9/11 Consider the Firefighters

When I think about 9/11, I keep coming back to the firemen - the men who went up to face the flames and hopefully save lives while the innocent targeted by radical Islamists (yes, I will keep saying that since the current regime and propaganda press want so desperately for us to forget) came down. 

They were so brave. So manly. So American. So sacrificial. Such role models for our sons, beset on every side 10 years later with encouragement to become less than the men God intended them to be.

9/11 is many things.  But as a parent, I saw it framed from the beginning as an object lesson in manhood, bravery, and self-sacrifice (See "Are Our Sons Ready to Roll?")  In the last 10 years of pop wisdom/propaganda supporting gender confusion, I feel the same way today.  Christian parents need to commit to raising strong, curious, creative, resilient, resourceful, confident, brave, loyal, faithful, faith-filled and self-sacrificing (feel free to add your adjectives in the comments below) boys.  Mothers and fathers, this is our number one priority!

In light of this, I offer Peggy Noonan's reflections on the tenth 9/11 anniversary.  Peggy Noonan was a favorite of mine until she abandoned her conservative roots to inexplicably support Obama's candidacy in 2008 - a tragic error in a history of faithful service to communicate the American vision to the American people.

Still waiting for her apology, I am glad that on the anniversary of 9/11 she gets it right. and as a New Yorker her first-hand reports ring true.  From today's Wall Street Journal, We'll Never Get Over It, Nor Should We: Ten years later, remembering a day of horror and heroism:

And there were the firemen. They were the heart of it all, the guys
who went up the stairs with 50 to 75 pounds of gear and tools on their
back. The other people who were there in the towers, they were innocent
victims, they went to work that morning and wound up in the middle of a
disaster. But the firemen saw the disaster before they went into it,
they knew what they were getting into, they made a decision. And a lot
of them were scared, you can see it on their faces on the pictures
people took in the stairwells. The firemen would be going up one side of
the stairs, and the fleeing workers would be going down on the other,
right next to them, and they'd call out, "Good luck, son," and, "Thank
you, boys."

They were tough men from Queens and Brooklyn and Staten Island, and
they had families, wives and kids, and they went up those stairs.
Captain Terry Hatton of Rescue 1 got as high as the 83rd floor. That's
the last time he was seen.

Three hundred forty-three firemen gave their lives that day. Three
hundred forty-three! It was impossible, like everything else.

Many heartbreaking things happened after 9/11 and maybe the worst is
that there's no heroic statue to them, no big marking of what they were
and what they gave, at the new World Trade Center memorial.

But New York will never get over what they did. They live in a lot of hearts.

They tell us to get over it, they say to move on, and they mean it
well: We can't bring an air of tragedy into the future. But I will never
get over it. To get over it is to get over the guy who stayed behind on
a high floor with his friend who was in a wheelchair. To get over it is
to get over the woman by herself with the sign in the darkness:
"America You Are Not Alone." To get over it is to get over the guys who
ran into the fire and not away from the fire.

You've got to be loyal to pain sometimes to be loyal to the glory that came out of it.

You've got to be loyal to pain sometimes to be loyal to the glory that came out of it.


This is exactly what I mean about it being important to remember in a solemn and reflective way - not in the distracted Day of Service promulgated by the Obama Regime , but in a way that honors the senseless deaths and sacrifice of first responders - a day that like Pearl Harbor stands in infamy as part of our history.


We need to resist all efforts to minimize and gloss over the reality and implications of this horrendous assault on American values and our way of life.

In some ways, looking over the past 10 years, I feel that with the help of our Misguided Media, we have lost so much, marginalizing those with the character to rescue us and teaching our citizens to mock them.



We are the resistance. Never forget.



The picture above is Mike Kehoe, from Staten Island, who went up the stairs but somehow survived. Time Magazine did a photo essay on him: Portrait of a Firefighter.

MommyLife 9/11 series