Memorial Day was set aside as a time for Americans to honor those who have fallen in service to our great nation. This year, however, I propose that we remember something else as well: who we were as a nation that we thought such a memorial important.
Consider that this day was set aside not just to remember the dead, but why they died. Everyone dies, however it is when someone dies for noble cause and purpose that we set aside time as a nation to remember.
Whatever the politics of the times might have been, there has never been a time when America has committed her warriors to the field-keep in mind that it is the people who elect the Presidents and Congresses who do such things-where the cause has not been noble and just.
What has changed, then, is the American value of nobility and justice. Since Vietnam, Americans seem less and less concerned with doing the right thing, especially if the right thing is unpopular and difficult. Nobility and justice are no longer seen as absolute.
Yet, those who died for the absolute cause of nobility and justice are exactly who we honor today. If that is so, then how can we not continue that memory through how we live and what we do today and into the future?
We have a singular opportunity to prove that we deserve the legacy of nobility and justice we inherited from our honored fallen in what we do in Afghanistan and Iraq over the next months and years. The question is whether we have learned the lesson of our inherited legacy well enough to see those missions of nobility and justice through to their completion.
Therefore, I ask everyone who reads this post to take a moment upon reading it and consider where he or she stands with regard to the causes of nobility and justice we now face. Do each of us have the will, the courage, and the honor to do what we need to do as part of a nation engaged in such an endeavor? Will our legacy join that of those who have gone before us as a lasting testament to a people and a nation that does the right thing?
There is no doubt that the times we face are difficult; however, the purpose is noble and the cause is just. We simply need to remember who we are as Americans and, by doing so, honor our fallen dead by preserving the legacy they died for.
