Dear Gloria,
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” More than a century after George Santayana wrote those words, they carry particular weight as America marks 25 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Twenty-five years ago, our nation walked through the worst terrorist attack in its history. Almost 3,000 innocent people were murdered. The World Trade Centers crumbled to the ground. Families were shattered. The Pentagon burned. And it was all as a result of jihadists whose life mission was “Death to America.”
The spirit of the American people is the fabric of our nation, and radical Islamists penetrated our borders and dared to take hold of it, but they failed.
In the hours and days that followed, Americans ran toward danger to save complete strangers. Firefighters climbed the stairs of burning towers. Police officers and first responders put the lives of others before their own. Neighbors cared for neighbors. Churches filled with people praying for our country. Americans lined up to donate blood, hung flags from their homes, and stood together as one nation.
Now, we stand on the other side of history, and the greatest mistake we can make as a nation is believing that the threat of radical Islam has come and gone. Just twenty-five years later, the same city that lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, elected a mayor who sympathizes with men and women who stand firmly on the belief that America deserved the events of that fateful day. What an atrocity. Americans have lost the capacity to go back, not generations but years, and remember who caused the events of September 11. Lives were senselessly stolen by men who sought to bring our country to its knees, and liberal DEI policies that prioritize a checked box over merit have led so far down a road of passivity that we don’t know right from wrong, and aren’t willing to call out the evil.
1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” We are ignorant if we don’t see the threat on our doorstep.
A war is being waged over our nation’s schools, classrooms, and universities to determine the trajectory of the next 50 years. Those who want to bring our nation to its knees are very much still out there. As we sit on our porches and passively allow socialist politicians who sympathize with terrorists to have a platform in front of the American people, we’ve left the back door open to the minds of our children, allowing this rhetoric to shape their perspective and beliefs, twisting everything this country stands for.
As fewer Americans have firsthand memories of September 11, our schools will play an increasingly important role in ensuring its lessons are not lost.
In Texas, we are taking that responsibility seriously. The Texas State Board of Education recently approved revised high school social studies standards that make clear the connection between radical Islam and the 9/11 attacks.
The state of our nation depends on getting this right. The next generation is relying upon us to get this right. They need to know the truth. America’s next generation is growing up in a world that praises al-Qaeda sympathizers, thinks socialism works, and blames our country for one of the worst things that has ever happened on American soil. They need to know of the lives lost and the hurt that ricocheted throughout every corner of our nation, but they also need to know of our response. The resiliency of the United States of America showed up in the days following one of the worst days in history.
The resilience of the American people deserves to be etched into the history books, and it’s our job to do so. Our sons and daughters deserve to know that in the hour of greatest need, the American spirit didn’t bend or break to tyranny. Students in Texas will not suffer because academia traded in truth for what was politically feasible. Our students will know the history of our nation, and while they might not have experienced it, they will forever remember it, and never fall prey to the guise of ignorance, forgetting the events of that day and the ideology of radical Islam that caused it. The courage and resilience that are woven into the fabric of our country will prevail in our history books if we’re willing to fight for it, and as a result, the United States of America will prevail.
