By Richard Landes

Most Americans had no idea, in the days after 9/11, just how many people around the world weren't grieving with them — some were celebrating.

A number of prominent European intellectuals published pieces within the week suggesting the attack was fully deserved: a blow against an overbearing superpower, or even a form of justice. One well-known American academic argued, through some remarkable logic, that the US was actually the world's worst terrorist state.

This reaction — blame the country that got attacked, not those who attacked it — didn't stay on the fringe.

A prominent religious leader in Chicago put it in five words that are still quoted today:

“America's chickens are coming home to roost.”

At the time, that kind of framing shocked people. A version of the same instinct, tried at a public memorial in San Francisco just days after the attack, caused deep consternation.

But over the following twenty-five years, that instinct — the country got attacked, so look at what the country must have done to deserve it — moved from the fringe to the mainstream of parts of the political left.

It's the same reflex driving reactions today. Understanding where this principled self-loathing came from, and how quickly it spread, is the subject of this day.