Guest Post: 25 Years Later — We Must Never Forget
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by State Representative Will Wade, who is also the Republican Nominee for State Senate District 51.
Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, America was attacked.
I was a senior at one of our nation’s military universities. Although I was not in ROTC, I have a deep respect for those who wear the uniform and answer the call to serve. My maternal grandfather served during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Today, his remains rest at Arlington National Cemetery, within sight of the Pentagon, one of the places attacked that terrible morning.
My family understood a truth generations of Americans have learned through sacrifice: freedom has never been free.
My wife was teaching first graders to read that morning. She was largely sheltered from the unfolding news until the school asked parents to pick up their children early. Some of those young students had fathers who enlisted or were called to active duty beginning the very next day.
September 11 brought unimaginable evil and heartbreaking loss. Nearly 3,000 innocent lives were taken. Families were forever changed. Our nation was wounded.
But America did not surrender to fear.
America stood up.
In the hours and days that followed, we remembered who we were. We were not Republicans or Democrats first. We were Americans.
We prayed together. We mourned together. We raised our flag together. Churches filled. Americans donated blood, volunteered, enlisted, and stood beside first responders, military families, neighbors, and complete strangers.
Our differences became smaller than the things that bound us together.
Twenty-five years later, America needs that spirit again.
Our nation has never been perfect, and our history deserves honest examination. But acknowledging our imperfections does not require rejecting America or apologizing for its existence. It does not require abandoning the principles of liberty, human dignity, individual responsibility, faith, free enterprise, self-government, and equality under the law that have guided our progress.
That is particularly important today.
American families face real economic pressures. We feel them at the grocery store, in housing costs, healthcare bills, insurance premiums, and around the kitchen table. Young Americans understandably wonder whether the opportunities enjoyed by previous generations will remain available to them.
Those concerns deserve serious solutions not slogans.
And we must reject the siren song of socialism, socialism-lite, and communism; ideologies that promise economic security through greater government control while diminishing individual liberty, responsibility, free enterprise, and opportunity.
We should never confuse temporary economic hardship with a failure of freedom itself. Nor should we surrender permanent freedoms for promises of short-term economic comfort.
The answer is not ideological wish-casting or the belief that government can guarantee prosperity simply by redistributing it.
The American answer is to rise to the challenge.
Work. Build. Innovate. Compete. Serve. Reform what is broken. Expand opportunity. Reward initiative. Make it easier to raise a family, own a home, start a business, obtain an education, and pursue a better life.
We do not need less freedom to solve America’s problems. We need to make freedom work better for more Americans.
That is one of the lessons we must pass to the generation that did not witness September 11.
More than a third of Americans were not yet alive that morning. They deserve to know what happened—not merely as a chapter in a textbook, but as part of our national inheritance.
They should know about firefighters climbing stairwells while others were desperately trying to escape. They should know about police officers, paramedics, military personnel, ordinary citizens, and the passengers of Flight 93 who demonstrated extraordinary courage.
They deserve to know not only how America was attacked, but how America responded.
With courage. With compassion. With resolve.
Together.
My late father’s birthday was December 7, only a few years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. His family made certain he understood the significance of that date and the sacrifices of the generation that confronted tyranny abroad.
They understood something we must never forget:
A nation that forgets its history may eventually forget what its freedom cost.
Today, that responsibility belongs to us.
Parents, grandparents, teachers, veterans, and community leaders must tell these stories. We must teach our children about Pearl Harbor and September 11. We must tell them about those who answered America’s call, those who sacrificed, and those who never came home.
We do it so they will Never Forget.
But remembrance cannot simply be about looking backward. It places a responsibility upon the living.
Serve your community. Protect our freedoms. Help your neighbor. Respect those who serve. Stand for what is right. And disagree with your fellow citizens without treating them as enemies.
There will always be forces abroad that wish America harm. There will also be voices at home that have lost faith in the American experiment or believe our founding principles should be discarded rather than strengthened.
We should answer both with confidence, truth, and resolve, not hatred.
America is imperfect, but America is worth defending.
America is worth improving.
America is worth serving.
And America is worth passing on—stronger, freer, safer, more prosperous, and more united—to the generations that follow us.
Twenty-five years ago, those who attacked America sought to frighten us, divide us, and break our spirit.
They failed.
We must make certain that division, cynicism, economic anxiety, or failed ideologies do not accomplish from within what terrorists could not accomplish from without.
That does not mean Americans must agree on everything. Vigorous disagreement is part of a free Republic. But beneath those disagreements must remain something stronger: a shared belief that this country is still worth working for, improving, defending, and handing to our children.
When America is tested, Americans rise.
We rise because liberty is worth defending. We rise because our children deserve the blessings of freedom. We rise because generations before us sacrificed too much for us to surrender what they preserved.
And we rise because, despite all our differences, we still share a country, a history, and a future.
On this twenty-fifth anniversary, let us remember the fallen, honor those who ran toward danger, teach our children the truth, reject those who would divide us, and remain steadfast against ideologies that would diminish our freedom.
Then let us return to the great American work of building, serving, creating, improving, and rising—together.
God bless the families of the fallen. God bless those who have served and continue to defend our freedom.
And may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Never Forget.
