Never forget that we are stronger as a Union
2025/09/11 | Colorado
Never forget that we are stronger as a Union
With all respect to Abraham Lincoln, on the anniversary of September 11, as our country is once again facing civil discord
By Matt Barnes
“No day shall erase you from the memory of time” — The 9/11 Memorial and Museum, New York City
Twenty-four years ago, on September 11, one of the formative events of our generation, at least 2,977 people, including 343 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers, lost their lives amid a horrific act of ethnocentric violence perpetrated under a banner of patriotism and religion. We, fellow Americans and friends around the world, highly resolve that they shall not have died in vain. May we never forget the sacrifices they made, and may we never forget the sacrifices of innumerable people around the earth for the cause of democratic government.
And—indulging in a little American exceptionalism—may we never forget that ours is a rare country defined not by ethnicity, religion, or language, but by liberty, equality, and justice; and that it is our great privilege to inherit these values, and our great duty to build on that foundation to express those values more broadly and inclusively, in an ever more perfect union.
Note: This post is, of course, paraphrased from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
The significance of the Civil War in the modern American culture wars has been traced to competing versions of national mythology—myths of liberation, reconciliation, and the lost cause—by historian and culture critic Richard Slotkin in A Great Disorder (2024); and in that sense, this is an invocation of the liberation myth.
