Memorial Day — The Honored Dead

Another Memorial day has passed in America. The parading bands were out. Red, White and Blue bunting festooned houses. Little American flags flew promiscuously in yards all across a thousand communities. Family graves were visited and spruced up. In the Midwest, this is a weekend when people will plant their family gardens. Here in Charlotte, we had the Vietnam Wall memorial visit us and many people made pilgrimage to the wall. Also, in Charlotte the Methodist Church held her annual luncheon barbecue where the community gathered to hob-knob and talk about the Pistons and the Red Wings.

Just another Memorial Day in small town America with cherished customs and traditions that have been pursued for years and years.

On this Memorial Day though I couldn’t help but think about the purpose for which Memorial Day started over 100 years ago and that is to remember our war dead. And then when I started thinking about the necessity of remembering the war dead and the sacrifice they made I began to wonder if those who died for their country at Saratoga and at Cowpens died for the same country as those who died for their country at Fallujah and Rumaylah? I wondered if those Brave Americans who died on the beaches of Normandy or at sites across the South Pacific would still want to risk dying for the country we have become? Would my Father still have jumped with the Airborne troops in Korea and would my Grandfather still have wanted to drive for the Big Red One in the Battle of the Bulge if they could see what the country for which they risked all has become? Would the American Dough boys who did not return from Marne or Belleau Wood recognize the country for which they died?

On this Memorial Day I couldn’t help but ask myself, as I remembered the sacrifice of American Brave, what the sacrifice has accomplished. Did our Fathers fight and die in the jungles of Vietnam to stop the falling dominoes of Statist Communism so that the falling dominoes of Statist Globalism could be achieved? Did our Fathers land and die at Inchon and crush the Reds so that America could be landed on and crushed by the environmentalist Greens? Did our Father’s in WWI stop the Hun from covering Europe in order that ‘political correctness’ could cover the world? Did our Father’s in WWII stop the holocaust of the Jews so that the Americans would have the right to bring a generational holocaust upon the unborn in our country?

On this Memorial Day I wondered if America’s Dead could speak what they would say? What would they say about America being invaded and conquered by illegal immigrants? Would they notice the ghastly irony in their dying to protect America from foreign influence only to see later generations invite foreign influence? Would the brave American dead, if they could speak, lecture that they did indeed die to protect the rights of Homosexuals to get married? Would they say that they charged that machine gun nest or jumped on that grenade in order to protect the disintegration of the American family? Would they wax eloquent that their great sacrifice was accomplished to protect the right of no fault divorce, 30% illegitimacy rates, and 1.3 million abortions annually? Would they use close and carefully reasoned arguments to prove that they died in order to protect the right of their progeny to kill the America they died for through cultural hari-kari and demographic winter? Would they explain that they died in defeating Empires in order that their sons and grandsons could die building an Empire? Would they lead the rhetorical charge in explaining that they died so that their daughters and grand-daughters could die in a military uniform? Would they explain that they made the supreme sacrifice in order that the ideological sons of their enemies would rule their descendants?

Yesterday, during Memorial Day, I was patriotic with the best of them, but my patriotism was flowing in different channels. I pray God that He might once again raise up a brave warrior class that are willing to live and die for the America for which our Father’s died — an America very different from the one in which we are living.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane