Last week, we marked the anniversary of September 11 — commemorations for the tragic actions of 19 suicidal psychopaths who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans in a single morning. The images of that day still haunt us. And yet, alongside our grief, we remember something else: For a brief, shining moment, we came together as one people. The world rallied to us. Neighbors helped neighbors. There was hope that tragedy might spark unity.
This week, we commemorate something different: the signing of our Constitution, the bold framework that created a federal republic. It was not perfect, but it was revolutionary. It divided power, checked ambition, and bound states and citizens into a shared covenant of liberty.
We should celebrate that. We should teach our children to take pride in it. But we must also be honest: Our federal republic is out of balance. The structure the framers built to restrain power and elevate deliberation has too often been ignored, twisted or betrayed. Congress defers to presidents. Presidents govern by executive order. Courts legislate by decree. States have become dependent on federal subsidies, leaving citizens more subject to Washington than to their own communities.
The architects of our nation warned us. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, cautioned against the spirit of faction and the dangers of consolidating power. Madison spoke of ambition needed to counteract ambition. Yet today, ambition is centralized, not balanced. Instead of a federal republic rooted in trust of the people, we have a political culture addicted to control from the top.
And here is where Constitution Week and the anniversary of 9/11 meet. Each September, we say “Never Forget.” But too often, what we remember are only the fireballs in the sky, the collapsing towers and the smoke. We should remember more than that. We should remember how fear warped our republic in the years that followed – how we abandoned the careful balance the framers built and betrayed the very principles we claim to celebrate this week.
On Sept. 11, we lost nearly 3,000 innocents. For a brief moment afterward, faith triumphed over fear and unity triumphed over division. But that moment was fleeting. In its place, fear took root. Power consolidated. Liberty gave way to secrecy, surveillance and endless war. And here lies the bitter irony: In our vengeful response to those 3,000 deaths, we sacrificed nearly 7,000 more of our own sons and daughters on foreign battlefields, with 1.8 million returning home with disabilities – 40 percent of them for life.
And beyond our borders, we unleashed devastation. In Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. Families torn apart, entire societies destabilized, generations of young people orphaned or raised in rubble. And today, Gaza lies shattered before the eyes of the world – a whole society ground down in violence and siege. We repeat “Never Forget” each year, but we are not the only ones who don’t forget. From Baghdad to Kabul to Gaza, children grow up remembering America not for the unity of that September morning, but for the wars and occupations that followed.
So, this Constitution Week, let us not simply recite the words of the preamble or toast the genius of Philadelphia in 1787. Let us remember how fragile this structure is when citizens fall silent, when power goes unchecked, and when fear dictates policy.
The Constitution is not a museum piece. It is a living covenant. It demands accountability from those in power and responsibility from each of us. To celebrate it is not just to wave a flag. It is to resist complacency, to renew our commitment, and to remember: The promise of this republic endures only if we remain faithful to it.
Never forget – not only the attacks that shook us, but the choices we made afterward. Never forget that our Constitution is only as strong as our willingness to live by it.
Mike Bedenbaugh is a preservationist, political commentator and author of Reviving Our Republic: 95 Theses for the Future of America. A native South Carolinian, he writes about the challenges of renewing our constitutional republic.
