Two weeks ago Monday, following the tragic events of Boston, CTV interviewed Tom Ridge as part of their coverage. Now Ridge is the former Secretary of Homeland Security, and aside from being the first man to hold that title and helping to manage the largest re-organization of the U.S. government in its history, his tenure in that post was largely unremarkable.
But Ridge, and this is how I took his appearance on the news, is a symbol of the immediate reaction post-9/11, a reminder that sweeping action was taken without a lot of thought about the consequences following a terrorist attack on American soil. Looking back on those events, it's easy to see where things might have gone wrong, and where other things might have gone too far, which is why it's a relief that any kind of visceral and emotional overreaction has been avoided - for the most part.
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