Memorial Day

Here we are again memorializing the sacrifices of the many men and women who have served in the armed forces of the American several states and the U.S government throughout the 242 years of this extraordinarily great nation on Memorial Day 2018.  I often hear it said that these courageous people paid, and are today paying, the ultimate sacrifice in order for you and I to be free.  Though I believe that there can be little argument that those who fought in the Revolutionary War were fighting for citizens of this new nation to be free from Briton and the tyrannical ways of old Europe.  But honestly, I am not at all sure that can be said of the America today.

The question that has been a psychological conflict for me is, is it the responsibility of the members of the U.S military to protect my freedoms? Or is it the responsibility of me and each individual American citizen to defend his and her own rights as recognized in the Constitution?  As I review The Bill of Rights there are a LOT of rights that have been virtually surrendered by us individually. I mean, we are at a point in our nation that someone like Kanye West can get publically blacklisted for voicing his personal opinion on race issues and his support for President Trump. There is a FISA court that meets in secret that can issue rulings against Americans with NO due process and can convict them on “secret evidence”. Senator Rand Paul recently stated regarding the proliferation of the use of drones, particularly by the government, “The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to personal privacy.”  Lets not forget about the insane use of surveillance cameras in our society.  We are now inviting listening and surveillance cameras and devices into our homes, via home security systems and Google’s AI device Echo, Amazon’s AI device Alexa, and others.  It should cause even the most casual observer to pause when placing anything called Artificial Intelligence in their homes. I mean, let that marinate in your minds for a tic. We are voluntarily revealing some of the most personal aspects of our lives and information on social media that will never be personal again and that we would not tell a stranger sitting next to them on a bench at a park.

According to many reports, such as the one in thenation.com in 2015, reported that the U.S had deployed the military armed forces into combat in 135 nations. That was 3 years ago. The conflict in Yemen is not included in that list.  Am I to believe that those battles are to secure and protect my and your freedoms? I  believe that the notion that members of the U.S military are to defend my and your freedoms when they’re deployed to foreign lands, it is intellectually insulting and burdens the men and women of the military with a grossly unfair and unrealistic expectation.  They have one responsibility, and that is to protect their rear ends and that of the guy to their right and left. PERIOD!

The soldiers each have sworn that they will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that they will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, nowhere in there is there any mention that they should come rushing to our aide when our right to bear arms, right to freedom of speech, or right to exercise our religious beliefs are being threatened either by our neighbor, or the government, or being willfully given up by us.  If it was the military’s duty to protect our rights, as the popular mantra would have us believe, then that would imply that it had something to do with us having these rights in the first place.  That they are Dr. Frankinstien, and that we are it’s creation.  But, the Declaration of Independence has long established that each man has been “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”and it even made clear that it is the purpose of the government to secure these rights, and that Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from us the consent of the governed.  This remarkable document even informs us what we should do should the government ever become too demonstrative and forgets it’s place, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to establish a new government that acts right.

No, no, it is not the duty nor function of the U.S military to protect or defend our rights.  In fact I believe to say it so much is to subconsciously deflect the true responsibility from us, you and I.  In light of the gross lack of education and understanding of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the nation’s Declaration of Independence by so many of the American citizenry today that the true role of the government to see to it that our rights are protected fades away like a ship in a fog-filled harbor.  But at the end of the day, it is the duty of we, the governed, those who have unalienable God-given rights, to cherish them and to defend them, if not for ourselves, then for those that will come after us.

The brave members of the volunteer military may have joined to stand up for or to project the ideals of America and the tenents and principles of the Constitution-that all men should be free.  They represent the extraordinary marvel that is America, that as a country that is dwarfed in size and population by Europe, and yet has dominated the world economically, culturally, and militarily virtually since its creation. For that, we do owe them an eternal gratitude and debt.  But when the boots of this nation’s armed forces hit the grounds in some place that they may not even had heard of before to be either kill or be killed there is one thing that should be on their minds, to take care of their mission and return back to the greatest land in one piece and safe.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson may have said it best regarding where the ultimate responsibility of this nation’s freedom rest when he said, “Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they [you and I] keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.”  If we, as individual Americans, continue to let lie abandoned the covenant of self-governance and individual freedom that was handed down from the nation’s great Founders then it will be the fault of us, and us alone.  And our posterity will forever memorialize us with disdain for our betrayal and dishonor for surrendering the land that was once of the free and leaving them in serfdom and servitude.