100 Post Marathon #51

James Joyner has a very sensible look at the conflation of Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

We shouldn’t be surprised that this happens. Aside from the fact that 35 years of an all-volunteer force mean that relatively few have served, the two instances overlap considerably. Obviously, all who died in war are veterans. Beyond that, though, we honor veterans because they have risked death in war, whether physically (by having gone to war) or theoretically (by being available for deployment). And when we honor those who have fallen in past wars, it’s only natural to pay at least passing homage to those currently risking their lives in ongoing wars or those who did so in past wars and lived to tell the story.

A very good point.

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100 Post Marathon #49

So, what are your plans today?

I’ll be sticking right here for the most part. I’ll be tuning in to the rain-delayed Coca Cola 600 around noon. And I’ll be posting throughout the day.

So, what are your plans? Share before you turn off the ‘puter.

If you can…

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100 Post Marathon #45

The first of what I’m sure will be many posts pointing to some very good Memorial Day remembrances.

Basil’s Blog

My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

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100 Post Marathon #37

Frank Buckles is the last surviving veteran of World War I. I hope you are humbled, as I am, by his words. While Memorial Day is a day to remember those who have died in service to our country, it doesn’t hurt to remember those like Mr. Buckles, who may only be with us a short time longer.

h/t: Dave in Texas at Ace of Spades who said,

I hope we remember what they gave us. I hope it keeps us focused upon what those who serve now give us.

I will wager a paycheck that most of you have someone in your world, who does this. Day in, day out. About to deploy, or back from one.

What they do, or did, is so much. They loved you and our country with their very bodies, and their souls (and boxers). It’s that.

God keep them.

Amen.

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100 Post Marathon #32

One of my favorite reads every week is the Sunday Funnies at Flopping Aces. Leading off this week:

Futures - Cox & Forkum

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100 Post Marathon #15

Home for a three day weekend and ready for some time away from work. Of course the most important part of this weekend is Memorial Day. Are you ever just stopped by the realization that men and women have sacrificed everything so we can enjoy everything our country has to offer?

We honor those people this weekend and thank them and their families for what they’ve done for us.

If you can…

To learn more about the 100 Post Marathon read here and especially here.

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Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical. ~ Jonathan Swift

Happy 3rd Blogiversary to:
The Ignoble Experiment, a.k.a. Live Dangerously!

Memorial Day — 2007

The Mudville Gazette (Mrs. Grayhawk) Memorial Day Dawn Patrol
Pirate’s Cove (William Teach) Memorial Day Monday: One Marine
Blue Star Chronicles (Beth) Wednesday Hero – Memorial Day 2007
Blue Crab Boulevard (Gaius) Memorial Day
No Runny Eggs (Steveegg) Memorial Day
Wizbang (Jay Tea) Remembrance
Basil’s Blog Remember
Flopping Aces (Curt) Memorial Day 2007
The Anchoress Memorial Day: “Americans will die for freedom…”
Don Surber Memorial Day 2007

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Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It’s the only thing “real” men do that doesn’t seem to threaten their masculinity. ~ Erma Bombeck

Blue Star Chronicles (Beth) A Succession of Honor — “I watched the National Memorial Day Tribute a little bit ago. It was a good program …. and a good cry.”

Wizbang (Lorie Byrd) Remember — “This weekend, in the middle of your cookouts and family trips and other holiday events, don’t forget to stop and remember those we honor on Memorial Day. More importantly, take the time to teach your children that the day is about more than barbeque and the beach.” [Lorie has a great roundup of links to the many Memorial Day posts around the blogosphere. Jim]

La Shawn Barber’s Corner Memorial Day Reflections — “To the families of our war dead — men and women who fought and served in the armed forces to defend this country and to preserve freedom, the most treasured of all ideas — this weekend I reflect with you.”

Additions throughout the day:

TMH’s Bacon Bits (DL) Memorial Day – The Cost of Freedom — “Memorial Day is both a day to honor our dead that gave their lives to insure our way of life – our freedom – and to always remember that there is a cost for freedom – a cost that, it seems, we are less and less willing to incur. Today, more than ever, we must be on guard against those who would trade mere politics for freedom. We do this best by saluting our fallen, who understood and gave their lives for what we enjoy and value – freedom.”

Confederate Yankee The Wall — “Under the statue-soldier’s gaze, and elderly man lagged behind a tour group at the wall. He caressed it and knelt to leave a single rose at the base. He sobbed. He had difficulty standing up. A nearby park attendant helped him up and asked, “One of yours, sir?” The man shook his head and replied, “Not one of them. All of them.” ”

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred The Cosmic Clock, Memorial Day And What Hope Looks Like — “When we see veterans marching in a Memorial Day parade, we are watching the men and women that are a living testimony to those who would defend the principles and ideals of freedom. They fought for more than geography and they fought for more than country.”

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The speech by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Delivered on May 30, 1884, at Keene, NH, still has an important message for us all. This is a part of that address. The entire text can be found here. If you read only part of this, please read the paragraph I highlighted below.

Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up Memorial Day, and it set me thinking of the answer. Not the answer that you and I should give to each other-not the expression of those feelings that, so long as you live, will make this day sacred to memories of love and grief and heroic youth–but an answer which should command the assent of those who do not share our memories, and in which we of the North and our brethren of the South could join in perfect accord.

So far as this last is concerned, to be sure, there is no trouble. The soldiers who were doing their best to kill one another felt less of personal hostility, I am very certain, than some who were not imperilled by their mutual endeavors. I have heard more than one of those who had been gallant and distinguished officers on the Confederate side say that they had had no such feeling. I know that I and those whom I knew best had not. We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable; we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief. The experience of battle soon taught its lesson even to those who came into the field more bitterly disposed. You could not stand up day after day in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at least something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south–each working in an opposite sense to the other, but each unable to get along without the other. As it was then , it is now. The soldiers of the war need no explanations; they can join in commemorating a soldier’s death with feelings not different in kind, whether he fell toward them or by their side.

But Memorial Day may and ought to have a meaning also for those who do not share our memories. When men have instinctively agreed to celebrate an anniversary, it will be found that there is some thought of feeling behind it which is too large to be dependent upon associations alone. The Fourth of July, for instance, has still its serious aspect, although we no longer should think of rejoicing like children that we have escaped from an outgrown control, although we have achieved not only our national but our moral independence and know it far too profoundly to make a talk about it, and although an Englishman can join in the celebration without a scruple. For, stripped of the temporary associations which gives rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.

So to the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiam and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhpas a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.

When it was felt so deeply as it was on both sides that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible, was that feeling simply the requirement of a local majority that their neighbors should agree with them? I think not: I think the feeling was right-in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

If this be so, the use of this day is obvious. It is true that I cannot argue a man into a desire. If he says to me, Why should I seek to know the secrets of philosophy? Why seek to decipher the hidden laws of creation that are graven upon the tablets of the rocks, or to unravel the history of civilization that is woven in the tissue of our jurisprudence, or to do any great work, either of speculation or of practical affairs? I cannot answer him; or at least my answer is as little worth making for any effect it will have upon his wishes if he asked why I should eat this, or drink that. You must begin by wanting to. But although desire cannot be imparted by argument, it can be by contagion. Feeling begets feeling, and great feeling begets great feeling. We can hardly share the emotions that make this day to us the most sacred day of the year, and embody them in ceremonial pomp, without in some degree imparting them to those who come after us. I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.

But even if I am wrong, even if those who come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that this day is dear and sacred.

Linked with Remember at Wizbang.

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No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odour to the nostrils. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Happy Blogiversary to The Florida Masochist

Home of the Knucklehead of the Day

Outside The Beltway (James Joyner) AG and FBI Director Threatened Resignation — “I’m glad to see someone had some backbone in this matter. To have thrown away evidence against a corrupt congressman obtained through a legal raid backed by a judicial warrant out of political appeasement would have been outrageous. Separation of powers or no, Congress is not above the law.”

Captain’s Quarters (Ed Morrissey) Hastert Grabs The Lifesaver As Gonzalez Threatens To Quit — “Until now, Gonzalez has always appeared to be a moderate, get-along-to-go-along political appointee. However, this shows that the AG has serious backbone and integrity to spare. He and Mueller both understood the stakes involved in this standoff and refused to participate in creating a political class insulated from law enforcement. Without the power to enforce and execute duly authorized subpoenas and search warrants, members of Congress could hide evidence of corruption in their offices with no fear of exposure or prosecution. It would create a taxpayer-funded sanctuary for crooks, and the top officials at Justice sent the message that they would not become accessories to that system.”

Dr. Sanity (Pat Santy) A WAR TO BE PROUD OF — “Especially this weekend, though, we should be remembering the achievement our military has had in crushing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. That we have stayed on to offer a new alternative other than autocracy and theocracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and kept a targeted United States safe from attack for over four years is an incredible accomplishment.”

The Jawa Report (Dr. Rusty Shackleford) A Memorial Day Reflection: Thank You Grandpa — “I never knew my maternal grandfather, but I am proud of his voluntary service and of his supreme sacrifice to our country. RIP.

To my paternal grandfather, who was a pilot in WWII, and a career Air Force officer, thank you for your service. RIP.

To my father who was a Marine–once a Marine, always a Marine–thank you for your service. To my niece, currently a Marine, may God’s protection and blessings be upon you in the service of your country.”

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