Written by Maria Ayton
The memory of a nation matters. It matters for its life, it’s flourishing, and it’s survival. The enemies of America know this and have worked hard to erase our memory and rewrite our story. Americans seem unsure of where we came from as a nation. But every Memorial Day is a small chance to remember that the freedoms we enjoy were paid for by the lives of courageous men and women. But more than that, it’s a reminder that freedom can and will be lost if we forget its price.
To give your life in service of America is to not die for a nation, a leader, or a flag. You swear to defend the Constitution and for those who died in service, they died for the Constitution. In remembering the fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, we remember that freedom and self government isn’t given, it is fought for and paid for in blood.
Most of us won’t die in service to the country or defense of the constitution. But we should honor those who did, not just by remembering them once a year, but by working at home to insure that what they died for isn’t lost. We must remember and live in light of that remembrance by working to preserve the Constitution and freedoms they died for. We must vote and engage in the political process, because people literally died so we could do those things. We should speak and exercise our rights, because men and women never came home so we could. We must know where we came from and what it cost to make us the freest and greatest nation. If we lose the memory of the fallen, the enemies of our nation succeeded in erasing the cost of a Constitutional republic from our memory. If we forget that it cost the lives of our countrymen to purchase a free nation, we will lose the nation they gave their lives for.
This Memorial Day and everyday we live in freedom we would be wise to remember the words Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “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.”