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I am amazed at the difference between the east and the mid west. I am in Minnesota this weekend and I am shocked at the lack of flags and signs of patriotism.

I don't doubt the patriotism of the people here either, I do think the proximity has made a difference in how people look at these events. My father and I were talking about this today. He lives here in Minnesota and thinks that because most people here didn't personally know people that died in the massacre, it is harder to really grasp the scope of what happened in NY, DC, and PA. I think that the closer you are to the carnage, the more likely you know someone that died. The other factor is that life has basically just gone on. After the initial 24/7 coverage, people just have gone on with their normal lives. We didn't get the financial depression that could have happened, and we haven't been directly attacked on our own soil again.

That there hasn't been mass panic and financial mayhem is a great credit to the current administration, but I fear that most of the country has already gone back to sleep. (Excluding FReepers of course).

Perhaps it's because I originally hail from the east coast.
Perhaps it's because I drove by the Pentagon every day for years commuting to and from work.
Perhaps it's because I have friends and family in NY.
Perhaps it's because I've seen up close and personal just what suddenly losing a member of your family feels like.
Helplessness. You want to do so much. You want to change it-make time go backwards and somehow change the events that unfold, but you cannot.

This was a life changing event for us all. How we reacted was personal and unique.

I'm out here in flyover country and there are still many flags flying.

Senator, thanks for the post.

I don't know how things are in the midwest, but here in the southwest patriotism is a way of life. True, we've take the flags off our cars but that's because summer is coming and the sun would fade the flags faster then we could replace them.

Don't believe for a minute that we've forgotten or that we don't feel this as deeply as those in the east. Remember that most of the military comes from flyover country and we've all got someone we know who is in harms way right now. We go on because, well, that's what we do. But we haven't forgotten, we will NEVER forget.