“All we have of freedom, all we use or know
-
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.”
~Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.”
~Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899
Memorial Day is unusual among our national
holidays in that it links the past with the present and the future. Put another
way, Memorial Day has been traditionally a celebration and a remembrance of all
that has come and gone which in turn has set the stage for the here and now and
that what is yet to be. We remember not only our dead but what they did for us
and how they influenced the course of history.
This Memorial Day seems stranger and more ominous
than any I have ever experienced before. There is a miasma hanging over the
Republic like a dank, thick clammy fog that makes our every action more
difficult for lack of a clear vision as to where we are going and where we have
come from.
We are ensnarled in crisis and scandal, sapping
the confidence we have in our government and it’s leadership. The “Ship of
State” feels like it’s sailing with no hand on the tiller and no helmsman at
the wheel.
All the comfortable and comforting words of
memory to our sacred dead who preserved for us with “their last full measure of
devotion” the freedoms we used to cherish now seem suddenly to be in jeopardy.
It is as if we are on the precipice of ceasing to be Americans due to the
assaults by our government on our rights and on our lives.
It has always been the natural state of things
for Americans to argue with, disparage, harangue and insult those who make up
the government. It is not the natural state of things for the government to
stop protecting our right to do this and instead attack us for being in critical
disagreement of what it does and how it behaves toward us. Protecting our
unalienable rights is after all, the first and most important responsibility of
constitutional government toward those it governs.
For years we as Americans have lived in mounting
fear of agencies of government such as the IRS who seem to have unfettered
power over our lives. A letter from the IRS fills us with dread because we have
come to understand that if they accuse us of something we are automatically
guilty until we prove ourselves innocent. This is fundamentally and profoundly
un-American. When did this happen and more importantly why did we allow it to
happen?
Now other instrument of power such as the DOJ,
the EPA, OSHA, the FBI, the DOL, the NLRB and others seem to all too
frequently, engage in “witch hunts” against political or ideological opponents
who publicly disagree with the current regime. This is not the America of
Memorial days past. This is not the America that our forefathers worked for and
brave patriots died for. This in fact is an insult to their memory. It would
be almost sacrilegious to pretend that the fruits of their sacrifice are not in
grave peril.
This Memorial day is different because we are in
uncharted waters with regard to who we were and we exist in Terra Incognita as
to what we want and who we want to be. How we came to this existential
identity crisis is part of the struggle we find ourselves in with our nation
almost equally divided over these fundamental questions. What is critically
important however is that we not allow the relentless assaults on our liberty
and freedom to succeed and thereby relegate future Memorial Days to the mere
memory of freedom and not freedom being the vibrant center of our lives today
and our children’s lives tomorrow.
ERLANDSSON
( THIS COMMENTARY WAS BROADCAST ON THE
VERNUCCIO/ALLISON REPORT ON MAY 25, 2013 ON WVOX 1460 AM /http://www.wvox.com )
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