Has there ever been a day during which the American people as a whole ran the gamut of emotions as we did on September 11, 2001?
There was exaltation and thanks for the glorious morning along the eastern seaboard and the Midwest, a warm September sun bursting through a flawless blue ceiling.
There was confusion at the first reports of an aircraft hitting one of the World Trade Center towers at the edge of Manhattan. Was it a traffic helicopter? Was it a small plane? Was it pilot error?
There was numb shock at the images of black smoke beginning to engulf one of the towers, helpless people trapped inside. Then came the second plane, its fiery explosion, and the realization that these were not accidents. Thoughts began to turn to the number of people in the buildings. How many were trapped inside? 30,000? 50,000? 100,000?
There was absolute horror as the buildings of the World Trade Center vanished, and the skyline of Manhattan was rapidly obscured by white smoke. If you witnessed all of this or any of this in person, you know that absolute horror does not even begin to describe hell on Earth.
There was fear. What was to come next? Do I know anyone possibly still in the air and at the mercy of hijackers? Do I know anyone in the towers or in high rises across the country? Are we safe where we are?
There was anger and the demand for answers to suddenly salient questions: Who did this? When do we retaliate? As it happened, a group of passengers still in the air knew the answers to both questions. They were on board United Airlines Flight 93.
Much has been deservedly written and aired about the story of Flight 93, which is, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, altogether fitting and proper. The patriots of 93 — the members of the flight crew, loved ones on the ground filling them and the passengers in on cell phones, the men who rushed their attackers — pieced together what was happening in New York and Washington and knew what they had to do. They discussed their options, they took a quintessentially American vote on their plan of attack, and they said their good-byes. They counterattacked the agents of barbarism. They likely kept an integral symbol of our republic — either the White House or the Capitol — intact.
Their courage saved countless lives on the ground in Washington, D.C., including the very representatives of our republic. But the symbolic importance of what they preserved cannot be overstated. Just as the ongoing construction of the Capitol dome during the Civil War symbolized the will of the Union to be made whole once again, 93 secured the first strike in a battle of civilizations and declared to the world that, although severely wounded, the United States was still standing.
There is a well-worn anecdote concerning the aftermath of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 that may or may not be true. In the story, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin following the final proceedings and inquired of him "Well, doctor, what have we got?"
Franklin is said to have replied: "A republic, if you can keep it."
Whether the anecdote is apocryphal is of no consequence. Our forefathers indeed bequeathed to us a republic. They gave us the greatest form of government that has ever been devised. As with any gift, it is the responsibility of its inheritors to be good stewards or allow it to fade away from negligence.
The patriots of 93 gave their emphatic response to Franklin's challenge and that of the fanatics on their plane. Their response was that we are a free people. Our free republic is so precious that, if necessary, we will fight until the last second before submitting to any government or to any cult of death and destruction. And if anyone or any government attempts to overtake that freedom, they will be met with a ferocious courage the likes of which they have never seen.
As befitting the first attack on American soil since the Civil War, commemorations of September 11, 2001, are appropriately somber. But the story of Flight 93 gives all of us who remember more than a glimmer of hope.
The passengers on 93 allowed Americans one more emotion on that horrible day — more than a measure of pride. While the savages who flew planes in to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have, in their addled minds, believed they had succeeded, the barbarians who hijacked 93 knew that they had failed. They failed because of the swift action and courage of patriots of the brightest magnitude.
Names such as Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Todd Beamer, Sandra Bradshaw, and many others on board should shine in perpetuity alongside those of Crispus Attucks, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell and Patrick Carr. In the face of certain death, the patriots on 93 spoke and acted for a nation. They charged their killers and, on behalf of all of us, with their last full measures of devotion, declared that the American people shall not submit.
As long as our republic endures, so, too, will the spirit of 93. Those of us working to call an Article V convention should remember that spirit and motivate us to do what we can to make sure the republic endures.
