Memorial Day

Right now, we Americans have a great pleasure. 

 

Our nation has set a day aside, during which it is our duty to honor the men and women of our military forces.  These men and women recognized a truth larger than their personal goals.  They sacrificed their time—sometimes their health or even their lives—for the maintenance of that truth.  That truth is our possession today because of their sacrifices. 

 

That truth is embodied in the brief documents by which our nation was founded, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The men who forged these documents were all of them acquainted with the notion that something larger than themselves was active in their personal lives: most of them were committed Christian believers in the God of the Holy Bible.  As compared with an increasing number of secularists today, they believed that it was their duty—as well as their fulfillment—to work for the good of the Lord…which in turn would be for the good of all humans. 

 

I never met a Civil War veteran, although my father did, and General Washington, to me, seems so far away as to be marble.  But the General was not marble, nor were the underfed, under-clothed, and under-supported troops gathered together with him at Valley Forge.  Nor are our soldiers today.

 

Our founding documents created a unique nation.  We were founded out of the passions of eighteenth century enlightenment, tempered by wisdom gained from review of seventeenth century political struggles. Our founding population, principally, was made up of second (and later) sons and of others who needed to make it on their own.  Thanks to our geographical isolation from the European and other wider worlds, we gained some time to learn to make it on our own.  We built.  We invented.  We explored.  Then we fought to keep what we had built, invented, and explored.  We fought to keep it because we believed that our possession of it secured not only ourselves but anyone else from any spot on earth who might want to come here, to become one of us, and to be secured by what we had built, invented, and explored, too.    

 

Although we were continually torn between isolationism and interventionism, we always believed we have something to offer to the rest of the world: an idea, a hope. 

 

Today, we are a nation to which millions flock when they have no hope where they are.  Do millions risk their lives every year to cross into North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Mexico, China, and Libya?  No.  America is the melting pot, and so long as we remain so—and so long as we avoid the tendency to become hyphenated Americans—we will continue to benefit, and the world will continue to benefit, from our creativity. 

 

We are a religious nation which cares about Good and Evil.  We see ourselves as part of a long story, which, like any complex novel, has its subplots, its distractions, its heroes and villains, its ambiguities.  Yet the story we are part of is a grand one—even a holy one—and it is our privilege to be proud of it, and, right now, particularly it is our privilege to be proud of  our sons and daughters who wore—and who wear—its service uniforms.     

 

We thank them for their willingness to put their lives on the line, whether we agree or disagree with policy that put them in particular places at particular times. 

 

Would I have been at Valley Forge, virtually starving in the snow?  Would I have stood and given silent honor to my Confederate brothers, and former enemies, at Appomattox, as they lay down their arms?  Would I have charged up San Juan Hill?  As a doughboy landing with Black Jack Pershing in France in 1918, would I have done what Alvin York did and render unto Caesar?  Would I have been a young navy flier on patrol over Iwo Jima as Old Glory is raised below?  Would I have been scared and frozen and down to my last few rounds, crouching in the night on a hill in Korea, waiting for a communist attack at dawn?  Would I have leapt from a Huey in Vietnam, into the Broken Arrow battle, when the lid finally blew off the kettle?  And would I be a marine in Afghanistan today, right now, facing deadly intent by an implacable enemy desirous of doing my nation—and the idea behind it—deadly harm? 

 

Would you?

 

Any American reading this blog post has benefited that there are millions, during our years, who did these things.  And that there were many more of them, too, often hidden behind the lines. There were clandestine warriors, cold warriors, fifth columnists, spies, atom bomb designers, Rosie the Riveters, propagandists…and more.  These soldiers, too, helped the American story continue into its next chapter. 

 

There is glory, in our story.

 

For those who are nervous at such a term—glory, how antique!—I say enjoy the fact that you have the liberty to be offended. 

 

We are neither dispirited Old Europe, nor the angry and paranoid Middle East, nor the struggling and envious Third World, nor burgeoning and nervous China, nor the confused remnants of Sovietism in Central Asia, nor battered and victimized Africa, nor even the energetic but edgy Pacific Rim. 

 

Our military forces have given us 237 years of safety to create more—

 

o   growth,

o   invention,

o   goods,

o   services,

o   value,

o   security,

o   health,

o   fineness of living,

o   satisfaction, and

o   eagerness to give back

 

than has ever occurred on earth before, ever. 

 

Thank you, from our hearts. 

 

Copyright 2013 - Dikkon Eberhart