A good Memorial Day read

Remembering the Forgotten from American Thinker.

We do not need to glorify war to give thanks for their sacrifice. Young men do not make wars, and no one needs remind them of the ghastliness or grisliness of war. Our obligation is to look at Arlington Cemetery (or any military cemetery, or at a local law enforcement cemetery of policemen who died to keep us safe) and respect what these men have given us. Most of the fallen are now forgotten. Their memory, their shortened lives, their mangled bodies laid into some distant grave -- these plain and awful data of history -- cannot hold the attention of a world in which only the last day's news cycle is real.


The faith in America of those brave men who don a uniform to keep us safe has survived the debauchery and deconstruction of the sixties, the cynicism of politics, and the rule of presidents who "loathed the military." The resilience of these good and ordinary Americans transcends political parties (if there are no atheists in the foxhole, then there are also no Republicans or Democrats). Their will to defend us defies the conventional amorality of modern selfishness. When they not only liberate but succor, in spite of their own long campaigns and bitter deprivations, emaciated Jews imprisoned in Hell, like my wife's parents, these Americans do only what is natural to them.