Monday, May 31, 2010

Memorial Day

We throw the word "hero" around a lot. Too often, really. Movie actors who have never done anything but recite words written by someone else, showing expressions in closeups, as told by a director. We have ball players who, were it not for some freakish gift of nature, plus a willingness to work, with personal habits that would otherwise earn them an orange jumpsuit. Today, though, we honor the real heroes.

The heroes were ordinary men and women who, in a moment of extraordinary stress and danger, reached down deep inside and found a little something extra. Men and women of the United States of America have been doing this since before we were a nation. There is much nonsense about the decline of America bandied about. This decline is not found in our Armed Services.

I only pray that the sacrifices of our young men and women are not thrown away by our political class. Some 58,000 of my brothers and a few of my sisters had their lives thrown away by our politicians, after we won that war. Today the political class is doing the best they can to repeat the process.

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