Memorial Day is a time each year to remember those who died for our nation in war against our enemies. In honoring these good men, it is just as important to remember what they were fighting and dying to defend and to preserve. These days, it seems as if politicians of every stripe prattle on about the economy and restoring prosperity to the middle class and similar appeals to material self-interest.
But men did not die on the bloody beaches of distant lands for material gains, and the men who founded our nation did not fight for our independence for commercial reasons. One of the earliest expressions of this purpose was made by the Scots in their own war of independence against the British. The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath states that “[i]t is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honors that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”
Our own Declaration of Independence states that the purpose of government is the protection of: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” and then, significantly, at the end of that document, states that the signers pledge “our lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” The Preamble to the Constitution that followed eleven years later notes the purposes of the Constitution as “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure Domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity[.]”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/05/what_memorial_day_means.html
But men did not die on the bloody beaches of distant lands for material gains, and the men who founded our nation did not fight for our independence for commercial reasons. One of the earliest expressions of this purpose was made by the Scots in their own war of independence against the British. The 1320 Declaration of Arbroath states that “[i]t is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honors that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”
Our own Declaration of Independence states that the purpose of government is the protection of: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” and then, significantly, at the end of that document, states that the signers pledge “our lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” The Preamble to the Constitution that followed eleven years later notes the purposes of the Constitution as “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure Domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity[.]”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/05/what_memorial_day_means.html
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