Memorial Day: What Were They Fighting For?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6llT2ZYg-4E

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrpearlharbor.htm

This Memorial Day it is time to not just remember the men and women who served and sacrificed. To honor them, we must also remember why they fought. The top link actually will take you to a condensed version of a Winston Churchill address in which he throws down the gauntlet at Hitler and defeatists. Britain will fight for every inch of her island and Empire. Franklin Roosevelt in the next link calls for a declaration of war on Japan after the destruction visited on Pearl Harbor.

The men and women of the armed forces who march into combat and defend our nation fight for the nation and the principles that serve as its foundation. The ememies of this nation were never Germans or Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese as much as they were militarists, Nazis, and Communists. We fought ideologies more so than peoples. German militarism under the Kaiser, National Socialism under Hitler, Communism under several different countries served as ideological world views. Radical left wing ideologies such as Nazism and Communism sought to infect, overthrow, and dominate all of the owrld's great nations. We rightfully fought to keep the threat at bay.

Why did we have to fight? Because of who we are. Our culture, both its positive and beautiful aspects as well as its flaws, stem from the ideal that each individual has the right to choose and the responsibility to live with their choices. Other ideologies believe that humans should have little or no choice, be forced into certain lifestyles by political leaders, or religious law in the case of fundamentalist Islam. We are, as Reagan put it, a shining light of freedom in the world. We inspire the individual. That is why they hate us. That is why they attack us from without and within. They must give us a black eye. They must destroy us if possible. Our ideals of freedom have the power of logic and reason. Live and let live. Allow each man and woman to chart his and her own destiny. They believe destiny must be charted by the Leader. as long as the American alternative exists and is respected, they will always have strong opposition to their demands for control.

That is why we have fought and continue to fight. No man or woman is ever rightfully the slave or subject of another. No government has the right to coerce its own people in the name of "the greater good" because that means that a Leader or chosen few has defined the "greater good" and imposed that definition upon all. Our military fights for the freedoms and natural rights of Americans first and occasionally others as well. Only when the entire world recognizes the natural rights of mankind and the God-given dignity of the individual will there be peace. We cannot fight for all of them, nor should we, but as long as we remain the shining light of freedom, there will always be hope and inspiration.