Some of these transformations are recognitions of a changed reality. Few people decorate servicemen’s graves these days, much less anything else. My family album has photos of my mother’s decoration of my baby carriage – red, white, and blue bunting – so she could join hundreds of other moms, dads, and veterans in a Decoration Day parade in Ridgewood NY, a scene that was duplicated thousands of times over, across America on every Decoration Day. I daresay – whether called Decoration Day or Memorial Day – these democratic-impulse celebrations of patriotism are practiced in that way any longer.

Most holidays, today, seem to be the concoctions of a secret cabal whose members include Hallmark Cards, florists, and retail stores looking for an excuse to frame a sales event. Worse, the assault on Christian traditions is one symptom of Creeping Paganism. Earth Day and the Winter Solstice are more common in public schools than at any time since Druids pushed stones across vacant lots. Thanksgiving is also on the endangered-species list (so to speak; I mean no offense to the duck-billed toad) in public schools.

Veterans Day was mercifully renamed, however. Invented by fiat of Woodrow Wilson, his proclamation betrayed his typically internationalist fetish: “because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…” The peace and justice in the council of the nations was illustrated to Wilson in the succeeding months, when Old-World politicians treated him like a country rube, metaphorically picking his pockets and those of former enemies after whose lands and resources they lusted, all under the cover of Wilson’s Messianic delusions.

In a bit of pre-Hallmark gimmickry, Wilson and friends delayed the cessation of hostilities until 11:11 on 11-11, even though the Germans had signed papers of surrender at 5 a.m. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of soldiers and civilians died in those extra hours of history’s most useless war; but a catchy commemoration was achieved.

After a few years, and especially after the generation’s second bloodbath, World War II, the United States considered it more seemly to honor all veterans, not just those of what had been called the War to End All Wars. In Eisenhower’s administration, Congress (about the same time it added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance) voted the official change – to honor all American veterans of all wars.

It is truly meet and right so to do.

America has not been exempt from other nations’ folly, for it is indeed an aspect of human nature, not a peculiarity of a country or a system of politics or economics: some wars are justified, and some are criminal. Some uplift a society; some merely decimate a society. Some bring out the best in people’s character; some expose, and even encourage, the worst aspects.

In the Revolutionary War, it was necessary for a citizen militia, and squads even less formal, to take up arms, and it still is inspiring to consider how many men committed their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for a vague dream.

On the other hand, the Mexican War was a contrived land-grab – contrived partly to extend slave-holding territory at that – and many of whose participants (a young Abraham Lincoln among them) ridiculed the leaders and goals.

In the Civil War, the least distinguished soldier – sometimes recent arrivals to these shores – often performed the bravest and most sacrificial of acts, again for causes that were at least as abstract as material. In Viet Nam (as in Korea previously and Iraq afterwards) troops were obliged to fight for limited, inchoate, or shifting, objectives.

Through it all, whether causes were sterling or tarnished, American military personnel invariably reflected the glory of Old Glory. Whether militias, volunteers, or draftees, the best have always stepped forward… or were crafted by the system to become the best. There has not been a war where the American serviceman has not been an efficient warrior… and a sincere friend to the locals.

We all know that too often the US soldier, sailor, marine, and airman have faced honest enemies and received inconsistent support from citizens and politicians back home. Shame on America that this has happened and is happening.

This world is turning crazy.

Our troops are stretched thin in our government’s mad desire to transform the United States from a Republic into an empire.

Our troops are killed and maimed in a war deficient of military goals and started under shady pretext. They are stretched thin in strange corners of the globe while an undeclared, piecemeal invasion of illegals across our borders continues week by week.

Our troops, superbly trained in the arts and craft of war, find themselves doing Florence-Nightingale works of charity, building schools, delivering computers to children, clearing safe zones for hospitals; building nations, patrolling polling places. Nice gestures, but not the work of warriors.

In the meantime, our goal of cramming Social-Studies textbook-style democracy down the world’s throat is backed by a fatally flawed democracy in the homeland – voter frauds, false ballots, intimidation at polling places, forged registrations, and bias on the part of officials, “community” organizations, and the media. What’s wrong with this picture?

We ask our servicemen and women to deliver billions of dollars’ worth of assistance and materiel – bribes, really – to countries around the world when America itself is hurting for better schools, classroom technology, hospitals and infrastructure. Worse, the military is being charged with the task that God has assigned to His children: to act charitably toward those in need. The military should fight or defend; individuals and citizen-groups should aid the needy and tend to the sick.

After deciding to establish a for-hire military in the US, the government routinely asks troops to perform non-military duties, puts them in harm’s way in murky-policy swamps, allows them to be slandered in press and politicians’ speeches… and leaves service families stateside sometimes to subsist on food stamps and reside in public housing. And when troops are shipped home, often after a three-card monte trick of extra tours, and sometimes horribly maimed, there are inadequate facilities and care for the best of our best -- remember the scandal at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

America has come to the point where the performance of normal duties is regarded as something exceptional. It is more of a compliment to say the police and firemen at 9-11 did their duty, than to say they performed as out-of-the-ordinary heroes. But so have American values changed. And many people whine about special treatment they “deserve.”

However, on Veterans Day 2008, and every Veterans Day to come – indeed, every day of every year to come – I propose that we all treat every veteran as a hero. And that they should be honored, yes, specially, for doing their duty: being heroes for us. I propose a program of “reparations” not for “past wrongs” done to them but for countless good things they have done for us in the past.

When you see a vet, thank him or her.

If you can hire a vet, offer them a place at the front of the line.

Maybe there are families of active-duty service people in your area. “Adopt” them, remember them at holidays, watch the kids, run errands, organize a work-weekend, invite them to church.

Talk to them with undimmed eyes, but it’s OK to get a little misty when you think about them.

Work to keep that flag something worth defending.

Thank them for their service… and then, remember to thank God for their service. 

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