Patriotism is more powerful than politics

by Greg Johnson

As somber, respectful and emotional commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred on Saturday, we wondered why we go to such lengths to remember something so horrible.

It’s certainly easier to bury and ignore the unpleasant than to go out of our way to relive it again.

It’s simple. We remember days like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the space shuttle Challenger exploding and 9/11 so they may never be repeated. It’s why these events, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, “will live in infamy.”

This anniversary comes at an especially difficult time for our nation. At all levels, America is as divided as she’s been in generations.

But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from 9/11 and haven’t forgotten is how one of our darkest hours also became one of our brightest. The attacks galvanized and hardened a nation many thought had grown soft.

We proved that patriotism is more powerful than politics.

Suddenly, President George W. Bush wasn’t a Republican president or a conservative president. He was THE president. The same for Congress and our swift and hard response to the attacks. And that response wasn’t the GOP’s plan or a Liberal plan, it was just THE response.

One of the most iconic and memorable moments to come out of 9/11 was President Bush’s bullhorn address. It was Sept. 14 amid the rubble and destruction of Ground Zero and it lasted less than 2 minutes.

In the middle of talking to rescue workers, one yells out: “I can’t hear you!”

“I can hear you!” Bush replies. “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

The workers respond with a loud and long chant of, “USA, USA, USA …”

Despite how more than 16 months of extreme political division, a surging pandemic and frayed emotions have us emotionally battered, we are still the United States of America.

This anniversary of one of our “days of infamy” comes with a promise and reminder that if our country were the target of another 9/11-type attack, we would instantly again be one nation with a unified voice.

Our strength and endurance isn’t our form of government or national wealth. It’s us.

It wasn’t an accident that the first words of the U.S. Constitution are, “We the people.”

-from the Laramie Boomerang