Freedom works! We should try out more freedom again and maybe, just maybe, we can right this ship before it sinks. As Ron Paul always pointed out, we can either bring our spending and money-printing addiction back to sane levels or have reality dictate it for us when the empire collapses and the troops are forced to come home. But truly, truly, if it’s between financial collapse and a nuclear WWIII, I’ll take my depression now, please!
During the summer of 2018 my family and I were passing through Oklahoma. We were going home to central Texas from a family camp where my wife had been both a camper and counselor growing up. It was a great week. Instead of driving through McDonalds, we decided to get a real meal from a sit-down restaurant. Not only did the town of McAlister have a Chili’s, but we also had a coupon for free queso, so I was sold!
The waitress was sweet from the beginning and melted at the sight of our three beautiful kids. My Son was still a baby and was near peak cuteness. Towards the end of the meal, it came out that I was a Navy Vet, Submarines, Ohio-class. She perked up and said, “My Son was on one of those!”
“Oh, cool.” I exclaimed. “What’s his rate (job) – or is he an officer?”
“No, he was special forces.”
“So an SSGN, I’ll guess the Michigan?”
“That was it!” She said.
SSGNs are the ones that carry boatloads (pun intended) of Tomahawk missiles and are also capable of launching special forces while still submerged.
She then went through his story about how he later volunteered to go to Afghanistan. Up to this point both her demeanor and the language used seemed to suggest that he was still serving. But then I unintentionally flushed it out.
“He was killed is 2011 in Afghanistan.” She said calmly.
What do you say except, “I’m so sorry to hear that…”
We both handled it well, no one cried, and I tipped very well. Then as I was buckling my baby son into his car seat, checking the straps tight and chest-clip properly placed, I started getting angry thinking about the corrupt warmongers in DC that got the waitress’s son killed.
When he died, the obviously failed war was already more than a decade old. After ten years of war, Ron Paul predicted that if we didn’t withdraw, the war would last another ten years. It turns out he was exactly right (again) and if they had listened to Paul, her son would still be alive. But that didn’t happen. The US war machine would continue pumping trillions of dollars (yes, trillions) and thousands of lives into Afghanistan in order to ultimately replace the Taliban with the Taliban. And they intentionally and knowingly lied to us time and again. In a healthy democracy, the report of those lies would have been the top news for years. Nationally televised hearings, shameful resignations, and even prison sentences would have been dished out. None of that happened, and to the immense frustration of the small anti-war, anti-corruption crowd, no one even seemed to care.
After the embarrassing withdrawal, the war lobby immediately spouted insane claims that Al-Qaeda and ISIS were going to rise up and attack America if we didn’t start dropping more bombs on Afghanistan. These think-tank “experts” are often funded directly from weapons manufacturers and foreign governments like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Israel. They don’t even hide it, it’s publicly reported! They spend tens of millions of dollars a year funding “experts” to get on CNN, ABC, FOX, and NBC to tell you that endless war is necessary to keep you safe. It’s all so obviously corrupt, dumb, and unnecessary.
But this Memorial Day, when you say it, think of what it means on the most human level. You live in the greatest nation, among the greatest people, in the history of the world.
Remember them. Let the memory steel you – to deserve them.
The Christmas season of 1942 was clouded by war in the small town of Waterloo, Iowa, but for Mrs. Alleta Sullivan, it was especially dreadful. A rumor was going about town, and it was about her sons. Or rather, it was about all five sons, each of whom had volunteered for the Navy — and elected to serve together aboard the same ship. The brothers meant to fight as they lived, as a team, as a family, each helping the other out — on the vast and distant Pacific as much as in idyllic Iowa.
The rumor that reached their mother was that their ship, the light cruiser Juneau, had sunk off Guadalcanal. But Mrs. Alleta Sullivan had received no news.
So, she did something very American. She wrote to the Navy. “Dear Sirs,” she began, “I am writing you in regards to a rumor going around that my five sons were killed in action in November. A mother from here came and told me she got a letter from her son and he heard my five sons were killed.”
The next line, even softened by 80 years, still breaks the heart in its simplicity and directness: “It is all over town now, and I am so worried.”
Mrs. Sullivan would have been entirely justified in demanding news of her boys. She would have been justified in demanding that the Navy account for them, that she did not have to endure the quiet hell of rumors of her sons. Instead, she does something remarkable, and reading it now is a window into a different — and better — America. She writes that even if her five sons are gone, she will still do her own duty.
“[P]lease let me know the truth. I am to christen the U.S.S. TAWASA, Feb. 12th, at Portland, Oregon. If anything has happened to my five sons, I will still christen the ship as it was their wish that I do so.”
Stop there for a moment and re-read that. Even in the shadow of the most terrible prospect a mother can face, Mrs. Alleta Sullivan tells the Navy it can count on her to keep her commitments. She would never have said it, but here you can see from whom her five sons inherited their own sense of sacrificial devotion.
“I hated to bother you,” she continued as if she had anything at all to apologize for, “but it has worried me so that I wanted to know if it was true. So please tell me. It was hard to give five sons all at once to the Navy, but I am proud of my boys that they can serve and help protect their country.”
Mrs. Sullivan did not have to wait long for her answer. Her letter went to the Navy and crossed paths with the inbound casualty notification. Her letter went out in early January 1943. On the early morning of January 11, three Navy officers arrived at the little house on 98 Adams St. in Waterloo. Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan knew why they had come. The officer in charge knew he could not soften the blow.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “All five.”
The story of the Fighting Sullivans is a famous one, notable for its contrast of great virtue — five brothers, on fire with duty imparted by their parents — and great tragedy, in their death together on a black day off the Solomon Islands. We have an obligation to remember. We should also remember that it is not the only tale of its kind. We today are as far from World War II as it was from the Civil War. In that war, there was the heartbreaking episode of Mrs. Bixby and her five sons, all fallen in battle, of whom President Lincoln wrote that they were “so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.” In his 2013 “The Guns at Last Light,” Rick Atkinson tells a lesser-known tale of an elderly widower in Missouri, one Henry A. Wright, who waits at his small-town train station for the casket bearing his son, killed on Christmas Eve 1944 in the Ardennes.
He also received the remains of another son, who died in a German prison camp. He also received the remains of still another son, who died in combat in Germany, 10 days before war’s end.
Atkinson writes that the three brothers were buried “side by side by side beneath an iron sky.”
These stories of the grievous loss of the young, strong, brave, and parents burying their children, hit us hard. They should. If they do not, then we are undeserving of the fallen. The five Sullivans, the five Bixbys, and the three Wrights seize our attention and hearts because of the numbers. But make no mistake: the mother, the father, the brother, and the sister who lose a single son at war, do not grieve less because it is just one.
For them, there is the consolation in the grace that is only God’s to give.
On this Memorial Day, we remember all the fallen — and we remember those whom they left behind. We have a sacred obligation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” — and that obligation increases a hundredfold because the battle was borne, and the wife was widowed, and the child was orphaned, for us. “Freedom is not free” is an overused phrase, almost cliche, which does not mean it should not be said. But this Memorial Day, when you say it, think of what it means on the most human level. You live in the greatest nation, among the greatest people, in the history of the world.
You have that privilege because, across three centuries, unnumbered Americans laid down everything for it.
A young man died in battle on a sunny morning on the road to Concord.
A loving father fell in the wheatfield at Gettysburg.
A draftee determined to make his father proud died on the Imjin.
A bright and eager student breathed his last at Khe Sanh.
A young woman took her final flight over Fallujah.
Remember them. Let the memory steel you – to deserve them.
Many people visit cemeteries and memorials on Memorial Day to honor and mourn those who died while serving in the U.S. military. Many volunteers place American flags on the graves of military personnel in national cemeteries. Memorial Day is also considered the unofficial beginning of summer in the United States.[4]
The first national observance of Memorial Day occurred on May 30, 1868.[5] Then known as Decoration Day, the holiday was proclaimed by Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic to honor the Union soldiers who had died in the Civil War.[6] This national observance was preceded by many local ones between the end of the Civil War and Logan’s declaration. Many cities and people have claimed to be the first to observe it. However, in 2022, the National Cemetery Administration, a division of the Department of Veterans Affairs, credited Mary Ann Williams with originating the “idea of strewing the graves of Civil War soldiers—Union and Confederate” with flowers.[7]
Official recognition as a holiday spread among the states, beginning with New York in 1873.[8] By 1890, every Union state had adopted it. The world wars turned it into a day of remembrance for all members of the U.S. military who fought and died in service. In 1971, Congress standardized the holiday as “Memorial Day” and changed its observance to the last Monday in May.
Two other days celebrate those who have served or are serving in the U.S. military: Armed Forces Day (which is earlier in May), an unofficial U.S. holiday for honoring those currently serving in the armed forces, and Veterans Day (on November 11), which honors all those who have served in the United States Armed Forces.[9]
A variety of cities and people have claimed origination of Memorial Day.[5][10][11][12] In some such cases, the claims relate to documented events, occurring before or after the Civil War. Others may stem from general traditions of decorating soldiers’ graves with flowers, rather than specific events leading to the national proclamation.[13] Soldiers’ graves were decorated in the U.S. before[14] and during the American Civil War. Other claims may be less respectable, appearing to some researchers as taking credit without evidence, while erasing better-evidenced events or connections.[8][15]
Of documented commemorations occurring after the end of the Civil War and with the same purpose as Logan’s proclamation, the earliest occurred in Charleston, South Carolina. On May 1, 1865, formerly enslaved Black adults and children held a parade of 10,000 people to honor 257 dead Union soldiers. Those soldiers had been buried in a mass grave at the Washington Race Course, having died at the Confederate prison camp located there. After the city fell, recently freed persons unearthed and properly buried the soldiers. Then, on May 1, they held a parade and placed flowers. The estimate of 10,000 people comes from contemporaneous reporting, more recently unearthed by Historian David W. Blight, following references in archived material from Union veterans where the events were also described. Blight cites articles in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New-York Tribune.[16]
No direct link has been established between this event and Logan’s 1868 proclamations. Although Blight has claimed that “African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina”,[17] in 2012, he stated that he “has no evidence” that the event in Charleston effectively led to General Logan’s call for the national holiday.[18][15]
On June 3, 1861, Warrenton, Virginia, was the location of the first Civil War soldier’s grave ever to be decorated, according to a Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper article in 1906.[19] This decoration was for the funeral of the first soldier killed in action during the Civil War, John Quincy Marr, who fought and died on June 1, 1861, during a skirmish at Battle of Fairfax Courthouse in Virginia.[20]
On April 26, 1865, in Jackson, Mississippi, Sue Landon Vaughan supposedly decorated the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers. However, the earliest recorded reference to this event did not appear until many years after.[21] Regardless, mention of the observance is inscribed on the southeast panel of the Confederate Monument in Jackson, erected in 1891.[22]
The United States National Park Service[23] and numerous scholars attribute the beginning of a Memorial Day practice in the South to a group of women of Columbus, Georgia.[21][24][25][26][27][28][29] The women were the Ladies Memorial Association of Columbus. They were represented by Mary Ann Williams (Mrs. Charles J. Williams) who, as Secretary, wrote a letter to press in March 1866 asking their assistance in establishing annual holiday to decorate the graves of soldiers throughout the south.[30] The letter was reprinted in several southern states and the plans were noted in newspapers in the north. The date of April 26 was chosen. The holiday was observed in Atlanta, Augusta, Macon, Columbus and elsewhere in Georgia as well as Montgomery, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi, and across the south.[21] In some cities, mostly in Virginia, other dates in May and June were observed. General John A. Logan commented on the observances in a speech to veterans on July 4, 1866, in Salem, Illinois.[31] After General Logan’s General Order No. 11 to the Grand Army of the Republic to observe May 30, 1868, the earlier version of the holiday began to be referred to as Confederate Memorial Day.[21]
A year after the war’s end, in April 1866, four women of Columbus gathered together at Friendship Cemetery to decorate the graves of the Confederate soldiers. They also felt moved to honor the Union soldiers buried there, and to note the grief of their families, by decorating their graves as well. The story of their gesture of humanity and reconciliation is held by some writers as the inspiration of the original Memorial Day despite its occurring last among the claimed inspirations.[32][33][34][35]
According to the United States Library of Congress website, “Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War’s end. Records show that by 1865, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day.”[36] The earliest Southern Memorial Day celebrations were simple, somber occasions for veterans and their families to honor the dead and tend to local cemeteries.[37] In following years, the Ladies’ Memorial Association and other groups increasingly focused rituals on preserving Confederate culture and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy narrative.[38]
The 1863 cemetery dedication at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, included a ceremony of commemoration at the graves of dead soldiers. Some have therefore claimed that President Abraham Lincoln was the founder of Memorial Day.[39] However, Chicago journalist Lloyd Lewis tried to make the case that it was Lincoln’s funeral that spurred the soldiers’ grave decorating that followed.[40]
On July 4, 1864, ladies decorated soldiers’ graves according to local historians in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania.[41] Boalsburg promotes itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day.[42] However, no published reference to this event has been found earlier than the printing of the History of the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers in 1904.[43] In a footnote to a story about her brother, Mrs. Sophie (Keller) Hall described how she and Emma Hunter decorated the grave of Emma’s father, Reuben Hunter, and then the graves of all soldiers in the cemetery. The original story did not account for Reuben Hunter’s death occurring two months later on September 19, 1864. It also did not mention Mrs. Elizabeth Myers as one of the original participants. However, a bronze statue of all three women gazing upon Reuben Hunter’s grave now stands near the entrance to the Boalsburg Cemetery. Although July 4, 1864, was a Monday, the town now claims that the original decoration was on one of the Sundays in October 1864.[44]
General John A. Logan, who in 1868 issued a proclamation calling for “Decoration Day”
Orphans placing flags at their fathers’ graves in Glenwood Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Decoration Day
On May 5, 1868, General John A. Logan issued a proclamation calling for “Decoration Day” to be observed annually and nationwide; he was commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of and for Union Civil War veterans founded in Decatur, Illinois.[45] With his proclamation, Logan adopted the Memorial Day practice that had begun in the Southern states three years earlier.[21][30][46][47][48][49][50] The northern states quickly adopted the holiday. In 1868, memorial events were held in 183 cemeteries in 27 states, and 336 in 1869.[51]: 99–100 One author claims that the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of any particular battle.[52] According to a White House address in 2010, the date was chosen as the optimal date for flowers to be in bloom in the North.[53]
In 1871, Michigan made Decoration Day an official state holiday and by 1890, every northern state had followed suit. There was no standard program for the ceremonies, but they were typically sponsored by the Women’s Relief Corps, the women’s auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), which had 100,000 members. By 1870, the remains of nearly 300,000 Union dead had been reinterred in 73 national cemeteries, located near major battlefields and thus mainly in the South. The most famous are Gettysburg National Cemetery in Pennsylvania and Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.[54]
Another Memorial Day has come and gone, although it is still Military Appreciation Month. Evidently, having three military appreciation days already (Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Veterans Day) was not enough so “Congress designated May as National Military Appreciation Month in 1999 to ensure the nation was given the chance to publicly show their appreciation for troops past and present.”
Memorial Day, which did not become an official federal holiday until 1971, is supposed to be a day to honor American military personnel who died while in service to the country.
Honor them for what?
Fighting unjust wars?
Serving Uncle Sam?
Going where they had no business going?
Making widows and orphans? Dying for a lie?
Being the world’s self-appointed policeman?
Fighting senseless wars?
Engaging in offense instead of defense?
Neglecting and sacrificing their families?
Invading other countries?
Dying for a mistake?
Creating terrorists, insurgents, and militants because of U.S. military interventions?
Killing and maiming millions?
Fighting undeclared wars?
Drone strikes that regularly miss their targets?
Helping to carry out a reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy?
Fighting unnecessary wars?
Taking sides in civil wars?
Dying for the military/industrial complex?
Killing civilians and excusing it as collateral damage?
Following immoral orders?
Occupying other countries?
Unleashing sectarian violence?
Destroying foreign industry, culture, and infrastructure?
Being pawns of the U.S. government?
Bombing wedding parties?
Committing torture and atrocities?
Keeping overseas brothels in business?
Being duped?
Dying in vain?
Being a global force for evil?
But they died defending our freedoms!
Okay, let’s say that they did. Let’s say that in spite of all of the above, they still managed to die while defending our freedoms.
But what about current members of the U.S. military? On Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day, during Military Appreciation Month, and every other month and day of the year we are expected to honor military personnel for defending our freedoms and thank them for their service.
What freedoms?
The freedom to attend a sporting event?
The freedom to take one’s children to a playground?
The freedom to go to an amusement park?
The freedom to sunbathe on the beach?
The freedom to go to a concert?
The freedom to have a yard sale?
The freedom to attend church?
The freedom to assemble in a group of more than ten people?
The freedom to get a haircut?
The freedom to eat inside a restaurant?
The freedom to sit on a park bench?
The freedom to be closer than six feet to another person?
The freedom to go to a bar?
The freedom to open a “nonessential” business?
The freedom to have a wedding or funeral?
The freedom to go outside without having to wear a mask?
The freedom to make “unessential” travel?
The freedom to visit a sick relative in the hospital?
The freedom to go to a zoo?
The freedom to go to a movie?
The freedom to work out at a gym?
The freedom to take a drink from a water fountain? The freedom to try on clothes in store dressing room?
The freedom to take a cruise?
The freedom to ride a skateboard at a skate park?
The freedom to have a normal life?
Where is the U.S. military? I thought military personnel were defending our freedoms?
Why aren’t U.S. military personnel opening up stores, malls, parks, playgrounds, water fountains, zoos, gyms, bars, restaurants, park benches, barber shops, amusement parks, concert halls, arenas, stadiums, race tracks, beaches, churches, skate parks, cruise terminals, dressing rooms, and movie theatres? I thought they were defending our freedoms?
Why aren’t U.S. military personnel invading and occupying state legislatures and governor’s mansions and restoring our freedoms? I thought they were defending our freedoms?
U.S. military personnel are doing what they always do: whatever Uncle Sam tells them to do. They don’t defend our freedoms. They don’t support and defend the Constitution. They don’t secure our borders. They don’t guard American shores. They don’t patrol American coasts. They don’t watch over American skies. They don’t defend the country. They don’t protect Americans from credible threats. They don’t serve the country. They don’t fight “over there” so we don’t have to fight “over here.” They are too busy traveling the world, meeting interesting people, and then bombing, maiming, and killing them if the government tells them to.
It would be appropriate to celebrate Memorial Day by burning in effigy the politicians whose lies led to the deaths of so many Americans (and innocent foreigners). Those whose images deserve to be torched run the gamut from Lyndon Johnson to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton (Kosovo) to George W. Bush (Iraq, et cetera), to Barack Obama (Afghanistan, Libya, et cetera). Donald Trump’s warring has primarily resulted in the killing of foreigners, but they are also worthy of remembrance and lamentation. The burnings could be accompanied by recitations of the major offenses against the truth and liberty that each politician committed.
Before the war, almost all the broadcast news stories on Iraq originated with the federal government. PBS’ Bill Moyers noted that “of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS nightly news, from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.”
On Memorial Day, the media do their usual sacralizing of war. Instead, it should be a day for the ritualized scourging of politicians. During the last 70 years, their lies have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of almost 100,000 American soldiers and millions of foreigners. And yet, people still get teary-eyed when politicians take the stage to talk about their devotion to the troops.
On Memorial Day 2011, for instance, the Washington Post included numerous touching photographs of graves, recent widows or fatherless kids by the headstones, and stories of the troops’ sacrifices. The Post buried a short article in the middle of the A-Section (squeezed onto a nearly full-page ad for Mattress Discounters) about the U.S. military killing dozens of Afghan civilians and police in a wayward bombing in some irrelevant Afghan province. The story’s length and placement reflected the usual tacit assumption that any foreigner killed by the U.S. military doesn’t deserve to be treated as fully human.
The Washington Post celebrations of Memorial Day never include any reference to that paper’s culpability in helping the Bush administration deceive America into going to war against Iraq. When Post reporters dug up the facts that exposed the Bush administration’s false claims on the Iraqi peril, editors sometimes ignored or buried their revelations. Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained that in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’”
The Post continued aiding the war party by minimizing its sordidness. When the Bush administration’s claims on Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program had collapsed, the Washington Post article on the brazen deceits was headlined, “Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence.” According to Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, the press are obliged to portray politicians as if they are honest. He commented in 2007, “From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front-page pieces in the Washington Post making the administration’s case for war. It was, ‘The President said yesterday.’ ‘The Vice President said yesterday.’ ‘The Pentagon said yesterday.’ Well, that’s part of our job. Those people want to speak. We have to provide them a platform. I don’t have [sic] anything wrong with that.”
The Post was not alone in its groveling to war. Major television networks behaved like government-owned subsidiaries for much of the period before and during the Iraq War. CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan explained a month after the United States attacked Iraq, “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, ‘Here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war,’ and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important.” Jessica Yellin, a CNN correspondent who formerly worked for MSNBC, commented in 2008, “When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.” NBC news anchor Katie Couric stated that there was pressure from “the corporations who own where we work and from the government itself to really squash any kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it.”
Before the war, almost all the broadcast news stories on Iraq originated with the federal government. PBS’ Bill Moyers noted that “of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS nightly news, from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.”
But this record of servility and deceit has not slackened the media’s enthusiasm to drench Memorial Day with sanctimony.
In reality, Memorial Day should be a time to remember the government’s crimes against the people. Politicians have perennially sent young Americans to die for false causes or on wild-goose chases.
Over the past century, war memorials have become increasingly popular. However, most of the memorials do little or nothing to inform people of the chicaneries or deceits that paved the way to or perpetuated the war. It would be a vast improvement if each war memorial also had an adjacent monument of major lies—such as an engraved plaque listing the major deceits by which the American public were swayed to support sending American boys off to die for some grand cause.
The Vietnam War memorial in Washington, for instance, lists the names of each American killed in that conflict. If that memorial could be complemented by excerpts from the Pentagon Papers—or from some of the major admissions of deceit by some of that war’s policymakers—the effect on the public would be far more uplifting.
General Patton said that an ounce of sweat can save a pint of blood. Similarly, a few hours studying the lessons of history can prevent heaps of grave-digging in the coming years. President Trump has saber-rattled against Iran, North Korea, Syria, and other nations. His bellicose rhetoric should spur Americans to review the follies and frauds of past wars before it is too late to stop the next pointless bloodbath.
Memorial Day can benefit from the creativity of free spirits across the board. Tom Blanton, the mastermind of the website Project for a New American Revolution, proposed in an exchange on my website changing Memorial Day to make it far more realistic:
It used to be that Memorial Day was to honor dead soldiers. In recent years, we are asked to also honor veterans (who already have a day) and active duty members of the armed services. This may be an indication that the politicians feel there aren’t enough dead soldiers…
I think Memorial Day should simply be renamed Tombstone Day and people should decorate their yards with styrofoam tombstones like they do for Halloween. True-believers might even consider a few flag-draped coffins made of cardboard and maybe hanging dismembered arms and legs made of rubber from their trees.
Blanton’s proposal would provide a shot in the arm for party stores during the slow period between Valentine’s Day and Halloween. And it would be a spark for conversations that were far more substantive than the usual flag waving.
I would favor celebrating Memorial Day the way the British used to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. Fawkes was the leader of a conspiracy in 1604 to blow up the Parliament building in London. Until recently, the British celebrated the anniversary of that day by burning Guy Fawkes in effigy. (Government officials have recently banned such burnings on the grounds that something bad might happen because of the fires. The movie V for Vendetta probably made some bureaucrats nervous.)
It would be appropriate to celebrate Memorial Day by burning in effigy the politicians whose lies led to the deaths of so many Americans (and innocent foreigners). Those whose images deserve to be torched run the gamut from Lyndon Johnson to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton (Kosovo) to George W. Bush (Iraq, et cetera), to Barack Obama (Afghanistan, Libya, et cetera). Donald Trump’s warring has primarily resulted in the killing of foreigners, but they are also worthy of remembrance and lamentation. The burnings could be accompanied by recitations of the major offenses against the truth and liberty that each politician committed.
The best way to honor American war dead is to cancel politicians’ prerogative to send troops abroad to fight on any and every pretext. And one of the best steps towards that goal is to remember the lies for which soldiers died.
MCViewPoint 
.jpg){kind=link}
.jpg){kind=link}
