Happy Memorial Day
War is profoundly anti-Republican event. Its essence is force and power and will, the things republican politics attempts to replace with statesmanship and debate and negotiation. During wartime, governments must adopt exercise powers alien to free and peaceful nations, carrying out expansions of armed forces, central planning, requisitions, and conscriptions — and, when circumstances dictate, worse illiberal policies to keep the ship of state from capsizing. Might can never make right, but for the right to triumph, it must have the requisite might; the difference is often lost in the peace imposed by the victors and the histories they later write.
War is hell, as the trite but true saying goes. But war, like government itself, cannot be banished from the world so long as human nature remains what it is. This leaves us to hope that when war is unavoidable, the best, most prudent, and most moral men will be the ones to direct it and fight it.
This Memorial Day, we honor the men and women who died in the service of America — not to expand her empire but to preserve her liberty. These are the rough Massachusetts farmers who fell before British musket fire in 1775, the Mainers who kept the Union in the desperate moments on Little Round Top, the boys who sprinted bravely towards the gun-nests at Pointe du Hoc. These are the heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion that their nation might live.
They did the things — saw the things — that nobody ever should. They sacrificed things — not just their lives, but their fortunes, their careful wives, their children, and their chance to pursue and find their happiness — that nobody ever should be called upon to sacrifice. But in this world, should is not a synonym for is. War can be made scarce, as indeed in modernity it has by historical standards; but even economists know that man is not, in fact, homo economicus, and even the pacifist will at certain times find that arms are unavoidable. War, like politics, often takes an interest in even the most unwilling. Sometimes, men have to die.
Our American heroes did in the best of causes. By most metrics, our nation is better off — and the world is better off — than ever. The world we modern Americans enjoy today — with its freedoms, peace, and prosperity — could not have emerged without such sacrifices. Having emerged, it cannot be perpetuated without more sacrifices of men and women now in the service and of men and women yet unborn.
Sacrificing oneself to save one’s country — or, as is perhaps more common in the awful moment of violence, simply to save one’s brothers in arms — is often a thankless act. Look at this chart documenting the number of American dead in major wars since 1775. How many of their names do you know? Even if one were to dedicate a lifetime to memorizing their names and life stories — an impossible task — there would be unknown, and therefore forgotten, soldiers aplenty.
Veterans Day is a holiday more easily celebrated. One can find a veteran, a living person, and hear his story and thank him. Those honored on Memorial Day lie in graves, many of them unmarked, scattered from northern Virginia to Fallujah. They can no longer tell stories or receive thanks.
This may seem a dour way to write a commemorative “news”letter; I think it is anything but. The men and women who gave up everything — often spending their final moments in a deluge of unspeakable terror and pain — performed the most heroic acts one can comprehend. Their achievements were of the most beautiful kind, even if it was a horrific beauty which we ourselves hope never to have to replicate. They proved the worth of a free, virtuous, and republican citizenry to the utmost. We hope never to have to face what they faced, but their finest hours were our finest hours. Their sacrifices were unparalleled acts of charity and love — love for their families, their friends, their country, and for the unborn generations who live in the peace and freedom they died to secure. Everything we have we owe to them.
Their memory deserves not just memory but celebration. In that sense, we should all have a happy Memorial Day. Not happiness in the sense of barbecues and 20-percent-off sales but in the sense of the knowledge of the true greatness and virtue that came before and that still abides among us and, so long as we are a great and free people, always will. It is a greatness and virtue that we can only hope also can be called from within ourselves, if we are called upon.
I close with the final paragraph of the greatest of all memorials, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. It is an encomium to the soldiers and an charge to us all to preserve, protect, and defend the last, best hope:
“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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.”