Happy Thanksgiving

Two uniquely American Holidays are 4th of July Celebrations and Thanksgiving Day. For me they connect the American experience.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours and may freedom ring.
This focus is for those who serve, who have lost, or who simply just live in this country, yet understand the cost. And so I give thanks and ask a question or two to understand further in this time of supposed “change”. Why would American men — many of them boys — willingly lay down their young lives on the foreign beaches of Normandy? What was going through the mind of the 18-year-old soldier as he approached the shoreline in his crowded, sea-tossed landing craft? Do you suppose he was bitterly bemoaning his fate, cursing the gods for the unfairness of life? There was no time for such self-pity. Perhaps there was a fleeting image of a wife, a child, or a mother squeezing into his thoughts as he rehearsed and mentally drilled himself on what he would have to do when his craft shortly spit him out into machine-gun fire and the mine-laden beach. But what could compel this last full measure of devotion from a man? The answer is you. You are the reason. So that you could be born, live, work and worship in freedom. If someone wrote you a check for $10 million, do you think you would remember to thank him? What these soldiers gave up to buy an extension on your freedom is of infinitely more value. Yet how often do we reflect on that fact? Such valorous acts of sacrifice are by no means rare or isolated in America’s short history. Nor could they be. The price cannot somehow be paid once and for all. It must be paid seasonally. Someone must always be ready to pay because someone is always ready to take freedom away from us.
I like many others have served at cost. I never thought of my service as anything more than just that. Yet, the other day in the paper a former (Viet Nam Era) Marine (ret) wrote in a guest editorial about how he felt like a fraud when anyone “Thanked” him for his service. What was worse was the overwhelming response of those (active service personnel and Vets) who agreed with him. I was stunned. I did nothing heroic, but the cost was great for me, for my family and for a long time my eyes leaked when I was alone and sometimes they still do. I remember the first time another Vet came up to me on Veterans Day, Saluted and said, “thanks”. My eyes leaked that day as well. I do not count myself in the ranks of the Greatest Generation, but no one serves without cost nor do they now.
From the beginning of our nation, men and women have paid staggering personal costs with their lives and property to secure and maintain your liberty. Today many couples serve and leave children with other family members to continue to serve on various deployments. This too has a cost.
John Hancock, perhaps the wealthiest man in the colonies, liquidated his entire personal fortune to help finance the arming and outfitting of the Continental Army.
Hancock’s name is famously the first to appear on our founding document, which ends with these words: “ ... we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” These were not mere words to such heroes. It was for them, and should be for us, a radical commitment to a freedom which must be perpetually renewed. Why then does it appear to me that our nation’s leaders are so willing to forget such a radical commitment to freedom as they seem bent on destroying it.
Several years ago, many watched the Steven Spielberg movie “Saving Private Ryan.” In it, an older Ryan returns to Normandy to visit the graves of his wartime comrades, one of whom, as he lay dying after a battle, told Ryan to “earn this.” Ryan speaks to the white-cross headstone in the cemetery, and tells his dead friend that he hopes he lived up to this expectation, perhaps feeling guilty that he lived a full life of many years since the war. He hopes that he has lived up to his friend’s last desire that he earn the chance he was given as he was rescued from the battlefield.
We’ve all been given that $10-million chance. But now we have to earn it. We’ve been paid up front, but now we have also been commissioned to live worthily of that opportunity. It is unthinkable that we, the heirs and witnesses to the unequaled heroism and sacrifice of our nation’s warriors, living and dead and their families should take for granted that which most of the world has only dared hope for: freedom.
What are you going to do today as you think about our costly American liberty? How are you going to live today worthily of the valiant sacrifices of so many throughout the years, continuing to this very day on foreign soil, and certain to be carried out in our behalf for our common American future?
Our slain President Abraham Lincoln, in his famous speech at Gettysburg to dedicate a field as the final resting place for those who had just died in battle, insightfully recognized it was the war-dead who were actually dedicating the living. He said:
“... 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”.
I pray that as we look to the future and those who wish change for the sake of it, will restore respect for the founders of this nation, the Constitution, and a nation under God. We must live by it and teach our children to have respect for it, understand it, and remove those who would circumvent it, or alter it for any purpose otherwise that government of the people, by the people and for the people will become government by a few, for the privileged and entitled and freedom will truly perish.