It has been nearly a year since we all watched in horror as hijacked jetliners ripped into the Pentagon and the twin towers of the World Trade Center, bringing down the 110-story buildings and killing more than 3,000 innocent people as they began their workday.

We were awakened that Tuesday morning to a shocking reality — that our way of life doesn’t come without a price. After years of relative peace and unprecedented prosperity, we took for granted our freedoms, forgetting that to be free we may be called to fight. The question we must ask ourselves this Sept. 11 is: “Are we falling back into that slumber?”

Some are already counting sheep. Academics, pluralists and pundits are questioning our “war on terrorism.” They suggest the United States is to blame for the attacks — claiming that our manhandling of the world is the root cause of hatred toward America.

They say we must realize that other nations live by a different code, and we should accept that without interfering.

All of that works fine in a classroom, or on “Sesame Street,” but in a world where terrorists hijack your own planes to kill thousands of innocents, there is not too much to be “understood.”

Osama bin Laden and those like him do not hate America because it is great — they hate us because we are free. The United States is the lone roadblock on their path toward cruelty and dictatorship. We must not forget that. We must not grow weary of the battle for our way of life. We must not question what we know to be true — that man was born to be free.

“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of a moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse,” wrote political philosopher John Stuart Mill in the 19th century. “A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight — nothing he cares about more than his own safety — is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

We can be thankful for the brave Americans who fought for our freedoms in the past, and for those who are fighting now. But we stand in danger of becoming “miserable creatures” when we forget the reason they fight.

This has not been an easy year for the nation. Corporate scandals are jolting our beleaguered economy, there’s talk of war with Iraq, our “staunch allies” in Europe are questioning their support of U.S. policies, Israel and the Palestinians are still fighting, mid-term elections have brought partisan bickering back to the airwaves and it seems everyday another child is kidnapped.

With all this, it’s easy to forget the significance of Sept. 11. It’s easy to get side-tracked into the kind of “Sesame Street” politics that dilutes moral conviction with foolhardy notions of “understanding.” It’s easy to become lethargic and apathetic toward the freedoms that were attacked just one year ago. But we must not forget that day, and the harsh lesson it taught us. We must not forget that our freedom is precious, and has to be defended.

For on the day we fall back to sleep, the terrorists will have surely won.