What will it take to unite Americans?

I thought about the seventh Sept. 11 anniversary a great deal. How the events have forever changed us in very different ways. How the slaughter of our innocence by cowards, who refuse to fight a straight-up war have caused Americans to be divided like only once before.

The Civil War caused brothers to fight brothers, and fathers to fight sons. And the divisions from this single war prohibit us from truly being one nation under God with but one purpose, goal and dream.

The years just can't seem to erase the derision, or at least that's how it seems.

So I wonder just what it will really take to unify our cause, if an attack on the heartland of our nation can't do it on its own. Just like Pearl Harbor, shouldn't this have brought us closer, or will partisan politics and social unrest always set the tone?

It's time to put America first instead of individual desires, to remember a nation divided cannot ever hope to prevail, to learn from past historical events that when we rise as one voice and one people different yet united we shall not fail.

For all our faults and imperfections, we remain America the beautiful and a beacon for all the world to see. We are more than an experiment in democracy. We continue to be the Land of Liberty and the home of the brave and the free.

Tricia Dieringer

Elgin