In pondering a holiday message each year, I go back and look at what I’ve posted for it in the past. This year, on rereading the “Priorities, USA” article for 2022, I concluded that it’s still a timely message, and should be the bulk of what I advocate taking in this year.
As time passes, we are flicked more and more on the raw by the things we are having to face up to right now – epochal things, things of an entire age of the human journey. We find we can’t flee them. They come to find us. They won’t rest unresolved.
The purchases of the blood shed for America, by the ones we remember on Memorial Day, still hang in the balance. The issues from last year are still the ones we need to grapple with. America is about our character, yes, but what we expect of government, and whether we approach it in weakness and fear or in courage and realism about its proper role, is one of the most important manifestations of character. We will serve something; will we substitute government for God?
Our Founders most emphatically did not want us to do that. Their whole purpose was to design government so that it could not be “God” to us. A government that purports to fill the role of God is much more to be feared than liberty. Turn ourselves over to a human government with godlike powers, and the lying, brutality, and dealing of death start immediately.
That is America’s most consequential “national security” issue in 2023. Nothing else comes close. So I commend to you for review the TOC article from 2022.
I’ve also become a bit tired of the annual lectures about the meaning of Memorial Day. Leading with a tone of rebuke has become one of the most dysfunctional, discouraging elements of our public atmosphere today, and it’s not just leaving people feeling harassed and disheartened; it’s neutralizing the effect we need from rebuke used sparingly, and as a timely word to the spirit.
So here’s my little mite about how we’re remembering Memorial Day.
I won’t be looking at a single American to accuse him or her of not remembering what the holiday is for.
This year, as Memorial Day approached, we heard news of the death of the last of our Pearl Harbor survivors, Jack Holder. The custody of memory changes hands.
A new generation sings our national anthem.
An older one administers the 21-gun salute – a tradition each Memorial Day at TOC.
Let freedom’s ring be a carillon of life, not a toll of death, for our fallen heroes.
Feature image: Pixabay
The Optimistic Conservative 
That’s a beautiful message.