The Best Way to Honor the Dead on Memorial Day is to Reject Radical Ideologues

Memorial Day is a holiday you don’t celebrate but commemorate – a distinction that marketers and many event organizers don’t fully appreciate or subscribe to.

The unofficial start to summer, this extended weekend is marked by road trips, ball games, retail sales, barbecues and extended time with family and friends.

These are good things but shouldn’t be the only things filling these next few days. Memorial Day parades, patriotic prayer services and ceremonies at national cemeteries are all appropriate ways to pay tribute to those who sacrificed their life in the service of their country.

Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery in 1982, President Reagan reflected, “The willingness of some to give their lives so that others might live never fails to evoke in us a sense of wonder and mystery.” He then added, “I can’t claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don’t know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as our does. Does that flag still wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Speaking at Fort McHenry (where the “Star Spangled Banner” was written) on Memorial Day in 2020, President Trump declared:

In every generation, these intrepid souls kissed goodbye to their families and loved ones.  They took flight in planes, set sail in ships, and marched into battle with our flag, fighting for our country, defending our people.

When the cause of liberty was in jeopardy, American warriors carried that flag through ice and snow to victory at Trenton.  They hoisted it up the masts of great battleships in Manila Bay.  They fought through hell to raise it high atop a remote island in the Pacific Ocean called Iwo Jima.  From the Philippine Sea to Fallujah, from New Orleans to Normandy, from Saratoga to Saipan, from the Battle of Baltimore to the Battle of the Bulge, Americans gave their lives to carry that flag through piercing waves, blazing fires, sweltering deserts, and storms of bullets and shrapnel.  They climbed atop enemy tanks, jumped out of burning airplanes, and leapt on live grenades.  Their love was boundless.  Their devotion was without limit.  Their courage was beyond measure.

We can and should commemorate that courage this weekend in special ceremonies, but we can and should also honor it by pushing back against those who strive to corrupt or destroy it in any number of formats and forums.

World wars have been fought to preserve liberty and freedom. Our brave members of the military battled the enemy halfway across the world in the hope they’d never come to our shores and take up residence in America. They courageously confronted aggressors who wanted to brainwash children in their homes, control hearts and minds in schools and universities, infringe upon free speech, seize free enterprise and replace God with government.

Over a million U.S. military personnel have died in wars since the American Revolution to stop any of that from happening. Their sacrifice made the difference.

Yet, many of those same threats successfully resisted from the outside are now percolating inside our country.

Radical, fringe actors are determined to redefine the family, expand the definition of marriage, obliterate the obvious distinctions between male and female, destroy girl sports, control the major institutions of influence in America (business, education, media, entertainment and government) and silence anyone who resists the revolution.

On this Memorial Day weekend – and every day beyond – the very best way we can pay tribute those in uniform who gave their lives protecting and preserving those freedom would be to push back against the ideologues who want to wrestle it away.

“To every parent who weeps for a child, to every child who mourns for a parent, and to every husband or wife whose heart has been torn in two: Today we ask God to comfort your pain, to ease your sorrow, and to wipe away your tears,” said President Trump on Memorial Day in 2018. “This is a very special day.  And today, our whole country thanks you, embraces you, and pledges to you: We will never forget our heroes.”

The very best way to never forget them is to fight back against forces determined to undo what they fought so valiantly to protect.

Image from Getty.