Home America recent Memorial Day in a Divided Nation
Home America recent Memorial Day in a Divided Nation

Memorial Day in a Divided Nation

It has been over 150 years since our nation’s last civil war. Time enough has passed that we have come to associate the holiday once known as Decoration Day with the graves of soldiers fallen on other continents far from home.

It is important to honor our wartime dead. But Memorial Day has a powerful meaning that we have forgotten. It was the holiday that reunited our country after the Civil War. It began when Americans, from the North and the South, entered the cold gray stone fields of the dead, and decorated the graves of the fallen from the Grand Army of the Republic and the Confederacy with freshly cut flowers.

They followed no presidential order. They acted under no regulation. Instead the mothers and wives of men who would return home no more brought flowers to the graves of their fallen sons and husbands, and to the resting places of the young American men who might have slain them, who had been the enemy, but who still deserved honor and respect.

Those women, of the North and the South, brought America together.

Today a new breed of leftists gleefully tears down Confederate memorials. And it will not end with flags and statues. They will not be satisfied until the cemeteries that were once decorated have been desecrated. It is ominously fitting that the event which marked the end of one civil war now arrives to foreshadow the beginning of another war between brothers.

On a Memorial Day long ago, President Theodore Roosevelt praised the Union soldiers who “left us the right of brotherhood with the men in gray, who with such courage, and such devotion for what they deemed the right, fought against you.”

The Right of Brotherhood is what binds a nation. It cannot be imposed by force even when a war is won. It can only be won through mutual respect. Out of the brutality of the Civil War, came respect for the courage of those who fought and died on both sides. And once more, we called each other brothers.

“They not only reunited States, they reunited the spirits of men. That is their unique achievement, unexampled anywhere else in the annals of mankind,” President Wilson said in his Memorial Day address.

Like the American Revolution, the aftermath of the Civil War was indeed a unique achievement. It is now vanishing before our eyes. And Memorial Day has become a sad reminder of its diminution.

A day once marked by mutual respect for the courage of former enemies is now being ushered in with the deliberate desecration of Civil War memorials in New Orleans. And beyond this ugliness, Memorial Day sharply divides the country between conservatives who believe this country is worth fighting for and leftists who see it as a racist colonial monstrosity that must be erased with open borders and terror.

While there are no armies of the Blue and the Gray exchanging fire on grassy hills, earlier this month cities across America remembered the courageous men and women in blue murdered by the racist supremacist and separatists of Black Lives Matter who deny that the lives of other races matter.

The left-wing tactics of racist terror are a deliberate effort to divide us.

Millions of Americans on both sides recognize that a conflict is underway. Many of them feel helpless to stop it. And they wonder what can be done to avert it.

Memorial Day’s origins offer us one answer. 

Certain disagreements are intellectually, culturally and emotionally irreconcilable. The Civil War emerged out of such a conflict. The civil war we are sliding toward now is being born out of another. But mutual respect can make coexistence possible even in the face of fundamental divisions. And where there is no such respect, even minor differences become impossible to reconcile except through force.

The left expresses its radicalism as violent contempt. If it wants to understand where Trump came from, it need look no further than the contempt that its political and cultural leaders express for opponents. Its conviction of moral superiority makes it impossible for it to accept President Trump or his voters, and leads it to assault Trump supporters, vandalize memorials, attack the Constitution and openly plot subversion and secession.

Memorial Day arose not only as a way to honor those who fought for our side, but even those of our brethren who fought on the enemy side. Its lesson is that heroism does not occur only on the battlefield, but in the aftermath in which after trying to kill each other, we learn to live together as one people.

It takes one sort of moral courage to win a victory and another form of moral courage to rebuild afterward. Victory demands conviction. Rebuilding requires that we cast aside the conviction of superiority that war requires and to understand that our enemies are men like us.

The left is convinced of its utter moral superiority and the total moral inferiority of its enemies. Its utopian projects are pursued with ruthless violence and secured with unlimited power. Its enemies exist only to be brutally ground under. Those who are not of the left have no right to exist upon the earth. They are accorded no rights, no freedoms and no respect. Only a choice between slavery and death.

That is why the left wins its victories and then covers the land in blood. Its societies collapse into misery and repression. This was where the American Revolution differed so fundamentally from the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. We celebrate that difference on the Fourth of July. It is also where the Civil War differed from so many other civil wars not in its battles, but in its aftermath. That is the great moral victory that we remember on Memorial Day. A mutual victory of national reunification.

The Civil War saved the Union. But the mutual respect of Decoration Day preserved it. If the Union is to survive, the Democrats must learn to respect those they have come to consider their enemies. History teaches us that mutual respect can either avert a civil war. Or it must be learned after a civil war.

Comments

  1. Anonymous30/5/22

    When the first Confederate statue was pulled down by the mob, I knew it had nothing to do with the Confederacy. There would be no end until every statue was destroyed ~ every house of worship desecrated ~ every perceived enemy attacked. Their enemy wasn't the Confederacy, it was the United States.
    I also realized that we had no government. No governing authority voted in by citizens. No police power to protect the innocent and stop the mob. I didn't wait for 'the authorities' to step in and put a stop to the violence. I knew they wouldn't. They approved ~ if not actively organized ~ the mob ~ funded by our tax dollars.
    Daniel has once again given us the gift of his wisdom and scholarship. The origin of Decoration Day was a lesson for me. Thank you.
    Linda

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, they start with the easiest targets, and once people become complicit, they sense weakness and go in for the kill

      Delete
    2. Anonymous12/6/22

      Amen - bless Daniel for his wisdom in penning down such articles

      Delete
  2. Anonymous30/5/22

    "The left expresses its radicalism as
    violent contempt." Sadly true, and what we
    get when trying to achieve understanding and
    cooperation.

    The best we can do is know ourselves and the
    Left perfectly. Then advance our noble goals,
    without malice or embarrassment. Be prepared
    to counter the vilest acts of the Left in our
    defense, then restore order.

    The Left lives in delusion. Let them see that
    America continues as Man's triumphal home of
    Liberty, Peace, Goodwill. They can join in,
    or molder in self-pity.

    Thomas

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  3. AislaPS31/5/22

    Another great article as per.
    You give history and context, offering reason and humane answers to the amplification of division in your great nation.
    The tragedy I'd that only one side of this division cares for history, reason and reality.
    We will never reason the enemy( for that is what they are) out of poses and postures that they never reasoned themselves into. They have long substituted feelings for facts, preferring the rubble of utopian hellscapes to any constructive effort to build on the good whilst addressing the wrongs and injustices that truth reveals to us.
    It's more a mental health thing than political. Godless demons let loose on the world ,like the dogs of " Animal Farm"that the pigs adopted, trained from stolen puppies on the farm .
    These sperm of Satan won't breed or detain us for long, but you'll need your guns and to terrify them as Mao did to his Red Guard ,once they'd done their worst and were set to get even more evil. Thankfully, they know no history. But we have no excuse not to.
    Too many Von Papens and Petains are getting a free pass at present. It's your nation, a world beacon and too many of you aren't prepared to steal your nation back from those who took it in 2020, albeit after nearly 60 years of low level shoplifting and tampering.
    May Jesus take the wheel, may Moses ride shotgun.

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    Replies
    1. we won't reason the enemy out of anything, but it's important that we remember the majority of the country consists of the uncommitted, and even many of those on the other side have no idea what their side truly stands for

      all hope is far from lost

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  4. Anonymous31/5/22

    Laws can be disregarded, violence and physical assault is acceptable, a child - up to the moment of its birth and beyond - can be killed, pedophilia is simply being 'minor attracted', the youngest of children must be sexualized in schools, abortions can be had without a parent's knowledge or consent, puberty-blocker and transitioning is normal of minors, and on and on At some particular point we need to have them define 'moral superiority', but frankly, I ain't seein' it.

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    1. Anonymous2/6/22

      A little off topic, but A middle aged man who wants testosterone to feel better and keep his edge in the workplace cannot get that hormone from his GP doctor because it's "dangerous." You have to find a boutique doctor that will prescribe testosterone and you will pay a small fortune.
      However if you are a 12 year old girl who thinks she should be a man, our government will pump you full of testosterone at no cost to you.

      I guess prescribing testosterone to a 55 year old man in "dangerous," while prescribing endless amounts to a 12 year old girl is perfectly normal in the minds of these fascists.

      Delete
  5. Anonymous31/5/22

    I'm afraid there is a gigantic difference between today and our 19th century forefathers and mothers in that the latter, North and South, identified as Americans; division was resisted as long as it seemed possible, and reunion was sought as soon as possible. Today's Left does not operate that way. They despise everything about America and Americans. They intend to destroy both by hook or crook and - with apologies to Mr. Greenfield - will happily cheer if we are carted off in cattle cars. There won't be any reconciling with them.

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  6. Anonymous31/5/22

    A perspective I've never thought of for Memorial Day - respect for adversaries. I think this may be one of the bedrock characteristics of leftists (aside from a bad memory).... no respect, for anyone period, and especially no respect for your opponent. No empathy, no respect. Pure derision and dehumanization. Pure zeal with no self-reflection. Leftists sorely lack the virtue displayed in sportsmanship, even cagefighting wherein opponents who beat the snot out of each other for 25 minutes straight then go on to collapse and embrace in shows of respect. The Leftists is incapable of this virtue of strength. They go on to complain and whine about how they should have won, even if they didn't. They go back stage and poison the other team's food. They will stop at nothing to avenge their bruised ego, having been proven wrong, wrong, wrong, over and over again.

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  7. AislaPS1/6/22

    Rarely follow up on a thread, but we responders seem to be less tolerant of the enemy than is our leader!
    We'd like to be kinder, these are our kids and students after all. And we ourselves probably aided and abetted them as we taught them, brought them up.
    But sense we are now past a tipping point. Seems to be either us or them.
    Of course, there are plenty decent and non committal types but they're silent and fast becoming sandbags and ballast for what evildoers have in store for us.
    Don't see much chance of them coming to our aid, but we do pray and see the occasional glimmer of hope.
    Think that plumb line that Solzhenitsyn spoke of as being the line that demarcates good from evil as it passes through the human heart, has ceded territory and area to the enemy...and is more a Balkan border than an American stateline or the 49th parallel or whatever...

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  8. Anonymous7/6/22

    You say of today's left attitude towards the right: "They are accorded no rights, no freedoms and no respect. Only a choice between slavery and death."

    But that is all the confederacy would allow it's black slaves... And the cornerstone speech, along with each states' declaration of secession, proves that the confederacy intended to be a permanent slave regime. This fact was ignored by trump in his repeated declaration of love for the "beautiful" Confederate statues, but it shows a clear line to distinguish these statues from those of our founders. It is perplexing that trump should have held the bags for the Democrats by embracing Confederate statues (most slaveholders, confederates and Jim crow segregationists were democrat) but then again it is perplexing that trump would have bragged about "fathering" warp speed, on top of all the other reset-facilitation measures he enacted in 2020.

    It is almost as if he were a democrat controlled opposition plant. "Tell people not to go after the founders statues! And the mob will. Tell people to use ivermectin! And the mob won't.

    But most importantly, is what happens on the other side of the aisle. When March 2020 trump told the people to listen to fauci and lockdown, the conservatives did. When trump authorized helicopter cash to democrat! Governors to lockdown, conservatives didn't complain about trump, though they reviled the governors' lockdown The conservatives would never have locked down under a democrat in March 20. And that is why trump bff with bill hill Epstein, had been put in place. To get things started.

    Note that Biden's whole reason for running was Charlottesville .

    Trump loaded the gun; Biden pulled the trigger.

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  9. Anonymous8/6/22

    Those Confederate monuments are also the last reminders of the only time large numbers of Americans violently revolted against the US government.
    Can’t have those just hanging around.
    Might remind people of their rights and duty.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous9/6/22

      Revolted in order to preserve a slave regime is not to be admired.

      Delete

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