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 the people 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 a genuine uproar.

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 it came from, and how quickly it spread, is the subject of this day.