Twenty-five years ago, on a clear September morning, America was attacked by Islamic terrorists. Nearly three thousand lives were taken in a single day of calculated evil. In the years since, here on the blog, we’ve told the stories of the victims, honored the heroes who ran toward the danger, and shared our own memories of where we were when the world changed. Those accounts still matter. They always will.

This year, as the 25^th Anniversary of that day approaches, we wanted to do something different. Rather than look only backward, the women who write for Victory Girls sat down with 4 hard questions about what 9/11 still demands of us—and what it demands of the generation that did not live through it.

Each writer answered the same four questions:

1. What do you most want the next generation to understand about September 11, 2001?
2. Looking back over twenty-five years, what lesson from that day feels most urgent in 2026?
3. Where has America’s resolve held firm, and where has it softened or been deliberately weakened?
4. As women—mothers, daughters, sisters, citizens—how do we keep the memory of 9/11 clear and honest for those who will never have lived it?

What follows is not a single essay, but a conversation over the next 4 days, between women who lived through 9/11, women who write every week for Victory Girls Blog. Some responses are brief. Others run a bit longer. Together they form a record of how a group of conservative women, forever changed by September 11^th, still see that day and what we believe it continues to require of us.

We offer these reflections, beginning today with Day 1, Question 1; certainly not as the final word, but as an invitation: to remember accurately, to teach deliberately, and to refuse the “comfortable forgetting” part, that always threatens to settle in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPsGFrzhvdc

Now…

As we mark this milestone anniversary, we hold fast to the simple and immutable truth: a free people must remain strong, vigilant, and unapologetically proud of the nation the terrorists tried to break. We live free or die – without the nanny state’s boot on our neck. We know our mortal enemy, and kill him or be killed (Tzu loosely paraphrased!). And we continue to honor the fallen by defending the country they loved – vigorously without apology – without forgetting one single thing about it.

Below, please find our Day 1, Question 1 from our VG Writers Roundtable 25 years after 9/11 .

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Question 1, Day 1

The Introduction.

It’s hard to believe twenty-five years have passed that day, with an entire generation that never felt the sky fall. They did not watch the towers burn in real time, did not sit frozen before televisions as the second plane confirmed what no one wanted to believe, did not watch people choose to jump from the towers instead of being burned alive, did not breathe in that horrible ash or hear the silence that followed the last collapse. For them, September 11th risks becoming just another date in a textbook—sanitized, contextualized, and quietly (perhaps intentionally?) diminished. Yet that morning was not ambiguous. It was a deliberate act of mass murder carried out by evil men who hated the West for its freedom, its faith, and its very existence.

For me, the next generation must understand that evil is absolutely real, that it wears no disguise when it finally strikes, that the price of forgetting is paid in blood – just ask over twenty years of war fighters and their families, and our writers here at Victory Girls have spent decades refusing to look away. — Kate

The Question.

What do you most want the next generation to understand about September 11, 2001?

The Responses.

Carol – What I most want the next generation to understand is that September 11 was a terrorist attack on America. It wasn’t a tragedy that simply happened to us, and it wasn’t a random hijacking that went horribly wrong. It was planned, organized and carried out by Islamist terrorists who hated America enough to spend years preparing to murder as many Americans as possible.

I watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center on live television. I remember New Yorkers running for their lives through the streets and emerging covered in dust. I remember learning that people trapped above the fires were jumping from the towers. And I remember hearing about the passengers aboard Flight 93 and those two words: “Let’s roll.”

Twenty-five years later, I worry we have softened the edges of that day for generations who weren’t there to see it.

Don’t.

They need to see the photographs and the footage. They need to know who attacked us and why. Most of all, they need to understand that there are people in this world who hate America and everything she represents enough to do it again.

Darleen – GenZ and GenAlpha have been ill-served by public school systems that have gone out of their way to “woke-wash” 9/11 over the past 20 or so years. The younger generations need to understand not just the event itself, but both the Islamic-based terrorism behind it and the complicity of America’s leftwing activists who have twisted it into making America responsible for the attack.

I would also challenge the younger generations to compare pre-2001 to today, examine the ways our society and culture has changed over the past 25 years, 40 years, 60 years and make a commitment to travel the long road of taking it back from those that feel America is “illegitimate”.

Deanna – That it was real, and it happened.  We have seen the resurgence of Holocaust denial within our lifetime, and not even film evidence, museums, preserved death camps, or eyewitness testimony has been enough to root out that willful evil.  God forbid that someday people who witnessed 9/11, like us, are in the position of having to prove it.

Jodi – In the 25 years since the horrific September 11, 2001, attacks shook our nation to its foundations, I’ve watched with continued concern at the growing mindset—mirroring the very people who attacked us—creeping into every institution in America. California school children taken on field trips to mosques. A city council comprised entirely of Muslims. Foreign-born citizens installed in our judiciary sitting in judgement of us.

So to answer the question of what I want the next generation to understand is this: A coordinated attack on the heart of America—and its eventual destruction—doesn’t need to come via jetliners and a handful of radicals. The overthrow of America can be achieved from within by electing a charismatic president who’s sympathetic to Islam. It can be realized by electing a man to govern over the very city targeted for attack whose anti-American sympathies were expressed well before Election Day. And it can come via our educational system that tells young girls that donning a hijab signals tolerance. And unless we look back—in order to look forward—to what our future will be should we continue on this path, the goal of the 9/11 attackers will come to fruition without another weapon raised.

Lisa – That it started out like any other September morning in America. People were going to work in the Twin Towers and The Pentagon. Some were on shift as EMS workers or law enforcement. Some were traveling on holiday with family or home to see their families. The pilots and flight attendants on those planes were taking them to their destination.

I remember being on the phone with my dad, a native New Yorker through and through, as the second of “The Twins” crumbled to the ground right before our eyes. He bawled. I had never seen or heard him cry before.

Most of these people did not return home. For most, this was their last day on this earth. We watched as people jumped out of flaming infernos to their deaths. For most of us, we have never seen an attack of this scale on our soil before. Our landscape was forever changed.

Nina – 9/11 was a terror attack. Period. Planes were deliberately hijacked and flown into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers. If it weren’t for the heroes on Flight 93, either the White House or the US Capital would’ve been hit. 19 terrorists killed 2,977 innocent people. The next generations must be taught, in detail with photos and videos, everything that happened that day. EVERYTHING.

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How would you answer that question? Let us know in the comments.

Tomorrow’s Writer’s Roundtable question is:

Looking back over twenty-five years, what lesson from that day feels most urgent in 2026?

Please join us then for Day 2, Question 2.

Featured Photo Credit: photo used is original artwork by Victory Girls writer and graphics artist, Darleen Click. 

Video Credit:  LOOKBACK: Remembering 9/11 / 25th Anniversary / National Geographic, September 1, 2026.