Memorial Day 2019 Thoughts

           As I have noted in past years, Memorial Day is not a day for celebration, as has become an increasingly popular practice, with picnics and jubilation and wishes for a “Happy Memorial Day,” but a day of mourning those who died in service the United States of America and for considering their sacrifice and expressing our gratitude for them for the freedoms we Americans enjoy.

            It has been an especially poignant holiday the last few years because of the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War, the centennial of the First World War and the ongoing 75^th anniversary of the Second World War. 

            Memorial Day was first observed after the Civil War in 1865, the bloodiest war for Americans.  The current controversies about that struggle to preserve the Union of States risk discarding the essential constitutional principle of federalism because of its association with slavery, a practice anathema to freedom, which was the primary cause of the conflict between most of the slave-holding States of the South and the northernmost States that led to the secession from the Union of those slave States and the war between the two regions.  Federalism is the principle that the States that formed the Union through the Constitution retained their sovereignty in matters not delegated to the Union, thereby limiting federal power in order to avoid too great a concentration of power, for when two principles are in competition, it is not necessary to eliminate one of them altogether, even when it may be wrongly applied, or if its sacrifice in a particular instance were necessary for the greater good.  Whatever the constitutionality of secession, which seems a natural right of states that form any union, and which had been a safeguard against too much federal power, let alone the prudence of its particular invocation, the States ought not be reduced to provinces by the establishment of a super-state that was never intended by the Framers and feared by them and those who were skeptical of the Constitution.  Federalism is not incompatible with liberty or equality, for it can and ought to be their safeguard.

With liberty under assault from both the far left and the far right and the sacrifices for freedom made by those who died in service at grave risk, it would be helpful to understand American history better, instead of it being misinterpreted or misappropriated for current political advantage, and for there to be a healthier respect for those who argue reasonably for competing principles instead of absolute condemnation of one side or the other.  Reconciliation that makes the Union stronger while preserving liberty and equality would be a more fitting honor of those who made the last full measure of sacrifice than the promotion of unnecessary divisions that are often exacerbated by foreign enemies to weaken America.

May God bless America and keep her safe and free.