Memorial Day Weekend

I, like most of my fellow citizens, am a proud American.  As my wife and I get closer to the arrival of our daughter and first child, my mind reflects on the blessing of liberty my family enjoys.  With great sacrifice we enjoy these freedoms.  This freedom was paid for at great cost by men and women who believed they were creating something larger than themselves.  From our nation's birth through the Civil War, America's involvement in two great wars and wars in Asia and the Middle East, good men and women have laid down their lives that others may enjoy what we here at home most treasure.  In memory of the fine individuals who have given the ultimate sacrifice, I would like to reprint the Gettysburg Address, given November 19, 1863.  President Lincoln's words are applicable today.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.  It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

May God bless our veterans, the families of the fallen, our nation and our friends of liberty.

Update: Chicago Boyz has an excellent post on "Honor the Dead, Help and Support the Living".  Join them in adding to their $1,000 contribution to the Wounded Warriors Project.  (May 31, 2005)

Comments

[Gordon]

For some reason, his site is no longer up, but I suspect you might find one
of his essays to be of interest.
 
I have it saved on my hard drive, so I hope you don't mind my reproducing
it in full in absence of his site.
 

To my dear son,

In the final days of the
twentieth century, our Republic stands with fatal and dangerous pause on the
brink of infected rot.

When I was your age I, too, spent my days in
happy play and painting; in the love of my mother's arms and in the wonder of
fresh knowledge. I knew nothing of the sport of Men, and of the plays they
made for power and control in the world.

I, too, depended on the
strength and protection of my parents to handle the issues of national life
that I was a bare innocent in the path of.

Today, on your first day of
school, I am at home writing this letter with a heavy and worried heart. Our
Republic is no longer the unified bulwark of freedom that it once was. The
dignity of office... the respect for law... and the commitment to spreading
the shining and brilliant love of freedom that we based our lives upon, has
slowly but surely been transformed into an ignorant and careless abrogation of
our duties and responsibilities.

I look to the future of our nation,
and I am grim in foreboding for the threats that you will face. They will be
very different from mine.

When we feared the sudden incandescence of
nuclear suns dawning across the land, it was in the knowledge that our
Republic was united still, and facing the dangers of outside hate with a solid
and unswerving heart.

I fear that on the morrow, when your day has
arrived and you must take up the mantle of leadership, that you will face
these dangers hamstrung by the death of the Republic that enabled freedom to
grow and flourish across the world.

The fall of nations can often be
traced to the casual and careless abandonment of duty and responsibility which
often accompanies prosperity and peace. I pray that I will be able to teach
you this, and to instill in you an understanding of the true nature of Men,
and of the myriad tangles they weave in the grasp for temporal
power.

The rebirth of America will lie on your shoulders, and on the
shoulders of friends who share today with you the laughter, the games, and the
happy shouts of childhood. In your future those shouts will transform into the
screams of war, and the games will become the manipulations of authority that
accompany the struggle for control.

You must, my son, strive to attain
an understanding of these things as you grow into a man. For the life of our
Republic, and the nation for which we stand, cannot survive
otherwise.

We see new Senators calling for the dismantling of our
Constitution, and for the change of our representative government into
officially sanctioned mob rule. We see our leaders commit disgusting crimes in
the face of our people, and explain away the consequences by the definition of
simple words.

I see the active promotion of ignorance in America, and
the willing destruction of our nation so that partisan attachments may be
solidified.

My son, you must grow in the knowledge that our freedom is
more important than anything.

Your liberty and rights are more
important than your safety, and more critical to your happiness than wealth or
comfort.

I pray that you will never feel that they are somehow
guaranteed to you by the beneficence of other men.

The Republic cannot
survive without this understanding.

And the light of freedom that seeds
hope in the hearts and minds of billions... the promise of America, and the
fundamental justice of free conscience and rule of law that we swear by...
cannot survive without the Republic.

So as this millennium draws to a
close, I pray that you will find this knowledge, and this strength, to
maintain the principles of America in your own life - and in the future of our
shared nation. There is no better struggle, and no more essential one to the
race of Men.

I love you very much. And I pray, too, that my own example
as your father can pave the way for you. I will stumble from time to time, as
we all do. But on this one matter you must never flinch:

Your liberty
is not negotiable.

All my love,

Robert
Teesdale

[Bill C]

Hi Bill,

My wife and I are awaiting the birth of our daughter and first child, also. She is due in August. Good Luck.

[lylzhy]

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