On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, 19 men murdered nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans. They slammed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania after heroes on Flight 93 refused to let the fourth plane reach its target.
So why were we attacked?
The United States was not at war with any nation. We were not trading missile strikes with a foreign capital. We did not have a massive occupying army stretched across the Middle East. Americans were going to work, sending children to school, and living as a free people who still believed — as we always have — that our liberties are a gift from God, not a permission slip from government.
We were also a strong nation standing in the way of rogue nations that would enjoy the opportunity to exploit other weaker nations.
A nation marked by the law of God
Outside of Israel, the United States is the only nation that places the Ten Commandments in a position of national prominence. Moses holding the tablets is carved into the United States Supreme Court — on the courtroom frieze, on the east facade, on the gates and doors that lead into the chamber where the highest law of the land is argued. That is not decoration. It is a confession. Despite the naysayers, the United States and our founding documents were inspired by the God of the Bible. The Declaration of Independence does not begin with a committee. It begins with a Creator who endowed us with unalienable rights.
Whoever stands up for truth, righteousness, and justice — whether a person or a nation — will be attacked, directly or indirectly. Even when you are not guilty of the crimes your enemies invent, they will come for you because you block their path. Al-Qaeda’s own words confirm it. They hated our presence near their holy places. They hated our alliance with Israel. They hated our culture.
They did not attack us because we were at war. They attacked us because of who we are.
What happened after the towers fell
The Gallup organization has tracked race relations in the United States for decades. In 2002, roughly 70 percent of white Americans and nearly 70 percent of black Americans said that race relations were either good or very good. People from different religions and cultures treated each other with mutual respect and tolerance. American Jews were not threatened and attacked in New York City or anywhere else in the United States the way they have been in recent years.
Twenty-five years later, we are a more divided country with fewer things that unite us as Americans. That did not happen by accident. It was deliberate, and it was designed to weaken us as a nation.
For the past 20 years, our public schools and universities have indoctrinated students with every sin of our nation’s past while stripping out the virtues, the corrections, and the unmatched record of a people who fought a civil war to end slavery, passed civil rights laws to secure equal protection, and an economic system that has created the largest middle class in human history for all its citizens.
To our detriment, our academic institutions have promoted socialism as a respectable alternative to capitalism and recast free enterprise as an evil, greedy machine built for the white elites. That is a lie. Capitalism is the only economic system that has lifted billions of people of every ethnicity out of poverty and into a prosperous life.
The path forward
There is a pathway forward, and it starts with self-awareness: the constant agitation of our differences, the erosion of tradition and respect for heritage, and the aggressive indoctrination of students are a deliberate and organized campaign to transform Americans into a compliant people who seek the assistance of government for every problem, real or perceived.
The only way to recover from this self-destructive nightmare is to awaken with a renewed effort to embrace the principles that founded this country. Not as museum pieces. As living law. A Creator. Unalienable rights. Limited government. Equal justice. The family as the first government. Faith as the first school of the conscience. Work as dignity, not exploitation.
Then do something our institutions will not do for us. Form groups of Americans — in churches, neighborhoods, shops, and towns across this country — committed to societies of mutual respect, mutual prosperity, and genuine understanding. Not the counterfeit unity that demands you apologize for existing. The real kind: neighbors who tell the truth, keep their word, raise their children, start businesses, and refuse to let race hustlers, socialists, or cynics set the terms of American life.
The terrorists who flew those planes believed America would fold. They believed a people this free, this prosperous, and this loud about God would shatter under pressure. For a season after 9/11, we proved them wrong. Then we spent a generation proving them half right — not because they were strong, but because we walked away from the source of our strength.
It is not too late. Nations are not saved by programs. They are saved when enough people remember who they are, humble themselves before God, and decide — together — that the American experiment is still worth defending.
Kendall Qualls is a U.S. Army Veteran, businessman, husband of 40 years and father of five.
Kendall Qualls
Kendall Qualls is the President of TakeCharge, Minnesota which is an organization committed to supporting the notion that the promise of America works for everyone regardless of race or station in life. Mr. Qualls was a Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota. Prior to his candidacy, he was a health care executive and served in the U.S. Army as an Artillery officer. Mr. Qualls has been married for 36 years and has five children.
