I often disagree with the editorial board; however I agree quite strongly with Wednesday’s editorial. With regards to Sept. 11, the absence of facts in treatments of the subject, in particular that given by the NEA, is disconcerting and offensive to thinking men and women.

My concern here is with one particular aspect of the editorial complaint. In nearly every treatment (of Sept. 11), one finds little more than an accounting of emotional and sentimental reactions. While it is important that every individual come to terms with both the proper and ordinate sentiment that is due and his own personal emotions in reaction to these events, the preponderance of emotional treatments leads one to believe that here the facts are subordinate to the emotions: That in fact we come to understand war and tragedy through our emotional reactions to them, rather than having our factual understanding of the events procure our emotions and our sentiments.

Lewis wrote that the head rules the belly through the chest. What he meant was that our baser instincts must be ruled by intellect, not by emotion; but emotion and sentiment must always be considered carefully by that intellect.

Our ability as a nation to let the “head rule through the chest,” and not the other way around, will affect how we interpret both history and the present and will determine how we deal with events of such gravity in the future.

Jeremy Alm

Graduate

Mathematics