Today America celebrates Memorial Day - a day when Americans should pause and focus on the ultimate price so many have paid over the centuries to win and preserve our freedom.
This day also reminds us that each generation must take up and continue the unending struggle to protect liberty. My father served his country in France as a member of the US Army.
There's a hip phrase among young folks - "To die for..." In essence that means that some object or person is so enticing that the attractiveness suggests a feigned willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice to obtain it.
But ask yourself this, how many Americans today would be willing to die for the freedoms and liberties we supposedly enjoy, as millions before us have done? And also ask yourself - do we really still enjoy the fruits of those liberties? Or have they been slowly taken from us, devaluing the sacrifice of all those who died. Did they die in vain? In his eloquent Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln suggested that what we do will determine the answer to that question.
Americans live in an era of overwhelming numbers; the bloated national debt, the huge budget and trade deficits, opinion polls, holiday weekend highway fatalities, the number of hurricanes expected to hit our shores. But many seem more concerned about the latest American Idol winner or Wall Street record than they do about the very real loss of freedom.
The cruelest numbers of all are those that seem senseless. Over 3,430 American military have died in the Iraq war, as well as many thousands more Iraqis and non-military American contractors. Aside from the merits of this war, each American and Iraqi casualty, many of them very young, were unique individuals. Each with his or her own life, loves and potential that will no go unrealized. Was this really necessary? It's worth considering in comparison that in all the wars America has fought, including our own Civil War, 1,290,200 died. During Gen. Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North, at Antietam in my home state of Maryland, in one day alone, Sept. 17, 1862, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded or missing.
Here at Sound Of Cannons , we often speak of freedom and liberty, usually in terms of very real threats to both of these precious commodities.
To observe that so many have died in the American cause over so many centuries only accentuates the meaning and importance of the cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion. They died before their time, with promises unrealized, and in the service of their country. Their very real sacrifice for our liberties makes it all the more important that we guard against diminution of those liberties in our own time -- whether the threat is from abroad, or from within our own government.
Each of us always needs to be prepared for that unexpected hour of death, we know not when. The call to duty and service to country remains distant and unreal for too many Americans. As a nation we need always to be certain that in any war, including the so-called "war on terror," our cause is defensible and just.
And we should never forget and always pray that those who paid dearly for our liberties by making the ultimate sacrifice may rest in God's eternal peace - and that God will indeed bless America.
This day also reminds us that each generation must take up and continue the unending struggle to protect liberty. My father served his country in France as a member of the US Army.
There's a hip phrase among young folks - "To die for..." In essence that means that some object or person is so enticing that the attractiveness suggests a feigned willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice to obtain it.
But ask yourself this, how many Americans today would be willing to die for the freedoms and liberties we supposedly enjoy, as millions before us have done? And also ask yourself - do we really still enjoy the fruits of those liberties? Or have they been slowly taken from us, devaluing the sacrifice of all those who died. Did they die in vain? In his eloquent Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln suggested that what we do will determine the answer to that question.
Americans live in an era of overwhelming numbers; the bloated national debt, the huge budget and trade deficits, opinion polls, holiday weekend highway fatalities, the number of hurricanes expected to hit our shores. But many seem more concerned about the latest American Idol winner or Wall Street record than they do about the very real loss of freedom.
The cruelest numbers of all are those that seem senseless. Over 3,430 American military have died in the Iraq war, as well as many thousands more Iraqis and non-military American contractors. Aside from the merits of this war, each American and Iraqi casualty, many of them very young, were unique individuals. Each with his or her own life, loves and potential that will no go unrealized. Was this really necessary? It's worth considering in comparison that in all the wars America has fought, including our own Civil War, 1,290,200 died. During Gen. Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North, at Antietam in my home state of Maryland, in one day alone, Sept. 17, 1862, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded or missing.
Here at Sound Of Cannons , we often speak of freedom and liberty, usually in terms of very real threats to both of these precious commodities.
To observe that so many have died in the American cause over so many centuries only accentuates the meaning and importance of the cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion. They died before their time, with promises unrealized, and in the service of their country. Their very real sacrifice for our liberties makes it all the more important that we guard against diminution of those liberties in our own time -- whether the threat is from abroad, or from within our own government.
Each of us always needs to be prepared for that unexpected hour of death, we know not when. The call to duty and service to country remains distant and unreal for too many Americans. As a nation we need always to be certain that in any war, including the so-called "war on terror," our cause is defensible and just.
And we should never forget and always pray that those who paid dearly for our liberties by making the ultimate sacrifice may rest in God's eternal peace - and that God will indeed bless America.
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