We Gather Together

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President Bush, meanwhile, maintains an approval rating of 87%, according to last week's TIME/CNN poll, paralleling the increased faith in government generally. But that trust is not blind. "Americans expect government to step in here and do its job. It is not a glassy-eyed love of government," says Paul Light, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who co-authored a recent report on changing attitudes. "What we're seeing here is a demand for action. It's a tenuous surge in trust." The number of people who say they have "a great deal of confidence" in the government's ability to prevent more attacks has slipped from 41% to 25%, according to the TIME/CNN poll. The President did his part last week to bolster public faith in the government's antiterror campaign. In his speech Thursday night, Bush managed a more subtle version of his exhortation to get back to normal, wherever that is these days. "There is a difference between being alert and being intimidated," he said. While these times require vigilance, he also called on citizens to perform community service or volunteer in some way, whether to tutor a kid or join a neighborhood watch or help out at a hospital.

It was as though the President understood that like the religious revival, patriotism is personal, especially for those for whom it is new. Among families who always said the Pledge of Allegiance before high school football games and didn't have to go out and buy a flag, not much has changed. But for the eternal skeptics, whose views were defined by Vietnam and its aftermath, who viewed the Gulf War as being more about oil than justice, the new patriotism represents a kind of homecoming. The same is true for many whose lives until now were defined largely by their differences. "I was very skeptical of the new unity back when people first started waving flags," says Brandon Wolf, 54, a computer programmer from Houston. "I'm not skeptical anymore." As a gay man, he was struck by a sudden sense of belonging. "There was media coverage of gay families, gay pilots and gay heroes. The Red Cross responded without blinking that it would honor gay and lesbian relationships when determining who would be provided assistance. And then to top it all off, Jerry Falwell got a public whipping. I am nearly immune to him, so when he blamed gays for the tragedy, I just rolled my eyes. I was stunned to see that mainstream America seemed to have told him that he finally went too far."

Whether it's the stress or the fear or the sense of purpose, the issues people find they have in common overwhelm what once divided them. "I think people realize that we are one country and we have one goal, and that's to live and survive," says Peter Devonish, 42, a Jamaican-born printer in New York City's West Harlem. "People stop putting first politics and color and rich and poor and just realize that the problem that faces me is the problem that faces you. We see the security guards in the World Trade Center--little people were affected by the terrorist attacks too."