The nation makes its solemn 10-year observance of the 9-11 terror attacks on Sunday. It will be emotionally restorative to stop, reflect, and then…to get on with things.

Those horrifying events of 2001 have become part of the national memory. They are burned, like scars, across the skin of the American experience.

What person, who was of cognitive age on that beautiful day, does not recall the grim scenes, heaped one upon the other until the confusion of images no longer made sense? Smoke billowing from one of the twin towers. A plane barreling into the second, broadcast across the nation. Smoke rising from both towers. People running. The collapse. Smoke rising from the Pentagon. Government workers evacuating and gathering on the Mall. Rumors of more hijacked planes. Smoke rising from a deep hole in a Pennsylvania field, as heroes thwarted what would have been another, even far worse calamity. Towers collapsing.

Horror, debris, bodies, crushed fire trucks, terrified fac...