These students are members of the September 11 Generation. In a poll conducted by the Tarrance Group for the Independent Women’s Forum, nearly every student said September 11 changed their behavior. Many said they now pray more or volunteer more. Dr. Drew Pinsky observed, “I think that the students have changed – my perspective is that their attitude has shifted from a sense of entitlement to one of gratitude.”
Given the dedication of conservative activists and their worthy cause, the positive responses to their memorials and other activities overshadow the handful of bureaucratic administrators who object to the memorials. The number of schools participating in the Never Forget Project has tripled from 55 to 150 high schools and colleges across the country.
For the last several years, I’ve attended the Freedom Alliance’s Freedom Concert, hosted by Sean Hannity and Ollie North. Proceeds from the concert benefit the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, which provides educational scholarships to children with a parent that has been killed or permanently disabled while serving in the U.S. military or classified as a POW or MIA. Since its inception, the Fund has given out more than $1 million.
This year there were a five Freedom Concerts, the last one will be held on September 11 in Jackson, NJ. I’ll be there, along with Hannity and North, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Jon Voight, Laura Ingraham, Senator Joe Lieberman, and thousands of other patriotic Americans.
Like other moments in history, many of us will remember the moment when we heard or watched the September 11 terrorist attacks unfold. I was on a plane when they happened. After the plane landed, I drove a rental car 10 hours back to DC. My cell phone was out and I could barely pick-up a radio station. To this day, I haven’t seen much of the television coverage from that day. However, that night was the same for all of us. As Mark Steyn wrote, “[I]t’s harder to recreate the peculiar mood at the end of the day, when the citizens of the superpower went to bed not knowing what they'd wake up to the following morning.”
The September 11 anniversary shouldn’t be about politics. What makes the Freedom Concert and the 9/11: Never Forget Project extraordinary is that those who participate do so to show their patriotism and remember the fallen. They aren’t doing so to make a political statement. Coming from DC, a city saturated in politics, their sincerity is encouraging. It would do many professors and administrators some good to leave their isolated worlds and join their fellow Americans in remembering a day that is bigger than our differences.
Lisa De Pasquale
Lisa De Pasquale is is a writer in Alexandria, VA. Miss De Pasquale was previously the director of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where she oversaw all aspects of the conference from June 2006 to April 2011. Prior to CPAC, she was the program director of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. In 2010, she was named a “Rising Star” by
Campaigns & Elections magazine in their annual list of top political leaders under 35. She has written articles for Townhall.com and Townhall Magazine,
Human Events, The Daily Caller, Washingtonian, the St. Augustine Record, The Washington Times, The Houston Chronicle, and the Tallahassee Democrat. Originally from Florida, Miss De Pasquale received a B.A. from Flagler College in St. Augustine.
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