On Sept. 11, 2001, nineteen men crashed four airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Their goals were to strike at symbols of American power, and to kill as many Americans as possible. The 9/11 Commission looked at this event from many different vantage points--from airport security to intelligence, emergency response to foreign policy. Why did they do this? Why take the lives of so many men, women and children? Why attack us? In this article (which is a transcript of a speech given at the Conference on Civic Education in December, 2004), the author attempts not only to answer these questions, but also to define what it means, individually, to be an American, and exactly what we are defending when we defend America. It is his contention that, not only is it necessary to strengthen our school's efforts to teach the techniques of a healthy democracy, it should also be the business of all of our institutions: our families, churches, courts, universities, research centers, corporations, and governments.