September 10, 2001, felt like any other day. Americans went to work, made plans, walked their dogs, and tucked their children into bed without knowing they were living through the final hours of a world that was about to change forever.
On the anniversary of 9/11, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is reflecting on the courage and sacrifice that emerged in the wake of the attacks — and the gratitude Americans should have for every ordinary morning they get to wake up to.
“Do you know when the bridges and tunnels closed, half a million people were stranded, right there in lower Manhattan? Half a million. Sky was on fire behind them. Black, dust, ash everywhere,” Glenn recalls.
“The Coast Guard put out a call for every boat that could come,” he explains. “Tugboats, ferries, dinner cruises, fishing charters, you know, a guy with a Boston whaler.”
After the 9/11 attack, those vessels took half a million people off the island.
“It was the largest — and still is— the largest sea evacuation in the history of the world. Bigger than Dunkirk,” he says.
However, Americans quickly forgot the sacrifice others made out of love for their country and people.
“We have spent 25 years telling everybody it’s wicked, that it’s rotten. It was rotten from the start. That everything it gave us was stolen and everything that it built should be torn down or burned down,” he says.
But this “wicked” country is “still feeding us this morning.”
“It’s still a place people are dying in the desert to reach. It still goes on loving a generation that never once said thank you and might even be embarrassed to say thank you, America,” he explains.
And not only are foreigners doing everything they can to get into the country, but they’re doing it because an ordinary America that sees little gratitude is actually extraordinary.
“We’re standing in the ordinary,” Glenn says. “A different kind, but an ordinary today. Right now, somewhere in this country, there’s a morning coming that will divide our lives entirely. And that day is not on any calendar.”
“Nobody’s watching and saying, ‘I know when that’s going to happen.’ And what we will remember about today, this Thursday, this nothing of a day, is what we always remember,” he explains, noting that we will not remember “the argument” or “the elections.”
We will remember “the kitchen, the dog, somebody’s hand on the back of your neck.”
“I remember September 10, 2001. It was the last ordinary day of my life, of the America I knew. And in one day, the next morning, that ordinary America was completely different,” he says.
“It’s weird that we call what’s happening in the world today ordinary, but it is. It’s just the new normal,” he continues. “And I thank God we got another September 10.”
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