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By Eric Ventimiglia
Originally published in the Boston Herald — Read here
The world as we knew it changed in a single, cloudless September morning 25 years ago. As this solemn anniversary approaches, our most profound duty is remembrance, mourning the nearly 3,000 lives that were violently cut short. We honor the courage of the first responders who ran toward the danger, and we hold close the families who have lived for a quarter of a century with an empty seat at the table. The grief of 9/11 is a permanent part of the American story, and a scar that reminds us of the terrible price of hatred.
As the decades pass, this anniversary provides an opportunity to look beyond the immediate shock of that day and reflect on what the architects of those attacks were trying to destroy. The World Trade Center in New York City was not struck because the buildings were tall; it was targeted because of what it represented. It was a gleaming monument to global commerce, free enterprise, and American ingenuity.
To our adversaries — extremists bound by a rigid, oppressive ideology that demands submission — the American economic system is a profound provocation.
America is a country where anyone can chart his or her course, capital moves toward good ideas, and success is usually earned rather than assigned. That is what those who planned the attacks set out to destroy.
They failed. The attacks meant to break our spirit only revealed its depth. In the 25 years since the attacks, America’s resilience has proven to be as much economic and civic as it is military. The American people built the recovery from the ground up.
Our economy absorbed the most devastating blow imaginable and kept running. That is the living testament to what free people can build and sustain. The resilience of the American economy proved to be an unbreakable barricade.
Economic freedom has proved to be the bedrock of our national staying power. Over the past 25 years, the United States has faced numerous challenges and confronted new adversaries who rely on state control, command economies, and authoritarianism. Yet, the American model continues to outlast and outpace them all. Our strategic advantage on the world stage has never rested solely on hard power, as vital as that may be. Fundamentally, it rests in our economic freedom.
Nobody runs a free market from the top down. It corrects itself, and it has to, because no planner is smart enough to do the job for it. That self-correction is what pays for our military and funds the next generation of innovation. A worker who is free to work and a business that is free to build provide a level of strength that a command economy can’t feign. In technical terms, the free market is a national security asset. This is freedom, doing what freedom does.
Memorials are important, but they are not the entire tribute. The rest is a country that stays true to the American dream. By keeping our lives free, American exceptionalism needs no defense; it defends itself.
Eric Ventimiglia is executive director of Pinpoint Policy Institute, an organization defending the pillars of American prosperity/InsideSources.com
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