On Monday, I attended some of the public Memorial Day happenings in the city where I live. I was with my family, and the experience was at once moving, uplifting and sobering. For reasons that will be obvious to some, the tributes held a deeper meaning for many of the attendees than in times past; my wife, though definitely not a girly girl, found it necessary to water her face at more than one juncture during the commemoration.
The deeper meaning, of course, stems from the fact that a lot of Americans are aware of what a precarious position our republic now occupies, and how this relates to the many thousands of men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in preserving our freedom and our liberties.
"How do you think we should feel," I asked my children later, "about a person – maybe with kids at home, like you – who loses their life in war, so that the rest of us can do the things we want to do?"
They couldn't answer right away, though not for lack of compassion or intellect. It's not an easy question for a child.
Perhaps it's not an easy question for an adult, either – or maybe just some of them. From a strictly selfish point of view (a vantage point many Americans hold these days), why would anyone with talents and abilities, dreams and desires, loved ones and a life to live, willfully forfeit his life for the common good of his countrymen – even if guaranteed that the sacrifice would be appreciated and honored?
Based on the sentiments to which I've been exposed over the years, it's probably safe to say that most progressives believe that those who seek military careers are either pathologically violent morons or losers who essentially have nowhere else to go. Some even circuitously convey the notion that those who have been willing to lay down their lives for the rest of us were stupid to do so – suckers, you might say. Like many left-leaning Americans (particularly those in power), their conviction is that the military is a cheap utility for actualizing the grand designs of those with real vision – like themselves – and that military personnel are wholly expendable.
The truth is no doubt incomprehensible to those who believe as outlined above. While a wide variety of reasons exist as to why Americans pursue military careers (enlisted and otherwise), the fact is that, outside of dedicatedly liberal enclaves, there remains a certain distinction that is conferred upon those who elect to serve their country. As an aside, I also believe it is a testimony to American exceptionalism that ours continues to be the best military in the world, particularly given the whole "pathologically violent morons and losers" thing.
The consensus appears to be that very few of our service men and women have hidden agendas connected to their service (other than perhaps education and learning a trade or other skill); most believe that they are doing the right thing. This phenomenon would fall into the realm of honor, something that is, among many values, antithetical to the self-seeking narcissism that has become so well-established in many demographics.
And those who serve because it is the right thing to do apparently don't consider whether or not their sacrifice – even if it is of the ultimate sort – will be appreciated and honored.
What a concept ...
It's become painfully evident that those who have been driving popular culture for the last few decades are among the most irreverent, spoiled and timorous people who have ever gained pre-eminence in our nation. As a result, every American generation since "the Greatest Generation" (that which came of age during the Great Depression and World War II) has become, in the aggregate, more self-indulgent, shallow, superficial, mollycoddled, imperious, cavalier and arrogant than the last. Add to that a heaping helping of ignorance on many levels, and you have a recipe for the smorgasbord of sin upon which so many Americans are currently engorging themselves.
There's a difference between taking one's freedoms for granted (as almost all of us have done from time to time) and being so profoundly spoiled that one literally has no conception that those freedoms were bought and paid for with the blood of neighbors, and being so supercilious that such a concept would be scornfully rejected anyway.
Those who have little concept of what went into the founding, establishment and the preservation and safeguarding of this nation can no more consider anything other than their inconsequential, mundane perception than I can conceptualize being pregnant.
These days, there are many of this type, thanks to the press, the entertainment industry, the Department of Education and theNational Education Association. They are blissfully secure in the belief that when the pipe dream pushers have eliminated the opposition, they'll retain all of their liberties, their indulgences and their stuff. As many Europeans are now discovering, the awakening will be a decidedly rude one.
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