It's not often that a day goes by that a slanderous remark, criticism, or insult isn't heard regarding this country of ours. We bash the President, our government, our wayward media, and a polluted society with out second-thought. The noise has almost become ambiguous with western living. Meanwhile, families grieve over their sons, daughters, and spouses who just died in a war that they didn't start. What about the men and women who fought sixty years ago for a country they believed in. Do our anti-patriotic, cynical, attitudes and words fall deaf upon their ears? Or could it be that we slowly plunge the knife deeper into their wounds.
I was that soldier who signed up to serve our country. That soldier who saw the tabloids riddled with headlines of war protest, anti-military rallies, and hate as my plane rolled out in 2003 towards the middle-east. I recognize we belong to a nation that celebrates freedom of speech; but that speech is only poignant and powerful when used with tact, wisdom, and rationality. Freedom of speech should be used to unify and promote diversity within dissension, not further the gap between the ranks of a nation.
As I remember D-Day June 6, 1944, I look at a country that was unified at all costs. Men, boys, and teenagers rallied at recruitment stations to join the fight for their country, while woman went to work in factories and hospitals. Gas and food were rationed nationwide without a cry of protest, and, most of all, it seemed that there was a consistent attitude of worth, good-will, and appreciation between all spheres of society within the United States. It was a nation operating how a nation should operate.
Now, I recognize, things change: technology, the change in economic principles, and a rising of hate streamed through religion and factious governments. But we can do our part as individuals. We can honor those who went before us by honoring what they stood for. We can make a decision to stop and be a people that builds up and not tears down. People that stands for the moral good not the majority opinion.
"The Greatest Generation"....I don't label them any longer as "The Greatest Generation", because I believe this generation, ours, has been marked by God to do even more. Now that the odds have risen against us and the world sits at the edge of disaster once again, its our turn. It's our turn to honor those who came before us by doing even more. Eisenhower was a great man, a great leader, and an excellent commander- but we serve a commander of ultimate worth and unending capability, Jesus Christ. Fall in, and lets march onward together into the glory that awaits us who serve Him.
"Those who stand for nothing, will fall for anything" Alexander Hamilton
