On this Memorial Day, I remember and honor the men and women who sacrificed to sustain the American Dream. Thank you.
Today in America we protect unborn life but not those living, breathing and dreaming among us. The guns our fathers and grandfathers put away when they returned from war are now being taken up to turn not on our enemies but on each other. When Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, we declared war and defeated them. Now, as we attack one another, we sit by idly as if nothing can be done. Worse, as if taking action to halt the slaughter would make us un-American.
We are at war with ourselves, and we are losing.
When I was a young man, the future was clear to me. We were making progress on many fronts: technological, economic, legal and moral. Prosperity abounded. Ignorance was sent slinking back to its dark caves. The troglodytes living in the shadows didn’t trouble me; they were a minority, and maybe they would eventually die out altogether.
It turns out, though, that like Germany after the WW I Treaty of Versailles, they were licking their wounds, nursing their grudges and regrouping for an all-out panzer attack. Their heavy treads are grinding along the streets of our towns and cities, where we have become too complacent to recognize their danger, or so bitter and radicalized that we welcome them with flags and cheers as the Austrians welcomed Hitler at the start of WW II.
I don’t glorify the past. Intellectually, I realize that in may ways we have never had it better. We have indoor plumbing, antibiotics, vaccines and social security. Emotionally, though, it feels like we are sick with a disease for which we may not have a cure. Feeding on the same hatreds and prejudices that I had hoped we had put behind us, it is resurgent; and not having recently fought it in the stinking trenches and forests of Flanders and Ardennes, we seem to have lost our immunity to it.
Recently, when I asked someone I respect which nations he admires, he offered that America today is the least bad. That’s not the kind of dream I had for us. And at the rate we’re going, I’m not even sure that pale distinction will be a lasting one.
So, to come full circle, to those of you who came before and gave so much that we might live in freedom and prosperity, I apologize for our careless stewardship of your legacy. There will almost certainly be another great crisis that stirs our nation to unified purpose, a time when we will again as one take up your war-torn banner. I only hope that we will have not waited so long to be stirred out of our selfish indolence that we lose this next great struggle. We’ve never lived in totalitarianism. I don’t think we’ll like it.
