Memorial Day 2022-2023

The following is taken from the speech I gave last year (2022), as Mayor of Urbanna, at our Memorial Day celebration.

Thank you all for being here this morning. It fills my heart with hope and joy to see you all here today, to remember and honor the men and women who over the years, decades, and 2 ½ centuries of this nation have sacrificed horrifically to secure the freedoms guaranteed to us by our Constitution. 

From its very inception, this land was settled by immigrants escaping multiple other countries, governments, and limitations. And it is to our credit that the scope of immigration has broadened and deepened. With each new wave of immigrants, we have endured growing pains and internal conflicts as people from various cultures and languages have learned to come together in acceptance and appreciation of each other.

But this has been possible only through the demonstration that each wave of immigrants has come for the same reasons, and that the majority of them have understood that to be an American is to pledge his or her life to defend and uphold the Constitution and opportunities offered here, even as they struggle to fit in, to become part of the whole-cloth that is the UNITED STATES of AMERICA. This is reflected in the diversity of former nationalities represented in our Armed Forces.

You are certainly free to disagree with me when I say that I believe a UNIFIED nation is made up not of Euro-Americans, Asian-Americans, Afro-Americans, French, German, Latvian, Christian, Jewish, or Islamic-Americans. Indeed, there should be NO HYPHENATED-AMERICANS. We are all simply AMERICANS! Period!

And that is what we celebrate today and that is what our veterans died to create and sustain. And we MUST HONOR THAT!

Please excuse my language as I repeat a quote made by General George Patton in several of his speeches, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for HIS country.”

Patton’s aim was not to denigrate those who would not make it home. Instead, he was urging his men to do their best so that their homecoming would be celebratory and not mournful. But, even as he said it, he well understood that the price of victory, in human terms, was the same as the price of defeat.

He also understood, as every commander must, that not every participant of war enters voluntarily. Not every man or woman who took up arms in any of our conflicts believed it was his personal destiny to risk his everything for God and Country.

While many answered the allure of patriotic heroism, many more were called by necessity, or the Draft, and could not find a viable alternative to serving their prescribed time.

Nevertheless, each completed his training and came to internalize the need to defend himself, his buddies in the field, and ultimately those back home. And in the final determination of life or death, the volunteers and the drafted were equally at risk and equally determined to be on the winning side of Patton’s words. Their lives were of equal value and equal loss to those who loved them, to God, and to US here today. We owe them so much!

But, I fear we are living in troubled times when too many among us fail to understand and honor what is at stake if we allow our internal divisions to over-ride our common culture which is defined by our Constitution, our laws, and by the three branches of government.

Three equal branches were set up to be like the legs of a stool, to maintain balanced support; in fact, to be our checks and balances to prevent us from leaning and diverging from our noble path. They are in place to protect us from falling into corruption and deterioration from within, as Greece and Rome did before us.

In a society where “anything goes,” eventually EVERYTHING goes. That is a simple fact!

Let us not follow those two great societies down that path!  

Celebrations of our heroes, such as this one today, are designed to remind us WHO we are, WHY we are HERE, and WHAT it costs to exist as a free and sovereign nation, as free and sovereign individuals. Our fallen brothers and sisters must be remembered with gratitude and a determination that their sacrifices were not in vain!

Skipping to the generation after Patton, I quote Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, who said, “Teach your children well!”

Please, please teach them what Memorial Day is about!