If you’ll notice the headline captured in the photo above, it’s still a pretty good summary of how many of us feel, eleven years later.  I for one, am still angry.  We are supposed to forgive and forget but, I cannot.

I cannot forgive or forget the fact that almost three-thousand of my countrymen were killed, over six-thousand injured, and all our lives were forever altered. I cannot forgive and forget the fact that in the years since then, we have lost nearly 6,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. Over 42,000 of them have been injured in that time.  And of course, no one counts the scars we can’t see…Injuries inflicted on even those who have managed to come home “without a scratch.”  There’s no official tally for families torn apart, dreams deferred, or those that will simply never be.  No, I cannot and will not forgive those responsible the attacks and I will not forget those moments of terror or the decade of pain, suffering, and sacrifice that has followed.

In a cruel twist of irony, our country knew a sense of unity it hasn’t seen since World War II.  That time however, was fleeting.  Politics and politicians couldn’t let a tragedy go to waste.  Someone had to be held responsible and the finger-pointing began before the bodies of those we lost were cold. It continues to this day.  And while our Armed Forces have spent a decade fighting and dying to defend our way of life and the freedoms we take for granted, many of our politicians have been busy since September 12th, 2001, stripping us of those very freedoms. All in the name of “safety and security.” Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

So as we remember this day, I am suggesting that we also remember who we were prior to September 11, 2001.  While we were never perfect and never will be, it seems that we need to once again, embrace our own magnificence as a people.  I am suggesting a renewed recognition of the fact that living in the US means living a life of greater opportunity than many, if not most other parts of the world, in spite of our flaws.  I suggest that rather than continue the path to be more like every other country in the world, that we remember our legacy as the land of the free and the home of the brave.  I for one would rather live dangerously free than safely enslaved. I think that is the only proper way to memorialize September 11th.

-Gary