9/11 at 25: From ‘Where Were You?’ to ‘Where Are We?’

Where were you?

This is the typical question asked to anyone alive on Sep. 11, 2001, a day so universally trajectory-altering that it is impossible not to remember a personal moment in time.

Unfortunately, it’s come to a point where that question should be replaced with another: where are we on Sep. 11, 2026?

While 9/11 has been frequently used as a somber reminder of lessons learned, it has become apparent that it is now also a chilling reminder of lessons not learned. (RELATED: What We Must ‘Never Forget’ 25 Years After 9/11)

Monumental anniversaries not only bring but also require grave reflection. This year’s 25th anniversary serves as a harsh marker of just how far we’ve moved away from that moment in time, and how easily forgotten its severity and significance have become — not just in terms of the act itself, but the specific reasons that led to it, and the underlying ideology that birthed those reasons.

It is nothing short of surreal to realize that a third of this country today was not even born yet or too young to form memories. And it is no coincidence that as this domestic collision with terrorism fades from people’s personal existences, we also see a rise in apathy, sympathy, and sometimes even glorification of the attackers.

We know who celebrated America’s terror tragedy decades ago, and it is an utterly repulsive irony that they are who too many young Americans are now celebrating today.

The core promise itself to “never forget” has often been forgotten in more ways than one. It has been forgotten that, like the young’s beloved jihadist freedom fighters of today, Al-Qaeda also blamed and framed themselves as victims of Western ideology. It has been forgotten that the violence on 9/11 was also the result of “globalizing the intifada.” And it has ironically been forgotten that the very reason jihadi wannabes can all freely strut around as junior terrorists, shouting “death to America” in American cities, is precisely due to the very freedoms for which their headbanded heroes would murder them. (RELATED: The Day the Light of the World Went Out)

That collective bonding of patriotism which got our nation through incomprehensible devastation has too often been dismissed in favor of a perverse competition of who can bash America the most. Self-proclaimed “humanitarians” have traded genuine convictions of bravery, selflessness, and sacrifice for a shallow and snide performance of them. And perhaps most dangerous of all are those who simply relegate this date to irrelevance, only considered a past problem that could never affect today.

And so, we have quite literally reached an era where American congressional hopefuls will gladly stump with not only a loud terror apologist, but one who proudly claims that our attack was deserved. Where Gen Z has turned bin Laden’s manifesto for massacre into a social media trend, filming personal epiphanies of understanding. Where support for terror groups is not only publicly acceptable, but twisted into sick social justice, taught on campuses and paraded through streets with flags and slogans of hate and death. And where the very home of the fallen Twin Towers elected a leader who cannot, and doesn’t even care to, shake his personal and professional connections with terror sympathizers. (RELATED: Hasan Piker and the Democrats Who Embrace His Violent Rhetoric)

Where we are is genuinely appalling. But the reality is that we cannot confront these unimaginable results without naming the originating reasons that laid the framework for them.

In a PC-obsessed culture more fearful of offending feelings than physical offense, often considering language truer “literal violence” than actual brutality, and Islamophobia a bigger crime than Islamic terror, it is no wonder that such a moral 180 has been allowed to fester. (RELATED: The Questions We Must Ask About Islam)

It is a social paralysis due to passive discomfort or active unwillingness to internally admit and externally speak basic truths, opting instead to dress them up as narratives more socially acceptable and less societally sustainable, and that is how we find ourselves in this grotesque mess of irony today.

“Never forget” must only be the first part of a mandate. We can never forget who did this. They were not “some people” who “did something.” This was an attack by Muslim terrorists. We can never forget why they did this. This was an attack on not just the United States, but Western civilization. An ideological loathing not just for a certain way of life, but truly life itself. Most importantly, we can never forget that this evil remains waiting, and at the next available chance, many will jump at the opportunity to attack again. (RELATED: The West Is a Superior Civilization (And I Don’t Care If That Offends You))

This must be stated easily and plainly, not strained and politely, and with complete clarity, not muddying euphemisms. We cannot ever struggle to state and teach the truth, because that means we have indeed forgotten.

As the quote goes, freedom is not free, and it must be defended. At the very least, that includes never taking it for granted by emboldening those who despise it through pathetic passivism. A quarter century simply cannot be allowed to be all it takes to topple morality and bury reality with our lost buildings and lives.

On this anniversary and always, the onus and honor must be on all of us to not only remember the fundamental lessons of our past tragedies, but to remember to extend the necessary understanding of and respect toward them so that they can never become future ones. Because as it stands now, this nexus of amnesia toward history with an aversion to reality is simply not something we can afford any longer.