The summer of 2001 in North America was one of unusual political torpor. In Canada, the daily headlines reported on an uncivil war within the opposition party. In the United States, the media had little to report other than a peccadillo involving a Congressman of little note. The presidency was slipping into a mediocrity that even the most ardent critics of George W. Bush could not have predicted at the time of the inauguration.

The attacks of September 11 changed all of this. Symbolic of the humid dog days of summer, the American president on that day was reading a book to a school class, yet another photo opportunity to show his devotion to “compassionate conservatism.” Several days later, the president delivered a speech to the joint houses of Congress, inspiring Americans and many others around the world to mobilize in a war against terrorism. The most common comment in speeches at the highest level and among ordinary folks was that the “world will never be the same,” “everything is now changed,” “we live in a new world,” and “forget everything that has happened before; we are now in a new era.”

This type of response is typical of armchair analysts following major world events. We would find numerous parallels in the discourses surrounding the end of the two World Wars of the twentieth century.