Memorial Day USA

One thing people like Derek will never understand is that Americans
have a history of fighting FOR freedom and liberty. Many of our war
dead died fighting and killing the likes of Derek Copeland and his
ancestors. Much of our history and the history of many people around
the world who fought for freedom had to make that fight against the
British. So the history of Derek and his ancestors is one of fighting
against liberty, against freedom. While Dereks father fought in WWII,
he fought as much to avoid having to speak German as for freedom. I
doubt that Derek could be relied upon to even agree to let others do
the fighting for him if the need ever arises. If it does and the cause
is for freedom and for liberty there will be a lot of Americans and
many Brits doing the fighting and Derek and his friends will be sitting
in a prissy little pub sniping about the beastly Americans and how they
should pay attention to him. I'll bet Derek looks good in yellow.

Derek Copeland wrote:
" I'm sorry, but I find myself cheering every time a
US soldier gets killed in Iraq." This is obviously not
at a personal level, so much as it serves your country
right! Blame your idiotic President and Donald Rumsfeld;
not the Iraqis who are only fighting to free their
own country. You value freedom, so why shouldn't they?
Derek C

May 29, 2006
The Last Best Hope on Earth
By William J. Bennett

Today, our country celebrates Memorial Day. Originally called
"Decoration Day," the holiday started spontaneously enough in 1866,
when a drugstore owner in Waterloo, NY sought to honor those who died
in the recent Civil War. Townspeople joined Henry Welles' cause to
commemorate the fallen and they placed "flowers, wreaths and crosses on
the graves of the Northern soldiers in the [Waterloo] cemetery." They
decorated the graves. In short order, others joined around the country
and by 1868, according to the History Channel: "Children read poems and
sang civil war songs and veterans came to school wearing their medals
and uniforms to tell students about the Civil War. Then the veterans
marched through their home towns followed by the townspeople to the
cemetery." Soon enough, heroes from other wars were honored as well,
and the name became "Memorial Day."

Abraham Lincoln described our country, in his message to Congress in
1862, as the "last best hope of earth." Were it not for the United
States today--or, for that matter, in Lincoln's time--what would the
world look like? Aside from the hundreds of thousands of dead and
suffering, would anyone put the plight of the Sudanese on the world's
conscience today? It is fashionable in some quarters to say that our
policies against Muslims have caused other Muslims' wrath toward us.
But do we remember just our last two-decades' worth of military
excursions? Wolf Blitzer at CNN reminded us a few years ago: "Almost
every time U.S. military forces have been called into action to risk
their lives and limbs, it's been on behalf of Muslims," to save the
Afghanis against the Soviets, to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein,
to help Somalis, to help Muslims in Bosnia and then Kosovo and to
overthrow the Taliban. To Afghanistan in our current global war on
terror, we can add Iraq--and come to the realization that our policies
and our military have liberated over 50 million Muslims in just the
past five years.

In our current war, we've lost almost 3,000 brave soldiers. On
September 11, 2001, we lost 3,000 citizens who did not sign up for war,
but rather signed up to live freely as Americans. If our war on terror
ceased right now, it would be the first time that the number of those
who died repelling the enemy was less than the number of people who
died in the initial attack on us. But no matter, our war will go on,
because our enemy is large and has continued on. Still, we need to
remember every American soldier and citizen, alike, in this
war--including those in our first battle against the 9/11 attackers,
those brave citizen-soldiers on United flight 93 who took over a
hijacked airliner heading for the capital and put it down to save as
many innocent lives as possible.

Memory is an important part of our country; it is a critical part to
sustain it, to honor it, to love it. And sustaining, honoring, and
loving it deserves. The words engraved at the top of our National
Archives building, erected during the time of FDR, spoke to why. It
states that "the glory and romance of our history," are preserved
there. "Glory and romance" is, indeed, the 230-year-old story of who we
are and what we have done.

But we are forgetting that, too. The great historian David McCullough
recently warned that we are raising, "generation after generation of
young Americans who are historically illiterate, we are running a
terrible risk for this country. You could have amnesia of a society,
which is as detrimental as amnesia of an individual." Indeed, in a
recent survey, only 22% of college seniors could properly identify the
phrase "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people;"
23% knew that James Madison was the Father of the Constitution; and
only about a third of our college seniors knew that our Constitution
established the division of power in our government. At the high school
level, "American history is our worst subject," according to what
education professionals recognize as our Nation's Report Card.

We cannot love what we have taken for granted and forgotten. We cannot
honor what we do not know. We need to engage in what Tom Wolfe has
called "the great relearning." There is no better time to start that
relearning than on this Memorial Day, so that we can remember and honor
what we have done and what we stand for. It is for this reason, and
more, much more, that I dedicated my new book on American history,
America: The Last Best Hope, this way: "To the American soldier, whose
fidelity, patriotism, and valor have made this land the last best hope
of earth."

Radio host William J. Bennett is the author of America: The Last Best
Hope, and the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute.