Remember This on Memorial Day
[Photo Credit: Lucas J. Mather, Hero’s Garden, Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, Malibu, California, published to Facebook Friday 30 June 2017 at 8:22pm]
Memorial Day is supposed to evoke the kind of reflective memory that prompts decisive action in the future when it counts. It’s not merely the sentiment on this day of recalling great sacrifice for our country. It’s got a greater purpose than being uncomfortable for a few moments of sadness, even if it spawns some joy and gladness for what we have.
Memorial Day has a greater scope, as well. It’s about sacrifice — ultimate sacrifice — for our country, our flourishing as a nation.
If we know anything about military service and sacrifice, we know that there are countless non-military things that appropriately provide a necessary context even to understand something like Memorial Day and the normative role it plays in our culture and politics.
Non-military stuff like what ? Like being raised right in a good family, with attentive and disciplining parents (preferably one’s own parents, i.e., biological parents). Like being educated correctly (not politically correctly, but correctly) by disciplining teachers and schools who foster true morality and good character building. Like all the things that go into reinforcing the appropriate function of the criminal law in our culture and making sure that gets passed down and hopefully genuinely improved from generation to generation.
The military in its appropriate role doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If the surrounding culture is corrupt and decaying, that will infect the military, as well. And it will come to degrade Memorial Day and the normative role it plays in our culture and politics.
Let’s remember all the good non-military people in our present and past, all of our worthy (though vulnerable) institutions from the true family to the right and honorable purpose and design of our criminal and civil law, the church and the school. For without them, there is no country at all to defend, and no people with character required to defend it.
Copyright Lucas J. Mather, 2023
All Rights Reserved
Photo copyright Lucas J. Mather, 2017, originally published to Facebook Friday 30 June 2017 at 8:22 pm
Dr. Lucas J. Mather, Ph.D. is producer and host of The Republican Professor Podcast.
He served in the United States Navy for seven years as a Naval Aircrewman, Linguist, Analyst, Special Operations intel operator, and support staff for foreign language education and training for the National Security Agency.