Some of us spent part of Memorial Day thinking about what the day means, about honoring those who fell defending our freedom, liberty and country.
We at The New Era know that many of those who have fallen would be quite satisfied with what we call freedom and liberty. Other veterans, living and dead, might say they’re not too particularly happy with the direction our nation is headed, but it’s still our country, and we should take pride in it.
We take pride in our country insofar as this nation was the leader in establishing the idea that a man’s rights are not derived from a government or set of laws but rather from the divine Creator himself and discoverable through reason.
The founders of our nation believed that government essentially exists to preserve our rights to our own lives, along with the rights implied in that statement, rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness (or the results of our own labor – property).
We spent much time honoring our veterans, living and dead, for defending this country and its freedom. In reality, our nation is not what they were defending. Rather, they are defending and upholding the ideals of our Constitution, which provides us those individual and personal rights, not the nation.
The nation is merely the general directing agent to the force we wield collectively, not an end in itself.
We look around today and see a world enamored of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, all candidates who see government as much more than our founding fathers did, much more than the causes for which we are supposed to fight.
They tell us that government can be used to change our country and our world for the better. With one side of their mouth they state they’re for individual rights, but then they turn around and advocate programs and policies that are slowly but surely removing many of those rights.
Slowly but surely citizens of this nation are losing rights to free speech – you’re free to speak your mind as long as it’s not considered “hate speech” by someone else. We’re being told how we can raise our children and how we can’t. The recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision effectively outlawing homeschooling in California is a recent example.
We’re forced to support public education that, in many communities, is veering sharply away from principles and precepts our forefathers held dear. We’re forced to support welfare programs that allow many lazy, unmotivated and often able-bodied people to live off the rest of us. When you hear students in local schools boldly proclaim that they plan to live off the Oregon Trail card, so why bother with education, you know that’s not what our soldiers went to war for. Next, our leaders want to institute public healthcare founded on similar principles.
We have legislators and bureaucrats in whose eyes deficit spending is considered a plus. And on and on. Property rights. Gun-ownership rights. Taxation. Etc. etc.
Is this what our troops fought for and died for in World Wars I and II? In Korea? Is this what they should be fighting for now?
We’ve just finished a primary election that set the stage for the big one in November. The question we must ask ourselves is whether we’re moving in the right direction.
Our troops, fighting overseas, are not in position to change what’s happening at home. The ones we honor on Memorial Day cannot help us now.
We need to take a careful look at where we are and where we are going. We need to review what it was that made our nation great.
From the Declaration of Independence: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.”
This is where we are today. Most of us live pretty good lives, lives that remain blessed. We have so much to be thankful for. We still have a lot more to lose, but in many ways we have already lost it. The philosophical basis for our rights is all but forgotten and ignored as we trample the Constitution and the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence.
A time will come again where the next phrase will be of utmost import:
“But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”
The soldiers who fought for this, the soldiers who may yet again fight for this, they are the soldiers who deserve every bit of honor and respect we can muster. Voters who believe in individual rights, real freedom, deserve respect. The same goes for politicians who do likewise.