It seems inappropriate, even unseemly, to refer to Memorial Day as a holiday. It’s a day off from work and school, to be sure, and an opportunity to spend a long weekend with family and friends. But it is less a celebration, as the "holiday" designation implies, and more a time for somber reflection. It is a time to recall those who, in Lincoln’s words, gave "the last full measure of devotion."
America’s freedom was forged in blood sacrifice. Nearly 700,000 American soldiers have perished on battlefields around world — from Saratoga and Antietam to the Ardennes and Normandy, Inchon and Khe San. Many thousands more have been wounded. Hardly a generation has escaped the pain of war.
But it is not enough to simply recall the sacrifice of America’s fallen. It’s not enough to salute our servicemen and women at parades or to attend memorial services at cemeteries. To properly, to appropriately, honor our nation’s war dead requires from all of us a renewed commitment to the peaceful resolution of conflict, to promoting democracy and freedom through the power inherent in those concepts rather than through military might. It is, after all, what they fought and died for.