Memorial Day comes in Spring, the season of resurrection.
We remember those that have given the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. We also remember those that returned from war, wounded in body and mind. We remember all that have served.
Across our country, flags fly at half-staff. Each breeze creates a pulse of the red-white-and-blue, our prayers and sorrows are swept into the universe.
We remember their loss, but do we remember why they served? Memorial Day is for both.
This is the time for Lincoln’s words on the battlefield at Gettysburg.
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 battle-field 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 can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not 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.
The work begun in 1861 has yet to be completed so long as a single person is abused and treated as the Other. Today we are involved in a Civil War of Ideas, potentially just as destructive to our country as the armed conflict of 150 years ago. Yet, we have a distinguished history that gives us hope for the future.
Teddy Roosevelt, the great Republican Progressive summed it.
Our effort should be to procure for each man, whatever his color, equality of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law … Every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrusting down instead of helping up such a man. … The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of “all men up,” not that of “all men down.”
We must honor the sacrifices made by the fallen by committing to preserve what they fought for; raising all men higher.
To all military personnel, past and present, thank you for your service.