Tribute

Today is Veteran’s Day, Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day depending on where you live in the world. I’m sure you’ll see events on television or experience moments of silence. I’ll ask two things of the American readers:

1. Remember the the cost of creating our country. While this is a stereotypical sentiment, consider the individual sacrifices it took to have a country of our own. Freedom from tyranny was worth dying for and it was worth the struggle to create a republic with individual rights and opportunity.

2. Consider the individual sacrifice it took all those years ago in a rebellious fight for freedom. Now look at the image above and think about every single battle that has been fought since to preserve that freedom, that way of life. Wars and battles occur for a multitude of reasons, but the men and women who lead this country chose war and violence in order to protect and preserve our freedom (even if that reason only made up a small part of that decision). The sacrifice doesn’t lie with the country, but the individual and his family. You can read the book 1776 by David McCullough to read about the sacrifices of George Washington and his band of starving farmers. You can read Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose to read the story of how Dick Winters and Easy Company fought and survived through World War II. Nowadays you can go to any base or post throughout the country and see the personnel who continue the, for lack of a better term, tradition of upholding our freedom. These are Americans who have chosen to not only risk their lives, but ironically give up their own freedom to a country that aims to preserve liberty. The real hero in America is the mother who holds steady with two children while her husband deploys halfway around the world. The real hero is the husband who kisses his daughters one last time as he he leaves for his year long PCS in Korea. The Americans serving in the military and their families bear the individual sacrifice of preserving freedom so that you don’t have to think about it. And that’s what makes them heroes.

Today think of the past and think of the present. Place your politics aside and be thankful that these people exist, and they always will.