“The Best Way To Honor Sacrifice…”

Authored by W.J. Astore via BracingViews.com,

The best way to honor sacrifice is to seek an end to war and militarism

I was asked for a few words about Memorial Day. Here’s what I came up with:

On Memorial Day, we honor those who died in the service of our country. Let us do everything we can as a people and a nation to stop war and all its brutality. 

A peaceful future without war and all its awfulness is the best way to honor our troops, even as we cherish the memory of the heroes who gave their all.

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QOTD: DID THEY DIE FOR FREEDOM OR EMPIRE?

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Today is Memorial Day, honoring all of our veterans. I appreciate their sacrifice. But did they fight and die to protect our freedoms, or did they fight and die for oil, arms dealers, and oligarchs?

Why exactly did they die in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria and numerous other countries we’ve invaded?

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The Three Rivers of Angst

Guest Post by Jim Kunstler

Does Memorial Day 2021 seem an unusually grim lull between spring and summer this year? Here in the northeast, rain pounded the lakes, ballfields, and barbeque circles all weekend with the additional insult of a steady fifty-degree chill that hardly changed from noon to midnight all weekend. Anyway, the holiday is always freighted with that hush of battlefields strewn with the dead — no smiling Santa Claus, no pastel Easter eggs, and the skeletons aren’t in the mood for dancing.

Even the military looked tarnished this year with a battle royale raging over the new imposed strictures of Critical Race Theory poisoning the ranks, and the fishy spectacle of Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, an exemplary officer, getting drummed out of his post as Commander of the new Space Force for publishing a book about all that. His firing provoked the consciences of retired generals and admirals who denounced the Pentagon’s new tilt into Marxist political activism as an existential threat to the nation — and that didn’t seem like such an exaggeration, either, considering how an America led by transsexual gunnery sergeants might meet its future foes on the fields of war.

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HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY

Written by Mark M.

The Unwritten Poem, By the Forgotten Man

Remember the night we first met
and I kept staring
you thought I liked your girlfriend
instead of you
but I didn’t

remember our first date
the picnic in the park
you pushed me in the pond
and laughed while I almost drowned
but I didn’t

remember the first time we made love
it just happened by itself
you were afraid
and thought I was using you
but I didn’t

remember that summer night
we held each other and cried
because we were so happy
and you thought we were being silly
but I didn’t

remember that big fight
and the things we said we didn’t mean
I drove away cursing
and you thought we’d break up
but I didn’t

remember our wedding day
and the joy we shared
we held one another all night
and kissed for hours
you said I fell asleep first
but I didn’t

remember when I answered the call
how brave you were
we talked about our plans
the children we would have
and the life we would live
when I came home from Vietnam
but I didn’t

Real Patriotism on Memorial Day Means Losing Fewer Soldiers in Meaningless Wars

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Most people, when thinking of Memorial Day—if they don’t confuse it with Veterans Day—think of the start of the summer season or great sales at the stores and online. Yet the holiday is supposed to honor those who died in America’s wars. Even some of the limited remembrance on TV and in the news is more superficial than deeply reflective.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice might be to reduce the number of those who die in future wars. Unfortunately, throughout US history, but especially after the Cold War ended, politicians of both parties have been too quick to send American boys (and now girls) into harm’s way, rather than thinking of war as a last resort – as the nation’s founders did.

The original patriots realized the expenditure of blood and treasure for the leaders’ political goals usually fell to common citizens. The founders believed that war severely undermined the American republic.

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Crossing the Line: Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

On August 21, 2017 the narrow line of a solar eclipse’s shadow cut a path of totality right through the middle of the United States, dividing north from south.  If one believed in signs from the heavens they could make a pretty good case of an astronomical pairing to recent headlines depicting America as broken in two.  Of course the division began long ago, perhaps from the time of our nation’s earliest constitutional convention, through the Civil War era, and onward into modernity as the country has once again become mired in a civil war; this time the fight raging between the globalists and those striving to maintain constitutional national sovereignty. Obviously, before the utopian one-worlders can realize their ultimate new economic, political, and possibly spiritual, order, the atavistic and anachronistic United States must fall.  It is a fight unto death.  The winners take all.

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In Memoriam, 2017

This article was first posted on Straight Line Logic on Memorial Day, 2015. It will be published every Memorial Day for as long as SLL continues as a website.

Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic

You don’t fight for your country, you fight for your government.

The Golden Pinnacle, by Robert Gore

On Memorial Day, America remembers and honors those who died while serving in the military. It is altogether fitting and proper to ask: for what did they die? Do the rationales offered by the military and government officials who decide when and how the US will go to war, and embraced by the public, particularly those who lose loved ones, stand up to scrutiny and analysis? Some will recoil, claiming it inappropriate on a day devoted to honoring the dead. However, it is because war is a matter of life and death, for members of the military and, inevitably, civilians, that its putative justifications be subject to the strictest tests of truth and the most probing of analyses.

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IN FLANDERS FIELDS

by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

During the early days of the Second Battle of Ypres a young Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2nd May, 1915 in the gun positions near Ypres. An exploding German artillery shell landed near him. He was serving in the same Canadian artillery unit as a friend of his, the Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae.

As the brigade doctor, John McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service for Alexis because the chaplain had been called away somewhere else on duty that evening. It is believed that later that evening, after the burial, John began the draft for his now famous poem “In Flanders Fields”.


In Memoriam, 2016

This article was first posted last year on Straight Line Logic. It will be published every Memorial Day for as long as Straight Line Logic continues as a website.

Guest Post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic

You don’t fight for your country, you fight for your government.

The Golden Pinnacle, by Robert Gore

On Memorial Day, America remembers and honors those who died while serving in the military. It is altogether fitting and proper to ask: for what did they die? Do the rationales offered by the military and government officials who decide when and how the US will go to war, and embraced by the public, particularly those who lose loved ones, stand up to scrutiny and analysis? Some will recoil, claiming it inappropriate on a day devoted to honoring the dead. However, it is because war is a matter of life and death, for members of the military and, inevitably, civilians, that its putative justifications be subject to the strictest tests of truth and the most probing of analyses.

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HONOR & SCORN

Today we should honor the men who gave their lives for our country, but we should scorn the politicians, government apparatchiks, and corporate military industrial complex for sending them to their deaths in order to increase their profits, power and control over our lives. War is a racket.

Via Lonely Libertarian


Gray Skies and Memorial Day Reflections

Guest Post by Scott Spangler

3-25-2013: A political statement, apathetic neglect, or a combination of both?Most Americans today have but two connections with those who serve and have served in the military, and especially those who have perished in that service. The first is the hollow seconds it takes to utter “Thank you for your service,” an seemingly autonomic reflex when seeing someone in uniform. The other occurs should they see a film about any of our many conflicts. Since America’s last declared war, which ended 70 years ago, Memorial Day has become an annual celebration of patriotic hypocrisy, when people might notice that the American flag they ran up their front yard pole last year is faded and frayed and, maybe, add a new one to their celebration’s shopping list.

True appreciation is measured by our depth of experience and understanding.

Today, less than 1 percent of the population reaps the benefits resulting from the service and sacrifice of the less than 1 percent of the population who serve the politicians elected by the majority of people who separate, and have no direct involvement with, these two segments of society. And this disconnection and separation is no accident.

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