Occasions such as Memorial Day often cause me to think of how often we use a trite phrase about how people died for our freedom. Don’t get me wrong, hundreds of thousands have indeed paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. My critique is of us, for making the assumption that these folk died in support of our position on Liberty or the Constitution, or how life in the good ol’ USA should be.
My guess is that, overall, few soldiers died charging into battle with super high minded thoughts about Constitutional law, limited government and the true nature of Liberty. But that doesn’t mean that many were not generally aware that they were fighting for something special as Americans, not just fighting for “home” and life-familiar, but something unique in the world.
And it is that generally held corporate understanding of American Exceptionalism that bound us together as a people for almost two hundred years. One needn’t be a scholar to understand that within our land was something worth putting one’s life on the line for. I said almost two hundred years because we didn’t make it to the 1976 Bicentennial before the counter-culture began to overtake most all our institutions and begin the destruction of our jointly held concept of being exceptional.
So today, is what we have still worth protecting with our lives? I’d estimate that likely forty percent of the country doesn’t think so and, sadly that’s the biggest justification for questioning what we’ve become. But the memory of those who did give their lives should be motivation enough to retake our country and ensure that it remains “exceptional”, in the best possible way.
Well said Robert, well said.