Twenty-five years ago this week, I was a young journalism student sitting in class when America changed in a single morning.

I remember the shock, the confusion and then the clarity that followed. We watched our country come under attack, and we watched Americans come together in response.

Today, I am the mother of four daughters, and what strikes me most as we approach the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 is how much our country has changed since that day, and how many of our children have no memory of the America that existed before it.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airplanes and murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people. They attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The passengers and crew of Flight 93 fought back, and their plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania before it could reach its intended target.

There was no TikTok algorithm to reinterpret what we had just witnessed. Americans watched it happen. And then something remarkable happened. We came together.

American flags appeared on homes, businesses and freeway overpasses. Democrats and Republicans stood together. Strangers hugged. First responders ran toward burning buildings while everyone else was running out. We understood that America was imperfect, but fundamentally worth defending. We understood that deliberately flying airplanes filled with innocent people into buildings filled with innocent people was evil. We knew who had attacked us. Al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden, had declared war on the United States. There was moral clarity about that fact.

I miss that clarity. Not because America was perfect on Sept. 10, 2001. It wasn’t. And not because every decision our government made after Sept. 11 was correct. It wasn’t.

But we shared something that seems increasingly difficult to say today: America, for all its flaws, is a force for good, and loving your country should not belong to one political party.

You don’t have to be Republican to be patriotic. You don’t have to be Democrat to care about injustice. Twenty-five years ago, those ideas weren’t mutually exclusive.

Oct. 7, 2023, made me realize just how much had changed. When Hamas terrorists murdered, kidnapped and brutalized civilians in Israel, I expected to see the same moral clarity I remembered after Sept. 11. Instead, I watched people rationalize terrorism.

That became intensely personal when protests and an encampment consumed Columbia University, where my daughter was a student. She would later testify before Congress about what Jewish students experienced. As a mother, I kept asking myself: How did we get here?

How did we go from a country that could recognize terrorism for what it was to one where young Americans can encounter arguments that romanticize or excuse political violence?

And then I realized I was asking the wrong question. The better question is: What are we, as parents, going to do about it?

This Sept. 11, sit down with your children. Tell them what happened. If they are old enough, show them the footage. Tell them about the firefighters climbing the stairs of the World Trade Center, knowing they might never come back down. Tell them about the passengers of Flight 93.

Tell them Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were responsible. Teach them the difference between Islam, a faith practiced peacefully by millions of Americans, and Islamist terrorism, the extremist ideology used by al-Qaida, Hamas, Islamic State (IS) and other proxies to justify mass murder.

And then listen to what your children are being taught. California actually recognizes Sept. 11 as a Day of Remembrance and Service, and our Department of Education provides schools with resources for teaching about the attacks. Parents should know those resources exist and ask how their own schools are teaching this history. Don’t assume someone else will do it for you. Don’t let a 30-second TikTok become your child’s history teacher.

And vote. Not because patriotism requires allegiance to a particular party. It doesn’t. Vote for leaders whose values reflect your own and hold them accountable. Most importantly, bring these conversations back to the dinner table. Our children should understand that loving America does not require pretending America has never made mistakes. Patriotism means believing this country is worth improving, protecting and preserving for generations to come.

Twenty-five years ago, Americans promised each other that we would never forget. But remembering isn’t just reading the names of the dead once a year. It is teaching the generation that wasn’t there what happened, why it happened and what we learned from it.

Twenty-five years later, as a mother of four, I worry that my children are inheriting an America that has forgotten that we are the greatest nation on earth. It is up to us to remind them, and that starts at home.

Shirin Yadegar is the founder of LA Mom Magazine and a political commentator.

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