Capitalism and democracy endure as twin towers.

• Author: SCHWAB, ROBERT

IF YOU ARE A WRITER AND YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY to put your thoughts into print following events like the horrific attack on the United States that occurred Sept. 11, you must write about them.

As I do today, thousands are presumed dead, the nation's financial markets remain closed, an initial gas-price panic has been calmed, and five New York City firemen have been found alive in the ruins of the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.

And our anger is being steeled to a deadly but implacable resolve as the tragedy continues to unfold.

If the mad men who planned this destruction and theft of human life had hoped the United States and the rest of the world would stop for one day to watch them murder others and die, they got their wish.

One day -- I'll give them that.

But no more than a day.

Analysts said quickly that the acts of war committed against us on Sept. 11 could throw the already shaky economies of the world into a recession. My own thoughts that morning were worse: That the economic shock of an American war could kick off another worldwide depression.

Aiming our own commercial jets at our own people in our own buildings was that serious and symbolic. It was a direct assault on American capitalism and American democracy, and it was meant to derail us, to shut down history's most successful political experiment at improving the lives of large numbers of human beings.

The best retribution this country could...