 9/11 has largely dissipated.” Nearly as many agree that they “now have a greater personal sense of national unity and patriotism as a result of 9/11.”

Evidently, lots of us individually feel at one with the rest of the nation even though we don’t think most other Americans share these feelings. “It was the moment that was supposed to change everything,” David Broder and Dan Balz recently reminisced in The Washington Post. “But almost five years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American politics has reverted to many of its old habits and patterns.” Pundits and bloggers across the political spectrum wax nostalgic for the aftermath of the attacks and predictably blame the other side for the return of partisanship and divisiveness.

Nostalgia is built into invocations of national unity, since these invocations always call to mind a better time when unity prevailed, only to lapse into discord.

But what kind of post-Sept. 11 unity are we talking about when we bemoan its disappearance? In one of myGoodDeed’s survey questions, national unity is linked with compassion. In another, it is linked with patriotism. Compassion and patriotism are not the same.

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