That Armistice Day – the day intended to commemorate the “end” of the “War to End All Wars” in 1918- has become Veterans’ Day speaks to the reality that past and present efforts to avoid war by adopting either a weak or disinterested posture have failed. There will always be evil; there will always be those to do what they can to inflict evil upon good, to take freedoms away from those who take them for granted, to impose totalitarianism upon those who think that all we have to do is play nice. Starry-eyed kumbayah nonsense has never, not one time, brought on anything good. On the contrary, naivete costs lives.
The fact is that this nation was born as the result of a hard-fought war, and without our military, the rest – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the richness of our civil society, our culture that embraces the local as well as the global – would be just words. Without our military’s eyes-wide-open recognition of the value of strength in the face of inevitable adversity, this nation would never have been born, would not have prevailed, would not have risen to being the beacon to the world that it is.
Every member of our military takes an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;” this includes the First Amendment that protects the right of the media to actually do their jobs. It is for this Constitution that our servicemen and women have sacrificed over the decades.
Imagine, just for a moment, what today’s journalism would be if our Fourth Estate – our reporters, journalists, talking heads – deeply, in their core, recognized to whom they owe this freedom that they can’t be bothered to avail themselves of.
That the War to End All Wars was so badly named is a tragedy, and they are the ones who suffer that tragedy, and whose sacrifices deserve commemoration – and our gratitude – on this day, and EVERY day.
That our media don’t recognize this is another tragedy that affects every single American.
Peace through strength. To our military: you are our strength. Thank you.