On This Day In History (an extended rant)

Students entering college as freshmen right now were four years old when the towers fell.  And we're in a different kind of war today than the one that started on September 11, 2001.  

It's a war of feelings, a war where we must make sure our special little snowflakes are insulated from every harm, every harsh word, thought or bad decision that happens on college campuses.  

It's a war where these children are told repeatedly that things such as "microaggressions" exist that must be stamped out.  One where comedians refuse to play college campuses because making one student--just one--OFFEND will potentially tank their careers.  One where offices of "diversity and inclusivity" send out memos that encourage people to use bastardizations of words like "xym" and "zir" to talk to people in the name of equality that will never be achieved.  

These children will never know the reality of a man deciding to either burn to death or jump to the next life.  They'll never hear the horrendous sound of what a body falling over one thousand feet to the ground sounded like.  All they'll hear are concepts like "rape culture," "cisgender heteronormative oppression," and "ableism" get bandied about.  

This is to be expected in our lives.  Even when tragedies the likes of September 11 happen the world will move on.  As that day becomes just that--history--people will forget, because we're in a world where people's perceptions of reality hinge on what happens in their Facebook feed or Twitter timeline daily.  

My children will not live that life.  

My children will grow up knowing what happened that day.  

My children will know that we had a time where a group of terrorists hated us, and started a war. My children will know people got on television that night to tell us all that it was our fault.  
My children will know that men and women died on foreign soil to protect us from those events ever happening again.  My children will know that we won that war, but war still rages on.  

We really do lead a charmed life, as Scott Greenfield says, when we can lead shaming mobs over stupid jokes British Nobel Laureates make because one person took words out of context and posted them to social media.  But it's still a war we're in--this time one of feelings, rather than facts.  

My children will know what happened that day, and why we rallied as a nation.  

Because we never should forget what happened fourteen years ago today.