Thread drift Phooey!
It's about honoring those who have earned it. The Brits do it. We do it. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. Today is Memorial Day. It is a day we set aside to honor those Americans who have given their lives in defense of our great country. That dates back to Washington's ragged troops, marching bloody-footed through the snow, and the country boys at Lexington and Concord, standing up as civilian militia to face the mightiest military power on the face of the planet.
I feel humbled and small thinking about those events.
It is said that the Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Never let us forget this--we will do so at our country's peril.
Sweet kids are still leaving their mothers and young wives to enforce with violence our country's will, and some of them return in body bags. The media makes much of their deaths, but little mention of the freedoms they voted with their lives to defend.
We must never blame the troops for our country's policy. They need, as they have always needed, our support and praise, regardless of what we think of the war in which they fight. Every war in which the USA has fought has had its detractors--this is one of the freedoms for which the troops fight. But national policy is not the fault of the troops, any more than the scalpel is to blame for the decisions of the surgeon.
I hung my country's flag from its socket on my house this morning, and got a little choked up as I did it. Freedom will last just exactly as long as there are people to defend it. And that defense is not without cost.