What Memorial Day is Really About

Today is Memorial Day, a day that many think of as just another three-day weekend, yet I encourage every American to take a moment to remember the reason for this day. Today we remember the more than 1.3 million service members that paid the ultimate sacrifice, laying down their lives, in defense of our country and our freedoms. From the estimated 8,000 volunteers who died in the Revolutionary War to the approximated 450,000 who died in our Civil War (still America’s bloodiest war), and the 405,000 who gave their lives in World War II, this country has a long history of service and defense of our Constitution – the entire Constitution including all of its Amendments.

Turn on any popular news magazine today and you will see a conversation to limit the Second Amendment as a result of the tragedy in Uvalde. The previous weeks, there were more than a few suggestions that we should limit the First Amendment because a lifelong Democrat voter Elon Musk was considering a takeover of Twitter and Secretary Mayorkus of the DHS was on the verge of instituting a very Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board. There are long debates on these and all the Amendments and this is not the time for outlining all those arguments.  However, remember both of these attacks on the foundational elements of our Constitution are designed to install greater power in the politicians who no longer serve us but now feel that they rule us.

Is it odd in a sense that we will die to protect our Constitution from attack from abroad, but not from within?

How many of us intentionally voted for double-digit inflation, an unprotected border, a flood of toxic Fentanyl, paying for a war in Ukraine, delivering our national sovereignty to Director-General Tedros of the WHO, a war on fossil fuels, and dramatically rising crime rates in most urban areas of our nation? This is merely the civil backdrop while our children are being indoctrinated with liberal ideologies of ‘gender fluidity’ and are taught that Marxism, totalitarianism, and socialism are far superior to the inefficient government we labor under now. Consider the manic war on religion that is continually waged: any reference to God is being stricken from any public space, people have been dismissed from their positions for engaging in prayer, and only the non-Christian religions are respected. Why press this war on God and religion?  That answer is simple: hope.

Why was it so important for churches to close during the Covid lockdowns? No, it wasn’t fear of transmission – remember the crowds in Costco – it was fear of that we might look to our Creator instead of worshipping the alter of Anthony Fauci. Whether you declare yourself Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian, or non-denominational: when you recognize that there is a higher power than anything we can see on this earth, you no longer put all your faith in your political leaders. That is what our ‘health officials’ were really driving at.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Preamble to our Constitution: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Endowed by their Creator.  Creator refers to the God of the Bible. This is the first reference to God in the Constitution and perhaps the most important. It underscores the Founding Father’s reliance on Judeo-Christian principles in the drafting of the Constitution. This is the first nation in the recorded history of the world that posits that our rights are God-given and not given to us by the government. Jefferson continued in the Preamble: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”. In other words, it is the Government’s role to protect those rights not to limit them.

Our servicemen and women have stood watch over these freedoms for over two hundred years, and over one million have given their lives to maintain them. In 1918, Irving Berlin wrote the beautiful song/prayer “God Bless America” and revised it twenty years later into its current form:

While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,

Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.

God bless America,

Land that I love,

Stand beside her, and guide her

Through the night with a light from above.

From the mountains, to the prairies,

To the oceans, white with foam

God bless America, My home sweet home

God bless America, My home sweet home.

This song isn’t sung as much today as it was when I was a child and that is symptomatic of our separation from this nation’s foundational Judeo-Christian principles. While we barbeque our burgers, hot dogs, and ribs this weekend, visiting with friends and family, let us take a moment to remember all those who went before us to create, maintain and preserve our nation and remember: there are no atheists in foxholes.