Since the dawn of America, there have been approximately 565,000,000 people who have had the fortune of calling themselves “Americans”. Since our Declaration of Independence in 1776, less than 10%, have been the guardians of the American ideal. The guardians of our liberties and freedoms. They have stood against evil, both at home and abroad.
In America, we have a title of honor for these guardians and heroes: Veterans
Since the founding of our nation, we have seen and experienced many evils. Some at home, some abroad.
One of the greatest evils in our history was on our own soil. We were faced with an internal crisis, that was frankly, a battle for the soul of our Republic. The evils of slavery could no longer be ignored or allowed to continue. The Declaration of Independence reminds us, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. During the Civil War, our nation paid a terrible price, where the lives of more than 750,000 American sons were lost. While there would remain much work to do once the war ended, it was a price that needed to be paid, in order to work our way towards a more perfect union. We as a country, are very similar to each of us as individuals…we frequently fall short of our ideals, but still strive to be better tomorrow than we were today.
During the 20th century, we fought two world wars. During these wars, we faced the evils and horrors of genocide and ethnic cleansing throughout Europe. We witnessed invasions of peaceful nations. We saw entire countries enslaved. We witnessed the horror of The Holocaust, where more than 6,000,000 Jews were systematically exterminated. Other groups including the Poles, Russians, the handicapped and infirm, the Romani, and homosexuals also met a gruesome fate. More than 520,000 of America’s sons and daughters laid down their lives to stop these atrocities, to liberate those who had been invaded, and to ensure those atrocities never reached American shores.
In the thirty or so years following World War II, the spread of Communism and totalitarian soul-crushing regimes again drew our nations’ sons and daughters into service. During the Korean and Vietnam Conflicts, roughly 113,000 service members gave their last full measure of devotion in the service of our nation.
In the late 20th century, the sickness of ethnic cleansing reared its ugly head, again. This time throughout the Balkans, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were exterminated, and more than 4 million people became refugees. America, along with her NATO allies, once again answered the call to put an end to the evil of genocide.
At the dawn of the 21st century, America faced an enemy that they had not before…non-nation state terrorism. September 11, 2001 saw our nation attacked with commercial airliners and box-cutters. Whatever your perceptions on the genesis of this threat, America’s sons and daughters have spent the last 18 years engaged in this struggle. Almost 7,000 of them have given their lives to prevent another 9/11.
In short, America’s veterans are, and have been, the greatest force for good, and the greatest force for liberty the world has ever known. They are the best among us and demonstrate the values and ideas our nation was founded on. They are the people who step forward and say, “send me”. They are the ones who stand up and swear to, “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. They are the ones who freely “bear true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution of the United States of America. They are the heroes among us who will pay the price of liberty with their lives, if that is what’s needed. Of the roughly 55,000,000 heroes who have served our nation since its inception, 1,450,808 have paid that full price.
Our nation’s veterans have seen the evils of the world face to face and continued to charge forward. They battled against slavery. They battled against piracy. They battled against genocide, oppression and totalitarianism…not in some abstract way, but with their lives. They did so with honor, courage, and commitment, not just to their nation, but to each other.
We all have a debt to repay. We have the responsibility to earn the opportunities they have provided for us.
Be worthy of their service. Be worthy of their sacrifice.
Whether you realize it or not, they did it for you.
