Memorial Day and the Way of the Poppies

What ever happened to the poppies, you know those mundane flowers of crepe paper and wire? Do you miss them as I do? I miss them not because of their creative exquisiteness but because of what they represent. Have you seen many over the past few years? In my youth they were customary during Memorial weekends. Now, what was common then, appears to have diminished, as we in America grow more indifferent about those who perished while heeding the call of military service during times of war.

I ask you, the reader, what is the significance of Memorial Day? Is it still a day set aside to remember and honor those men and women who fought wars for our freedom and paid the ultimate sacrifice? Let us not forget they were people who wore the uniform of our nation and who were killed in the effort to purge the world of the evils of authoritarianism, despotism and tyranny. Those ideologies that enslave people to lives of serfdom are what patriots have fought and died for throughout America’s short history. They along with our allies are remembered on this day. And so to, are the war dead in the countries we fought to free.

Have you not observed how Americans have become apathetic about almost everything? We too frequently take our rights and freedoms for granted and often give them away. Today, we seem more willing to convey them away as though liberty is limitless. But that is not true. Liberty only exists when there is inferred covenant among people to acknowledge them and do all that is conceivable to maintain them. I ask you, how would we explain to our war dead - and yes today, including the living veterans of the horrors of wars we engaged in and in fact, are still fighting -how would we explain that we have taken their sacrifices for granted. I really do believe, that we frequently forget the living breathing people that statistics represent: more than 1.3 million Americans killed in our wars and hundreds of thousands of others wounded.

I am of the opinion, that we have legislators and government officials who are all too keen to put themselves and their party first and weaken the welfare of the people and the Constitution. In doing so, they (an extension of us) have betrayed the trust of our war dead. When they are willing, to ignore or break laws that allow our nation to be invaded across our borders, we have betrayed the trust of our war dead.  When we allow politicians to cover-up the truth about an attack on an American mission in Benghazi killing four Americans, or the truth about gun running operation to benefit Mexican cartels, or allow law enforcement and municipalities to ignore federal immigration laws, or disregard Americans who are confined in foreign prisons on unfounded allegations, or mistreatment of veterans who suffer medical maladies of varying degrees, and so on and so forth, etcetera. By all outward appearances our government today, is not working for the wellbeing of American Citizens or for American independence and freedom. This being the case, we are but as fraudulent as those within government for we have allowed it. As a nation we have broken faith with those who sacrificed their lifeblood. We’ve forgotten them, and their eternal souls sleep is but a restless slumber. Their deaths should haunt us forever.

Now I ask you, has Memorial Day gone the way of the poppies?