Sunday, May 25, 2014

Memorial Day

In Flanders fields the poppies grow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place, and in the sky,

The larks, still bravely singing, fly,

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

-John McCrae

 

“A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”

-Ecclesiastes 3:8

 

“Better to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life.”

-Bob Marley

 

As we celebrate the Memorial Day weekend I wanted to pause and reflect on the meaning of the holiday and what exactly it is we are celebrating, or remembering.  Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the US wherein the men and women who died while serving in the US Armed Forces are remembered.  Previously called Decoration Day, the holiday was founded after the Civil War, with the first observance being held in Charleston, SC in May 1865 by thousands of African American freedmen.

 

It is a bittersweet time.  We remember the courage and sacrifice of those who gave their lives to defend our freedoms, and we mourn the necessity of war and killing.  I am not qualified to wax poetic on those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and so I will provide quotations from various sources to try and put the holiday in perspective.


“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.”

– President Harry S. Truman

 

“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”

-John F. Kennedy

 

“It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.”

– General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.



It seems fitting to recall that which those who gave their lives in defense of this country died to defend.  They died to defend our Republic.  Jefferson wrote the words that define what this means.

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”

-The Declaration of Independence



President Lincoln followed up on these words on the battlefield at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863

 

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

-Abraham Lincoln



And some 60 years later Calvin Coolidge wrote of the timelessness of the Declaration of Independence.

 

"About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward a time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people."

-Calvin Coolidge, July 5th, 1926

 

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

-Senator Barry Goldwater

 

“The brave die never, though they sleep in dust: Their courage nerves a thousand living men.”

– Minot J. Savage

 

"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved."

– President Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

– President Thomas Jefferson

 

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

-G.K. Chesterton



“We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

-Winston Churchill

 

“I don't have to tell you how fragile this precious gift of freedom is. Every time we hear, watch, or read the news, we are reminded that liberty is a rare commodity in this world.”

– President Ronald Reagan

 

“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

-Sun Tzu

 

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953



And if you will permit me, I will offer a few quotes from works of fiction.

 

"I am William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny! You have come to fight as free men. And free man you are! What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?"

 

"Two thousand against ten?" - the veteran shouted. "No! We will run - and live!"

 

"Yes!" Wallace shouted back. "Fight and you may die. Run and you will live at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here as young men and tell our enemies that they may take our lives but they will never take our freedom!"

-from the movie Braveheart

 

King Leonidas: “The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, even a god-king can bleed.”

-from the movie 300



“Sons of Gondor, of Rohan. My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come, when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of Fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you, stand, men of the West!”

-from The Lord of the Rings

 

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

 

 


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