MEMORIAL DAY MUSINGS

This recent Memorial Day was not one of my better days. Normally, I really enjoy the holiday. But this year for some reason it seemed empty or maybe purposeless. Usually on Memorial Day, I go by and visit my dad’s grave. Each time I visit, as the road winds to his plot I am always stirred as I see the hundreds of flag adorned graves at Green Ridge Cemetery. When I see so many, it always causes me to recall how steep the price that the privilege of living in this blessed nation has been for so many and their loved ones.

But this Memorial Day I had a change in the routine. I decided to drive to Avella in Washington County, to visit an old and dear friend who had asked me to stop by and see him. I was much dismayed when I got there and discovered that just the previous week he had suffered a stroke. This news seemed almost surreal as I thought back nearly four decades and recalled my first time meeting this battle wounded and decorated former Marine. This has not been an easy year for him. Recently, I had the funeral for his dear wife. Since I have known him he has been constantly plagued by the wounds he received in Viet Nam. As I drove home from Avella, I thought of him and many other friends, and church members, and pastor friends such as Jim Bailey and Terry Hagedorn and even my own son who along with all these others have given so much and paid so dearly to enable our freedom and safety and rights.

Maybe much of the cause why this was such a sad holiday for me is due to the fact that I can’t seem to get my brain wrapped around the logic or justification for the activity and behavior that is displayed constantly as of late. I am speaking of those activities and behaviors and attempts by segments of our population which would rescind or even deny from others those guaranteed rights for which these warriors have paid so high a price.

This recent past election and the frenzy of its aftermath for the past several months has reminded all of us of something that one would need to be deaf or blind not to notice. It is the relentless national coarsening and vulgarizing of our attitudes and speech. It is a different sort of polarization than which we are familiar. The new norm is displayed in a vehement, crude and nearly universal decline in respect and decorum toward any with whom we disagree.

More worrisome is the growing tendency to disregard accuracy and basic fairness in one’s allegations and claims. It is a day of the shameful distortion of basic truth in what many allege or promote. While neither extreme in the political spectrum is without blame, it seem that liberals are especially above and beyond proficient in distortions and half-truths.

I thought of how Vice-President Pence was recently disrespected by the arrogant and ungrateful grads who walked out when he delivered the commencement at Notre Dame University. I thought of the fact that recently dozens of elementary students [at their parents urging] callously insulted Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives at a scheduled speech.

This is graduation season for our high-schools and colleges. But in these times, hardly any conservative speaker is allowed a platform or opportunity to speak at our most prestigious high-schools and colleges. Any attempt “to have your say” at these “bastions of free thought and speech” could well result in bodily harm or even death, unless of course, you are a jihadist sympathizer, abortion promoter, dog molester, Caitlin Jenner, or any nutty, half-baked radical liberal politician who may be calling for “resistance” or the impeachment of the President.

When I think of what our military has paid in blood and suffering and which enables the safety and the venues which allow contemporary “snowflakes” to do their thing, it infuriates me. The reason is this. These young shrill twits demand absolute freedom to speak, demonstrate, picket, march, or obstruct without restraint or restriction. But all the while, these pampered, privileged, selfish, arrogant, miss-informed, brainwashed little brown-shirts will abide neither discourse nor opinion that is contrary to their own asinine delusions. They throttle free speech unless it is in conformity with their own opinions and rantings. Just this past week, Robert Spencer, director of “Jihad Watch” and a New York Times best-selling author on radical Islam was invited to speak at the University of Buffalo. Notwithstanding the proper and legitimate invite, Spencer was cursed, reviled, shouted down and physically threatened when he attempted to read Islamic texts describing Islamic beliefs.

I have often wondered why it is that so many of these mindless “millennial snowflakes” and progressive politicians and generally the bulk of the news media are so determined to defend and “haul water” for groups like Hamas, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Isis, and other terrorist groups. Why are so many of these “just trying to be fair and objective” dutiful defenders of such questionable groups so disparaging and hateful toward Israel? How is it that anyone who has a different view on contemporary issues or who would promote traditional and biblical family values is immediately branded a racist, an Islamophobe, a homophobe, a trans-gender hater, a misogynist, or a fascist?

These “sweet, gentle, liberal-minded, and freedom demanding” little gadflies try to bully and coerce and threaten and then, when all else fails, “cry like little kids” and then demand tax payer provided “safe places” which are free from any stress of the hearing of opposing opinions. I just can’t imagine this is what our fallen heroes had in mind when they gave their ultimate. Their graves cry out in protest against such absurdity.