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Arlington National Cemetery
credit: wikipedia

This Memorial Day, our thoughts turn to you who, unbidden, answered your country’s call, you who truly were–and are–the best and brightest. We know your rest is troubled. How could it be otherwise? The America for which you fought and died is in jeopardy. Half of the country is “The Resistance,” resisting the Constitution, the rule of law and the love of liberty.  Racism disguised as “social justice’ is abroad in the land, stirring up division and hate among those who were formerly Americans.  Even our military is riven by Marxists seeking “domestic terrorists”–you.  As William Butler Yeats, in The Second Coming, said:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Yeats speaks of the self-imagined elite, those who seek to control and dominate, not serve, not you–-never you.  America no longer has a Commander In Chief, and many in our government, including our intelligence apparatus, the Department of Justice, the D/S/C Congress and the FBI, and virtually all of the news media, are doing all they can to destroy America, to fundamentally transform it into a socialist worker’s paradise. Our cities are ablaze, our police disheartened and disbanded, free speech is threatened and our foreign enemies encouraged.  There is no longer a loyal opposition; members of the D/S/C Party are racing to the left at blinding speed, heedless of the lessons of history, heedless of the virtues for which you fought and died.

Politicians wail that breaking the law and destroying the Constitution is the highest expression of patriotism. You understood patriotism.  You lived it, and died giving your all that others might understand it.

For you, duty, honor and country were not mere mottos, but lived, every day, and uncommon valor was a common virtue. Our current self-imagined elite fear ideas and words different than their own, and seek “safe spaces.” You willingly went to the hellholes of the Earth, places where no safety was to be found, and bore any burden to preserve liberty, even for those that would spit on it, and you. They, those precious snowflakes, demand the world accommodate their infantile desires.  You sacrificed everything so all could live in liberty.

Real Soldiers
credit: http://www.military-history.us

Even as our temporary President has thrown open our borders, devalued citizenship and labeled all Americans racists, you understood how rare and precious American citizenship is.  You fought to uphold and preserve a color blind society and to maintain equal justice for all. You lived patriotism, not the politically expedient rhetoric thrown in the faces of Americans by corrupt politicians and cynical, dim-witted, self-absorbed entertainers, but the patriotism that ever lives in the hearts of Americans. You knew what it meant to give the last full measure of devotion:

…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

credit: levycountysheriffsblog

They give nothing, but take much.  And you, like me, fear your sacrifice might be in vain.  You shudder with revulsion at men and women that deny the existence of evil and think America what is wrong with the world. They revel in the bounty of America, yet smugly sneer at those that honor your sacrifice, the flag, patriotism and all it means to be American.

Always, when we have needed great men and women, we have found them.  They stood and said: “here am I; send me.” You were among them. When we needed not the coddled, addled, self-imagined elite, the race hustlers and corrupt and criminal, but the truly best and brightest, they have always donned the uniform and taken up arms in the defense of liberty, just as you did.

credit: wesharepics.info

In Henry V, William Shakespeare wrote a speech that resonates in the hearts of every warrior.  He speaks of a climactic battle on Saint Crispin’s Day, but your days were no less meaningful, your sacrifice no less great:

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

You few; you band of brothers; you who kept faith with all who fought before you and showed the way to those that follow.  Will more step forward in the future? Will they sacrifice as you have sacrificed?  Will their sacrifice expose the lie that is the America-hating Left?  Will they pledge their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to preserve the America you so fiercely loved?

credit: forbes.com

I know they will. The sound you hear, the regular, echoing marching to the flag—the American flag, never any racist, political banner of division and shame–is the never-ending sound of their feet.  I drift back in memory to that day in the Air Force when my Security Police shift stood at attention, outdoors, prior to going on duty.  Suddenly, the roar of the eight engines of a B-52, invisible on the distant flight line, vibrated our chests and a young airman, new to the base, exclaimed: “What’s that!”  A wise sergeant replied: “The sound of freedom.”  The sound of generation after generation of marching feet is no less the sound of freedom than the roar of a warplane’s jet engines.

Even as vilely corrupt bureaucrats and politicians seek to preserve their life-long sinecures at the expense of honest, honorable Americans, young Americans answer the call, just as you answered the call.

The America for which you gave all of your tomorrows still lives. I am but one that remembers and honors you and America, but one of millions, tens, hundreds of millions, that can never forget you, because, we, like you, are Americans.

On this Memorial Day, we pause to particularly remember as Robert Laurence Binyon, in “For The Fallen,” wrote in 1914:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

God protect and comfort you, as you protected us, as your service gave us comfort, and give you peace.  Let the sound of fellow Americans marching to answer our nation’s call lull you to eternal, well deserved rest, secure in the knowledge that the flag will always be taken up; good men and women will not allow evil to win.  They will gladly take and honor your oath:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

We’ll never forget:  that’s what it is to be an American. That’s what it is to build and preserve the shining city on the hill, the last, best hope of mankind, on this, and every Memorial Day.