Memorial Day, 2010
Dear Friends,
I hope you are reading this upon returning from a restful Memorial Day. This is a note to reach out to you, share thoughts, and to reconnect.
This day always makes me a bit sad as I reflect upon our fallen soldiers and the many wars our relatively young country has been engaged in. Still, it is also a day to reflect, with the deepest gratitude, upon the priceless liberties they fought and died to preserve.
The American story is one in which leaders placed belief in people above pure self-interest and greed. Granted, we have had our fair share of self-interested leaders, but our system was framed to ensure that we, the citizens, are able to access leadership and fight for a chance to better ourselves, and by extension, to better future generations.
In a sense, those who made the ultimate sacrifice for us place upon us certain expectations and responsibilities. Those responsibilities include working to ensure that this Union can continue to actively preserve our capitalist democracy, as well as to provide the tools to excel in an ever-expanding free market world. We also have an obligation to keep future generations safe from foreign threats.
In an election year such as this, Memorial Day weekend also marks the beginning of campaign season, culminating in the free and fair elections that are the hallmark of a democracy. While I am no fan of the divisiveness that partisan politics has taken on in recent years, it may be a fitting day to mark the beginning of an informal public discourse -- a discourse to evaluate how we want to find solutions to the challenges our communities and country face today, and in doing so, how we honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. In this way, perhaps we are called upon to converse and contemplate.
It is my hope that you and your family are able to rest, relax, and reflect in gratitude upon the sacrifices made on our behalf. Perhaps that reflection will encourage us to work to better our communities in our own humble fashion.
During World War I, a soldier named John McCrae penned a memorable poem entitled "In Flanders Fields," which spoke to the responsibilities placed upon the living by those who died in battle. It reads in part:
"...to you from failing hands we throw the torch;
be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep..."
So as we return to our lives after having reflected on this Memorial Day, our responsibilities as citizens are twofold: to remember those who gave their all for our freedom, and to do all that we can to ensure the ongoing success of the great experiment in democracy which we call America. Hold high the torch.
Best Regards,
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