I am an American

I am an American and yesterday was September 11th. For one brief span of time ten years ago, nearly everyone came together in unity. As a nation, we had been attacked. As a people, we seemed in that moment to become united. Sadly, that has drifted away. The liberals fight the conservatives, and politics is a cess pool of invective–civility has fled like animals fleeing from a forest fire. We think it has not always been like that.

I will not forget 9/11. I won’t forget the planes plowing into the towers of the World Trade Center, nor the horror of watching bodies jump or fall from the windows. I won’t forget the heroism of the firefighters, and others, who devotedly continued on trying to save as many as possible, even as the buildings collapsed on top of them. How can one ever forget that?

But there’s another thing I won’t forget. I won’t forget how we came together as a people, united, caring and loving. Determined. I won’t forget how we are all much more alike than we are different. And I would like to think that no matter how you believe, whether you agree with me or not on any number of topics of vital interest, that I would bust down a door to pull you out if need be. For the common cause that unites us all, is freedom and liberty, the sense that humanity matters and people’s opinions are valuable, that the rights of an individual are vital to the continued liberty, and even humanity of us all. I am an American. We are Americans.