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On January 8, 1947, President Harry Truman stood before Congress and said seven words that have outlived the moment in which he spoke them:
“America was not built on fear.”
America, Truman said, was built “on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
I have been thinking about those words today.
Because twenty-five years ago, America had every reason to be afraid.
The sky over New York filled with smoke. A plane struck the Pentagon. Another fell into a field in Pennsylvania.
And 2,977 people who woke up on an ordinary Tuesday morning never came home.
They were parents children. Husbands and wives. Brothers and sisters. Coworkers and friends.
They had meetings on their calendars. Dinner plans that night. Birthdays coming. Children waiting to be picked up from school.
And then, in 102 minutes, the world changed changed.
We often remember September 11 because of what was taken from us.
But twenty-five years later, I also think we should remember what was revealed about us.
America was attacked. Americans also went to work. And on one of the darkest mornings in our history, ordinary Americans reminded the world what those stars and stripes mean.
Firefighters climbed the stairs while everyone else was coming down.
Police officers ran toward the smoke.
Paramedics and first responders moved toward danger because there were people on the other side of it who needed them.
Passengers aboard Flight 93, confronted with the unimaginable, acted together.
Strangers reached for strangers.
People carried people whose names they would never know.
That was courage. But it was also something simpler.
There was a job at hand. And Americans did it.
I represent Michigan. I come from a state where we know something about doing the job at hand.
We build things. We fix things. We work shifts. We solve problems.
And when something breaks, the people I know, don’t have much patience for standing around arguing about who gets credit for picking up the wrench.
You pick it up.
You get to work.
You take care of the person next to you.
And you don’t quit until the job is done.
There is something deeply American about that.
It’s in the factory worker reporting for the early shift. It’s in the firefighter putting on the helmet. It’s in the police officer answering the call. It’s in the servicemember raising a hand and taking an oath.
Different uniforms. Different jobs.
Same promise: When the call comes, Americans show up.
Standing alongside law enforcement and public servants at the 9/11 memorial in Michigan today, looking at the wreaths and the names and the uniforms, you’re reminded how inadequate so many of the categories we use to divide ourselves can become.
We were never supposed to be identical.
We were supposed to be one.
There is a difference.
Because a wreath doesn’t ask how you voted.
A uniform doesn’t ask where you came from.
A name carved into a memorial doesn’t tell you which arguments somebody won.
It tells you that somebody was here.
That somebody was loved.
That somebody served.
That somebody mattered.
And suddenly the things that seemed enormous yesterday become very small.
And every once in a while, history gives us a moment that strips everything else away and reminds humanity of the things that belong to all of us.
September 11 is one of those moments.
The grief belongs to all of us.
The gratitude belongs to all of us.
The responsibility to remember belongs to all of us.
And the flag belongs to all of us.
That is why twenty-five years matters.
An entire generation of Americans now knows September 11 not as a memory, but as history. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum estimates that roughly 100 million Americans are now too young to remember that day themselves which makes remembering more important, not less.
Because memory isn’t simply about looking backward, it’s the promise of what we need to carry forward. And that responsibility belongs to all of us.
So we will tell them about the firefighters climbing, about the officers running toward the smoke, about the passengers who fought back, about the people who lined up to give blood, about the flags hanging from porches.
We will tell them how on one of the darkest days in our history, Americans looked at one another and understood, without needing to be told:
You’re my neighbor.
You’re my countryman.
You’re not facing this alone.
That is part of the story of September 11, too.
And perhaps that is the part we are most responsible for carrying forward.
Because patriotism isn’t only remembering what happened to America.
It’s remembering what America is supposed to be.
A country confident enough to be free.
Strong enough to be generous.
Brave enough to run toward the fire.
And stubborn enough, when something is broken, to pick up the wrench and get to work.
Harry Truman said America was not built on fear.
Twenty-five years ago, fear came to our shores.
And Americans answered it with courage.
With service.
With sacrifice.
And with an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Today, we remember the 2,977 lives stolen on September 11, 2001. We honor the heroes who ran toward danger. We hold close the families who have spent a quarter century living with an empty chair, a missing voice, a birthday that arrives every year without the person who should be there.
And we make them a promise.
We will remember not only how they died.
But we also remember our country answered.
How we served.
How we sacrificed.
How we showed up for one another.
America was not built on fear.
It was built by people who showed up.
And it still is.
And may we never, ever, forget it.
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