The Memorial Day of the New Century

Reminded on all sides of the grim anniversary that today is, I pause to remember.

I remember hearing the news on the radio while driving to school and thinking it must be a joke.

By Google maps, we were only 64.7 miles from Shanksville, PA, where Flight 93 went down.

I spent part of the day with XBFRN; I remember not wanting to leave.

I was supposed to work at the airport that day, but it was closed.

I turned off the television to keep from seeing that horror replayed over and over.

I thought then, and still believe now, that we will lose our freedom to terrorism if we don't stand up and hold onto it with both hands.

In memory of those who gave their lives that day, I walk free and proud, my head held high. I do not fear what may happen; I fear that I will not respond bravely and boldly.

It seems apt to quote Abraham Lincoln at this juncture. I cannot say it as well as he did.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a
new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here
have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a
new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people shall not perish from the earth.