[Posted on FB on 5/31/2021, and expanded here]

On this Memorial Day, as a former soldier, I often think about how lucky I was that I never had to fire a shot in anger, or duck one fired at me. My ten years of service fell squarely between the wind down in Vietnam and the wind up in the Middle East. I pay careful attention, however, to the words attributed to the fallen. In particular, I’m worried by the phrase, “They gave their lives for our freedom!” Actually, our fallen gave their lives for our country. They swore to give their all to defend us from our enemies and the dangers they represented, foreign or domestic.

Whether or not our leaders used our men and women well for those purposes is a matter for debate that will be highly colored by one’s politics. Today is not the day for that debate. Today is the day to honor those who made the sacrifice based on the principle that it is an honor to serve our country. Whether or not our country or our leaders deserved that sacrifice is for history to decide. That the sacrifice was made, and paid for in blood, must be honored, but it must be honored honestly. And it is fundamentally dishonest to claim our fallen died for our freedom when our freedom hasn’t been directly in danger from a foreign enemy since we chased the British out or indirectly in danger since we defeated the Axis Powers.

So why fetishize service and sacrifice by attaching it to something as abstract as “freedom?” I think the ramifications are actually terrifying. If we defend Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan, and everything else as defending our OWN freedom, to argue against those ventures would make one against freedom itself. It becomes a form of doublethink. It is certainly Orwellian to me to think that only our military, i.e; the least free part of our society, can defend our freedom or imply that they are the guarantors of freedom. Our military is the guarantor of our security and safety, not our freedom.

It is to miss the point entirely of what freedom is and what freedom means to believe that it is only defended by our armed forces. You cannot defend freedom by force of arms; it is in fact easier to prove the converse: Freedom is almost always squashed by force of arms. Freedom, my friends, is defended by VOTERS. It is defended by paying attention to federal, state, and local politics. It is defended by activism and protest, donations of time and money, and by registering to vote and actually showing up to vote. Rain, shine, dark, cold – just like our young people in uniform. Freedom is defended by you, and it is your defense of freedom that gives meaning to lives given in service to our country.

Honor their memories.

Defend your freedom.

Vote.