Never Forget? Have We Already Forgotten 9/11?

Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, America pauses to remember the nearly 3,000 people who were killed and the first responders who ran toward danger.

But what does “Never Forget” really mean?

In this episode of Live to Shoot – Defending the 2nd Amendment, Jeff Dowdle looks at whether America has forgotten the lessons of 9/11, the threat of radical extremism, and the importance of protecting the freedoms that define this country. Jeff also examines the changing political and cultural landscape of America and asks a difficult question: are we remembering the tragedy, but forgetting the lessons?

We remember the victims. We honor the heroes. And we must never forget why it happened.

subscribe to my newsletter

Follow this link and get $25 in ammo.

Fountain Podcast App
Follow me on Fountain


Follow twitter @JeffDowdle
Follow me on Truth Social - @JeffDowdle

Convention of States Project
Presearch search engine sign up.
Brave Browser

Find our Representative
email me at jeff@livetoshoot.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

0:15

Shoot Podcast. My name is Jeff Dowd, and I've been a licensed firearm dealer for the last 19 years, and this podcast will talk about all things related to the Second Amendment, anything else going on in the world, sports story, or anything else I might find interesting. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Today we're gonna talk about a little something different. Today is September 11th, and we're gonna, we're gonna talk about September 11th, 2001. Every year we all say the same words, "Never forget." We put on T-shirts. We post pictures of the towers. We post pictures of remembering firefighters, police officers. Remember the people who went to work that morning and never came home, and, and I've been thinking about those two words, "Never forget." Have we? Have we really remembered? Because remembering September 11th isn't just remembering where you were when the planes hit the towers. It isn't just remembering the images. It isn't just remembering the nearly 3,000 Americans who were murdered. Remembering means remembering why it happened. It means remembering the idio- ideology behind the attack. It means remembering what we learned about our vulnerabilities, and it means remembering that freedom isn't self-preserving. So let's start with facts. First off, I'll, I can tell you, September 11th is one of those things in people's lives, you know, that, that were there that you'll always remember where you were. Things like, people will say, where they know where they were when the, we landed on the moon, when President Kennedy was killed. For me when Elvis died, when President R- Reagan got shot, when the Challenger exploded 9/11. Those are some very key things for me in terms of remembering where I was. And I was sitting at my desk at work, and this is 2001. We don't have a lot of internet, but I am streaming a, a radio show, and I'm listening to that, and they start talking about, there's a plane flew into one of the buildings in New York. And I hear it, I hear it, and then, then it becomes evident of what happened. And I remember very clearly my wife calling me and saying, "Hey "Do you see what's going on?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And at, at this point, everybody's starting to key in. And again, like the internet wasn't what it was today. The bandwidth was not there. And all of a sudden I couldn't stream my radio show on my computer because the internet became so slow just in the area that we were in. So I went to a, a radio I had by my desk and tried to-- and tuned into an AM station and started listening to it. And then I remember very clearly, again, no, no internet, really nothing, offices were not like they were. And we had a TV on a cart that you rolled around that had a VH- VCA- VA- VCR on it where that we would use f- to put in like training tapes and stuff. And we rolled that into an office that had a, a window, an exterior window, got the rabbit ears, messed around with them, and got to where we could finally get a snowy, fuzzy picture of what was going on. And that's where I remember in- through that snow and through that static, seeing the first tower collapse. And from that point on, things changed. My office and my house both were very close to the DFW Airport and very accustomed to airplanes, and so accustomed that, them, the, the being right in the flight pattern, the noise did not bother us, anything like that. And I remember, standing outside and looking up and the s- stark reality when there were no planes in the air. That is, that is nothing, something that I'd never seen before. And I will never forget that, and I remember that. But Again, the facts were, on September 11th, 2001, 19 terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airli- airliners. Two were flown into the World Trade Center, one was flown into the Pen- Pentagon, and passengers on Flight 93 fought back against the hijackers before the plane crashed in the Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in total. The 9/11 Memorial records 2,977 victims from 90 countries. Among those were 343 f- firefighters, 37 Port Authority, 23 NYPD officers. These weren't soldiers on the battlefield. They, they were Americans going to work, people going to an office, people getting on an airplane, firefighters running into a buil- burning building while everyone was trying to get out. That's what we remember. But we also have to remember the enemy. Al-Qaeda wasn't simply a group of angry people. It was an Islamic extremist organization driven by an ide- ideology that just murdering-- that justified murdering citizens, and that distinguish, distinguish-- distinction matters because if we remember only the victims but forget the ideology, the produced-- the ideology that produced the attack, we'll remember only half the history But here's where I'm going with this, people, and some people get uncomfortable. I think America has been inc- increasingly uncomfortable talking honestly about h- what happened on September 11th. We've got an entire generation that wasn't even born when it happened. We've imported people that that supported the ideology that led to that attack. We've put those people in offices. It's ridiculous. Millions of Muslim Americans, they're our neighbors, they're coworkers. They have a right to be here and participate in our society, but they have to accept our values, our Western values. They g- they have the, they have an issue, they c- with America, and can we distinguish between a religion that's practiced peacefully by millions of Americans and extremist political ideology? We can, we should, but we don't seem to be. And this brings me to, to something that we have to that I think would have almost been impossible for most Americans to imagine on September 12th, 2001. We have a New York City mayor who's a Muslim. Zohan Mandami is the fi- first Muslim mayor in the city history. He's associated with attorneys and lawyers that defended the, the terrorists. And I wanna be very clear, his religion is alone the the issue. But his election does tell us something important about how dramatically American politics have changed. Mandami isn't s- Mandami isn't simply a Muslim American who happens to hold office. He is an outspoken Democrat socialist, and a member of a Democratic Socialist of American, and that's where I think the larger conversations begins. What political ideas are becoming more acceptable in America, and why? Think about this. The Democrat Socialists of America say it's now has more than 100,000 members. That's a remarkable change from the organization a decade ago. DSA still identifies its-- it self-describes its recent growth as his- historic. The organization reported passing 95,000 members in January 2026 Now, here's my question. Would the American, America of September 12, 2001 have imagined that? Would they have imagined socialism becoming a significant political force among young Americans? Would they imagine a Democrat socialist becoming mayor of the New York City? Probably not, and that doesn't mean everyone who supports socialism supports terrorism. They don't. It just means that our political landscape has changed dramatically. Muslim Americans are curiously represented in elective office, and again, let me emphasize, that isn't inherently a bad thing. America is a constitutional republic. But the American, the numbers demonstrate how dramatically American society has changed. CAIR and Jetpac's 2023 directory counted 237, 235 elected Muslim American officials up from 189 the year before. Their 226th directory identifies 228 Muslims elected officials serving across 26 states. So yes, Muslim political representation is growing, and I don't think we should fear Muslim Americans participating in America. I think we should fear what they stand for, what they believe in. Everyone who can seek political power should be judged by what they believe and what they support, not by their religion, not by their ethnicity, and not by their ancestry, by their dates. So let's get back to these two words. What exactly are we pr- promising when we say that? Never forget. Are we promising to remember the names? Absolutely. Are we promising to remember the firefighters? Absolutely. The police officers? Absolutely. The people that died on those planes? Absolutely. But I think we also have to be promised something else. We have to promise to remember that America had enemies who wanted to destroy our way of life. We, we're promising to remember tho- that free society ha- has enemies. We're promising to remember that ideologies matter, and we're promising not to become so afraid of peop- offending people because of that, that we fear that we will be of treating innocent people wrongly. That's not American. The people who attacked us on September 11 don't get to define every Muslim American, and Muslim Americans don't have to answer for the crimes of Al-Qaeda. But the opposite makes it just as dangerous. We cannot say because most Muslims are peaceful, therefore Islamic extremists isn't worth discussing. Of course it is. We can reject bigotry and comfort-- We can reject bigotry and co- confront extremism. Those two things aren't contradictory, and that's where I bring you back to the theme of this podcast, Second Amendment, because the lesson of September 11 isn't simply about terrorism, it's about the relationship between citizens and government. September 11, Americans discovered that the government couldn't guarantee our safety. No government can. Police can't, can't be everywhere. Soldiers can't be everywhere. The government can't protect every individual, and that's what, pr- is the principles behind the Second Amendment, is that every citizen has to take their own safety res- and take responsibility for their own safety. The right to keep bear arms isn't about hunting, as we always say It's really important to remember that governments can fail, institutions can fail, intelligence agencies can fail. But when everything else fails, an individual still has responsibility and the right to protect himself and his family. So this September 11th, I'm asking you to do something. Don't just post a picture. Don't just write, "Never forget." Actually remember. Remember the people, remember the sacrifice, remember the fear, remember the courage, remember the ideology of the attackers that attacked us, and that is key. The ideology that we are bringing into this country, that we're putting into elected office, that ideology that hates America, and we have to wipe it from our land. We cannot put people in that, that say things that do not align with Western values. Twenty-five years later, America looks very different from the country we knew on September 10th, 2001. Some of these changes have been good, some have been bad, and some are still being decided We don't get to choose the world we inherit, but we get to choose what we do with it. So when you hear the words "Never forget," don't let them be-get become a slogan. Let them be a responsibility. Remember those 2,977 people, those 343 firefighters, those police officers, those passengers. Remember them. Remember that freedom is precious and that America is unique, and we have to keep it unique. And the reason that it's unique, it's the reason people hate us, and we have to continue to fight for our freedom. This is Jeff Dowdle. This is the Live Shoot podcast. Share it with others. Remember 9/11, but continue to remember what America really is about.