Nobody with a drop of Irish blood in them could have failed to be proud of all the Irish names which have appeared on the role of honour from New York: O'Sullivan, Sweeney, Murphy, Dempsey, Keating, Doyle - almost like a cast-list of characters from a Jimmy Cagney movie. If anything, the Irishness of the dead is probably understated by an assessment based on purely "Irish" names.
Any list of Irish people will contain names of "non-Irish" origin, some because their owners are descended from immigrants of one kind or another, or because their original Irish names had been translated into English. The name Judge, for example, which was borne by the gallant priest who perished beneath the towers, normally derives from Mac an Breitheamhnaigh.
Irish America
Whatever their names, we should hold these Irish-Americans dear to our hearts from the blackest day in the history of Irish America - how black we may never know. For buried beneath the millions of tons of rubble, many of the dead simply no longer exist in bodily form: all that remains of them are tissue-smears and molecules and the memories of their loved ones in Longford or Louth, waiting anxiously for the news from the US which now will never come.
You can call many of the dead at the bottom of the building, and those who have been removing the debris, handful by handful, in long human chains, "firefighters"; but in doing so we obscure a larger truth, not just about this particular catastrophe, but about how society works at certain basic levels. For the most part, the "firefighters" are men, and the people whose bodies they are most determined to recover are their fellow firemen. This a male project, done according to male values, employing male virtues, within a male hierarchy. This is manliness at its finest.
You don't hear much of manliness these days; the word has been almost erased from our verbal data-banks. No doubt there are young people who have never heard it mentioned, or would probably sneer at it as being sexist and out-dated. Yet in our hearts, most of us know what manliness is.
Manliness is a perception of a greater duty than service to oneself or one's immediate clan. It is a willingness to accept orders within a hierarchy, and do so without question. It is stoicism amid travail. It is physical and moral bravery. It is the preparedness to bond with others whom you don't even like for some common purpose. It is a determination to honour one's dead. It is a willingness to risk one's own life to save perfect strangers.
These are manly things; and they are qualities to be proud of.
Male hierarchy
Of course, there are women firefighters, and women police officers; but we know that they are at their most effective when they accept the male hierarchy and male values. Male values made societies, and male values keep those societies together. This doesn't mean that many of the functions traditionally monopolised by men can't now be done by women; but we might ask ourselves about the qualities which exist within male groups that have little to do with ability, and everything to with the intangibles of bonding and of group loyalty.
It is one of the perverse asymmetries of contemporary popular culture that all-male groups are regarded as being odd, perverse, dysfunctional. Heterosexual men who cherish the company of men, and the bondings therein, are often looked on as deviant, inadequate, sad. "Laddishness" is a widespread term of abuse. But comparable groups of women are usually celebrated for their sisterhood, for being in touch with their feelings - whatever that witless banality may mean - and for being strong and independent.
Men have been abused long enough. It is long overdue for male qualities once again to be identified, cherished and respected. For what woman, what women, would have done what Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Thomas Burnett and Louis Nacke did on Flight 93 last week? These were the men who are believed to have overpowered the hijackers of their airliner after phoning their loved ones to say what they were going to do.
Phoned operator
Perhaps not being able to bear talking to his pregnant wife Lisa at home with their sons David (3) and Andrew (1), Todd Beamer (32), instead phoned an operator to tell her his intentions. He said: "I know I'm not going to get out of this." Together they then recited the 23rd Psalm. "Though I walk in the shadow of death, I fear not with You at my side."
He asked the operator to phone Lisa. "Tell her I love her and the boys." "Let's roll," he then said, as he and his colleagues stormed the hijackers, knowing they were going to their doom. And to that doom they duly went, taking their murderers with them, but thereby saving God alone knows how many people in the intended target of Congress on Capitol Hill.
When young boys ask what core value they should aspire to as adults, their parents can say: Duty. And they can point to the extravagant examples of Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Thomas Burnett and Louis Nacke. They did their duty to the land they loved; and God knows that land was blessed to have such sons, sons who unhesitatingly sacrificed their lives for freedom, for democracy and for uncountable hundreds of strangers far away.
In other words, real men.