Poll: 13% of Democrats Say Americans Focus Too Much on 9/11 as 25th Anniversary Nears

By Lucretia Hughes Klucken

WASHINGTON — More than one in eight Democrats believes Americans focus too much on remembering the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a new survey released as the nation approaches the 25th anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history.

The YouGov survey found that 13% of Democrats said Americans place too much focus on the memory of 9/11. That compared with 6% of independents and 5% of Republicans.

Overall, 8% of Americans said the country focuses too much on the attacks, 46% said Americans give 9/11 about the right amount of attention and 27% said the nation focuses too little on that day. Another 19% said they were unsure.

The poll does not show that every Democrat wants America to forget 9/11. In fact, 50% of Democrats said the country gives the attacks the right amount of attention, while 19% said Americans focus too little on them.

But the fact that 13% of Democrats — more than double the percentage of Republicans and independents — believe America already remembers 9/11 too much should concern every citizen who understands the importance of preserving the nation’s history.

The survey was conducted online from Aug. 20-23 among 1,098 adult U.S. citizens. The results were weighted to represent the adult population and carried a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, according to YouGov’s complete polling data.

The same survey found a striking partisan divide over whether the attacks receive enough attention. Forty-three percent of Republicans said Americans focus too little on 9/11, compared with only 19% of Democrats.

That difference matters because Sept. 11 was not simply another event on the political calendar. It was a coordinated foreign terrorist attack against the American people.

Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger airplanes that morning. Two planes struck the World Trade Center towers in New York City. A third slammed into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew members fought back against the hijackers.

The attacks killed 2,977 people from 90 nations. That included 2,753 people in New York, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 aboard United Airlines Flight 93. The day also produced the greatest loss of emergency responders during a single incident in American history, according to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Those were not political statistics. They were mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, friends, firefighters, police officers, military personnel and ordinary Americans who went to work or boarded an airplane and never returned home.

Thousands of first responders, recovery workers and survivors have since suffered or died from illnesses connected to the toxic conditions at Ground Zero. Their sacrifice did not end when television cameras left lower Manhattan.

America does not remember 9/11 because it enjoys reopening old wounds. We remember because national memory is part of national survival.

A country that forgets what happened to it will eventually forget why it must be defended.

The survey revealed that 54% of Americans believe people born after 2001 do not have a good understanding of the attacks. Only 23% said younger Americans generally understand what happened.

That should be the real warning contained in this poll.

An entire generation has now reached adulthood without a personal memory of Sept. 11. Many know the day only through brief classroom lessons, social media clips or political arguments about the wars that followed.

The decisions made after 9/11 can and should be debated. Americans have every right to question the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, government surveillance, military spending and the expansion of federal power.

Remembering the victims does not require giving government a blank check. Honoring first responders does not mean citizens must surrender constitutional rights. Patriotism does not require silence when government officials make mistakes.

But none of those debates justifies minimizing the terrorist attack itself or treating remembrance as an outdated burden.

There is a growing political and cultural movement that appears more comfortable discussing America’s failures than honoring its courage. It examines every flaw in the nation’s history while dismissing the faith, sacrifice and constitutional principles that allowed America to confront those failures.

No single poll can prove that an entire political party wants to destroy America’s foundation. The survey did not ask respondents why they answered as they did, and it would be dishonest to assign one motive to millions of people.

However, the response from that 13% reflects a dangerous attitude: that America spends too much time remembering an attack on its own people.

We hear repeatedly that patriotism is divisive, that the American flag is offensive and that teaching children to love their country somehow prevents them from understanding its mistakes. Now we are being told by a measurable segment of one political party that Americans may be remembering 9/11 too much.

America’s foundation is weakened when its history is stripped of context, its heroes are forgotten and its children are taught only what to criticize — never what to defend.

The YouGov poll found that just 43% of Americans support requiring public schools to observe the anniversary with a moment of silence. Thirty-four percent opposed such a requirement, while 23% were unsure.

Only 30% of Democrats supported requiring the moment of silence, compared with 64% of Republicans.

The survey also found that 51% of Americans support making Sept. 11 a national holiday to commemorate those who died. Support reached 62% among Republicans and 43% among Democrats.

These are not insignificant divisions. They reveal two very different understandings of national remembrance.

One views 9/11 as a defining moment that must be taught to future generations. The other appears increasingly willing to place the attacks in the rearview mirror while focusing more attention on America’s response than on the terrorists who murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people.

We must teach both. We must teach what happened, who attacked us, why they attacked us and how Americans responded. We should also teach the constitutional debates and government decisions that followed.

That is history — not propaganda.

The lesson of Sept. 11 is not hatred. It is vigilance. It is courage. It is the image of firefighters running into burning buildings while others ran out. It is the bravery of the passengers aboard Flight 93. It is Americans of every race, religion and political affiliation standing together beneath one flag.

For a brief moment after the attacks, the country remembered that our shared American identity was stronger than the political labels used to divide us.

Perhaps that unity is what some people would prefer Americans to forget.

But forgetting does not heal a nation. It leaves the next generation defenseless against the lies of those who want to rewrite its history and weaken its resolve.

We owe the victims, their families, the first responders and our children more than that.

America does not focus too much on Sept. 11. If anything, we have allowed politics, distraction and division to make us forget what the day taught us.

Teach it. Honor it. Defend the nation they attacked.

Never forget.

The Real News with Lucretia Hughes — bringing the receipts, defending the Constitution and telling the truth the establishment would rather ignore.