Memorial Day is Not for Sale

When you think of Memorial Day, what do you think about? 

Barbecues? 

Day off from work? 

Memorial Day sales?

That used to be my world until I took a work training by a military veteran. The training was entitled something to the effect of, What Every Civilian Needs to Know About Veterans.

I didn’t have direct experience with anyone serving in the military. No one in my immediate family nor in my circles had served. Coming of age during the collapse of communism, I majored in political science. I read about militaries in textbooks, but it wasn’t part of my lived experience. 

So every year, well into my thirties, I looked to the last Monday in May as a day off from whatever it was I was doing. 

It took a work training to learn what I should have known by middle school- Memorial Day is a solemn day. One of the biggest insults to a veteran is a Memorial Day sale. And yet, I lived in that world. How many times had I said, Have a nice Memorial Day weekend. That’s like saying, You’re going to a funeral? Have a nice day off from work.

I place some of the responsibility on my 11 years of public education. Our school approached it as a three-day weekend and nothing more. Dead Americans were secondary to the excitement of a day off from school.

I nearly forgot that world until this past Friday at TwispWorks. Listening to a band play, one of the band members told the crowd, “Happy Memorial Day!” I experienced a jolt.

“Can you believe she said that?” I asked a friend next to me, relaying my epiphany.

“Well, that’s what happened to Christmas. Someone died on the cross and now it’s a festive holiday.”

“That’s Easter,” I said.

“You’re right. No one knows their holidays anymore.”

Not only do some of us not know our holidays, (I only realized as an adult that Mother’s Day is always in May and Father’s Day is always in June.) we are in a political arena where people don’t understand our military’s importance. I hear too often from so-called educated people that the U.S. should be paying more attention to domestic affairs than foreign ones. My response is the U.S. can walk and chew gum at the same time. 

It’s not an either/or. It’s both.

I hear people dismiss the importance of NATO when it was the only force that defended the peace in Europe after WWII. The only reason the Soviet Union didn’t occupy western Europe is because NATO, backed by the full military might and moral backbone of the United States of America, looked at the Soviets in the face and said, you shall go no further. 

Somehow that gets warped into a bad thing. People that chant Peace! don’t understand that a strong military is a deterrent to war. Today, Europe could be engulfed in war if it weren’t for NATO. It may come to that at some point. (The Slovak Prime Minister was nearly assassinated, a bad omen.)

There’s a war going on in Europe, a war not instigated by any incursion. Innocent civilians far from the front lines are terrorized by drone strikes on apartment buildings and shopping centers that have no military importance other than to terrorize civilians. It’s funny to me how some NATO members, namely Hungary and Slovakia, benefit from the full protection of NATO but don’t want it for their neighbor. Other NATO members are more like horses at the gate. Without NATO, they could have easily entered the war contributing more than just weapons. 

The world needs order. Without order, there is chaos, which leads to more wars. There is no one on the world stage to step into the US’ shoes right now. The EU isn’t entirely mature. China and Russia, I would argue, are the current axes of evil. 

The concept of a world order has been used to terrify people, but without it, the US would be forced to get involved in conflicts for political and economic reasons. People who oppose US involvement and back isolation think our country will be safer. That’s what Woodrow Wilson thought for years before things got so bad, he was forced to enter WWI. People miss that we’re more interconnected now economically and through advanced missile systems than during WWI.

So, on this Memorial Day holiday-flash sale, I want to honor what really matters- the men and women who died for this country to protect our freedom. The men and women who serve today protect this country with an invisible shield that allows us the luxury to have internal squabbles. Have we been perfect in foreign affairs? No, but where we have faltered, I ask God to bless America. Where we have erred in domestic affairs, I ask everyone to hold on to their hats.