(Part of UPI's Special Report on Sept. 11)
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- From a shabby trailer park in New Jersey to the ritzier neighborhoods out west, Americans have been unfurling their patriotism since Sept. 11.
Flags that once were displayed only on Flag Day, Fourth of July or on Memorial Day now are daily visions dancing in the winds, or replacing curtains in windows everywhere. It's not only pickup trucks that sport the American flag from antennas, but Lincolns, Cadillacs and fancy foreign imports. Enameled flag pins and glassy red, white and blue brooches decorate lapels and blouses.
Karin Page, of Flag-Works over America in Concord, N.H., said a woman in tears came in to buy a flag on Sept. 11, but by the following day business tripled and by Sept. 13 and for weeks following lines stretched out the door and around the block with customers seeking flags.
"We saw people wait in line for 1 1/2 hours to purchase a flag and when they finally made it to the register hug the person beside them before they left because they made a new friend during a time of tragedy for us all," said Page.
Patriotism has shown itself in other ways. Some recruiters say in the immediate aftermath of the terrorists attacks they had an increase in volunteers for the military, some of them veterans now to old or out of shape to join.
Others tell of an increased interest in what the government is doing and an increase in caring for others.
Along with that patriotism has come a heightened sense of security, an increased suspicion of strangers, and a feeling that the freedoms once enjoyed have diminished.
"From what I hear, people feel that there is less freedom," said Anita Lipman, a 55-year-old finance manager and grandmother from Revere, Mass. "But they don't care right at this point. They want the security."
Lipman, who travels on business, said that it took just a month for business travel to resume, despite the security headaches at airports.
She said people are "more conscious of security than they used to be. If someone was going to be afraid before, they won't fly, but otherwise, no. I don't think people are that much more afraid to fly."
Loren Shaw of Derby, Vt., is one of more than 1,000 pilots who planned to converge on Essex County, N.J.'s, airport Sept. 7, many of them carrying the flags of 50 states for a ceremony aboard the USS Intrepid in Manhattan the following day.
"We, as Americans, still need to fly," said Shaw. "We should live our lives free of terrorism."
The Flight Across America program began Aug. 11, with pilots on the West Coast barnstorming from one public airport to another, and others from each state joining in. Molly Peebles of Redmond, Wash., organized the trans-continental odyssey to demonstrate that the freedom of flight would not be restricted by the acts of Sept. 11.
"In the act of flying, pilots would be standing up for our freedom to fly that is so precious to us," Peebles says on her Web site.
Before the afternoon presentation ceremony Sept. 8, 50 aircraft carrying the state flags planned to fly down the Hudson River over the aircraft carrier that has become a floating museum.
The ceremony was just one of thousands being held across the United States to mark Sept. 11, which shook the United State like no other day since Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or the November 1963 day President Kennedy was assassinated.
From moments of silence at 8:48 a.m. EST, marking the time the first jet sliced into the World Trade Center in Manhattan, to unveiling memorials, both permanent and temporary, people of the United States will mark the event. There will be religious ceremonies from Saipan in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to hundreds of churches in the continental United States; mournful bagpipes in New York and Lewiston, Maine, and in numerous towns and cities the reading of names of those who died in Manhattan, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.
In Mesa, Ariz., an Indian Rosewood tree will be planted in memory of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a local Sikh businessman killed Sept. 15, 2001. Authorities said the man charged with his death said it was in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attack.
Most Texas politicians running for statewide offices, going one step further, have agreed to the suggestion of the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas, to suspend all radio and television advertisements from Sept. 1 to midnight Sept. 11.
"In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, the tone of the country changed," said Charley Wilkison, director of CLEAT. "People would let you in line ahead of them at the supermarket or on the freeways, people were nicer to one another. If there was a legacy for those people who died, and those police and firefighters who rushed in knowing they would die, if there was a legacy they could leave to all of us, why don't we in politics in Texas just have 11 days of silence."
Gov. Rick Perry, the Republican who succeeded George W. Bush in that office, is running a heated race against Tony Sanchez. Both camps say they will honor the memory of Sept. 11. Neither has agreed to remove all advertising for 11 days, but may go silent for a part of that term.
"I think the candidates are worried if they don't show concern with the anniversary and with the families that might be focused on a tragedy that struck them directly that they might pay a price for that," said Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University. "So I think they are complying defensively, as opposed to a firm conviction that they are morally obligated to do so."
The events of Sept. 11 also have raised the level of suspicion in the United States and heightened the debate over racial profiling, which began well before that date.
"I think people are afraid of their own shadow," said Anna Lombardi, a Malden, Mass., homemaker. "They have a tendency of looking behind their backs right now."
"I guess I have become a little more prejudiced since 9/11," said Theresa Lynn Melton of Seattle. "When I have seen groups of Mideasterners in public places, I am polite ... but I can feel the tension in the air."
She said just after Sept. 11 she was in a medical facility and there was a group of what appeared to be Middle Eastern people there. "They were acting defiantly. I felt at a deeper lever that if they are in our country, they are pushing our ability to tolerate them."
There also have been calls for more tolerance and appeals that people not be too quick to condemn others because of their nationality or beliefs.
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley held a news conference in August to announce the city's Sept. 11 plans. He said: "It's also important that we come together as a city to honor those who lost their lives, and to recommit ourselves to peace, understanding and tolerance and respect for humankind. These are not just American values, they are human values and they are shared by every religion and every nationality."
Charles Shanor, a constitutional law professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said prior to Sept. 11 public sentiment was 60-40 against racial profiling, while now it is 60-40 in favor.
At the same time, he said at a recent conference on post-Sept. 11 issues, new laws designed to strengthen domestic security have had an effect on civil liberties.
"The traditional standards for seizure have been abandoned," said Shanor, speaking of the some 1,000 people detained without charges or trial. He added, "The U.S. Patriot Act reintroduces McCarthy-era tactics that raise many civilian civil rights issues."
Under the Patriot Act, the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Sept. 11 will launch a new program requiring fingerprinting of various individuals seeking entry at U.S. ports, particularly nationals of Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya and Syria.
Locally, after Sept. 11, plans to make it easier for immigrants to get drivers licenses reversed, and state lawmakers began looking at ways to restrict immigration access, because of reports the attackers were able to obtain licenses. The National Immigration Law Center said most of the bills failed, but six states -- Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia -- passed restrictive laws. Most tie the license to expiration dates of visas, while Ohio issues a nonrenewable license and Virginia and Florida allow use of fingerprint identification.
"While none of us wants a national identifier, there's a much broader recognition that the driver's license...has really become the defacto identification card that we use," said Shirley Andre, who heads Iowa's Office of Driver Services.
This has raised the hackles of civil liberties groups. "It's not necessary to stigmatize these people, especially now," says Iowa Civil Liberties Union Director Ben Stone. "In this atmosphere of heightened nationalism, there is clearly the potential for trouble."
To many it appears the world has become a crazier place. It is not just the occasional homeless demented that they encounter on the street, but a broader vision of an evil encounter from unknown places.
Said Melton, "I think there are more "nut cases" from the Middle East, and that they're getting more power and that they're getting bolder since 9/11."
"Sometimes, yes, I think it's more publicity," said Kim Guerrette, a 34-year-old hair salon owner in Wells, Maine. "But other times I think the people who have the problems care even less about life. The suicide people, like the terrorists, nobody had suspected they would go down with the plane."
Whatever Sept. 11 did, it jolted the United States out of its complacency over external border security, while ripping apart the insular cloaks of states and of local law enforcement authorities. Apart from the massive Homeland Security Department foreseen by the federal government, authorities at the state and local levels are committing millions of dollars to developing better coordination across city and state borders.
At the August meeting of nine southern governors in New Orleans, they pledged to develop a video-conferencing system to respond to emergencies, including bio-terror attacks.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told the governors, "If you're prepared for every emergency you can think of, even if you have an emergency that happens, an attack, a terrorist attack, that you haven't anticipated completely, you will be much better prepared for it."
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(This story is part of UPI's special package commemorating the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It was written by National Editor Harold H. Martin with reporting by Dave Haskell in Boston, Les Kjos in Miami, Phil Magers in Dallas, Marcy Kreiter and Al Swanson in Chicago and Hil Anderson in Los Angeles)
