Remembering Veterans Day

I think it’s entirely fitting that Veterans Day comes so close to elections. It’s good to keep in mind that the one is tied inexorably to the other.

On Tuesday a colleague and I were chatting and the subject arose of the kind of trickery that was being reported about the polling: likely Obama supporters being told that, due to long lines, Democrats were being asked to vote on Wednesday; or that you’d be arrested if you showed up to vote and had outstanding traffic tickets; etc. (There may have been counter tactics used against Republicans; but if so I haven’t heard of them. Whereas my office mate received two separate emails from ’Pub friends advising him to vote on Wednesday.)

Leaving aside what a perversion this sort of thing is of the ideals on which this country was founded (do we see Jefferson sanctioning such chicanery even in his fight with Adams? Would that pragmatist Franklin have advocated skullduggery in the pursuit of utopia?), it utterly profanes the sacrifices made by generations of Americans to safeguard government of the people, by the people and for the people.

I mean, once you start subverting the voting process by misdirection, how far away are you from Zimbabwe or Burma?

On and off the battle field, at home and in foreign fields, men and women have for more than 200 years willingly gone into harm’s way in defense of something that transcends race, religion, politics or gender. That something would be the form of government established by those upstart former colonists in 1787.

As you may know, every uniformed service member takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States—not a President, not a state, but the figurative Pentateuch of all laws that evolved from it. Tell me, Ozymandias, where else the law is valued so highly as here?

(Or it was before the soon-to-be Ancien Régime took a scythe to the Bill of Rights and made us international outlaws.)

And these hundreds of thousands of Americans—natives, immigrants, urban, rural, north-south, bi-coastal, draftees or volunteers—put their lives on the line to defend those principles of that “more perfect union”.

Veterans Day is when we nominally honor those who chose to walk this path—to be the instruments of policy. In reality, though, we don’t do a whole hell of a lot of honoring, outside of the DC-Arlington National Cemetery area. Lord knows, we certainly don’t pay much attention to them the rest of the year, either.

I contrast this to the annual ceremony in the UK known as Remembrance Sunday. This is the Sunday nearest 11 November, the day the armistice went into effect ending hostilities on the Western Front in 1918. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Today is the 90th anniversary of that cease fire.

There are observances around the country on the 11th and two minutes of silence at 1100; church bells are muffled for the memorial peals. And there is a very moving ceremony at the Cenotaph, in Whitehall on the Sunday. The Royals, leaders of government, Commonwealth representatives—all lay wreaths at the empty tomb dedicated to all who gave their lives in the service of Britain.

(The thought occurred to me, as I was having my bag searched and I noticed snipers posted on the roofs and in the windows nearby, that this was probably the ideal time to knock over a liquor store if one were so inclined, as every copper in Southeast England was concentrated in a three-block radius of the Cenotaph. My mind works that way.)

Then there’s a march-by of veterans, starting with those from World War I—remarkably sharp in their movements, being men who still take pride in what they accomplished—and followed by those from successive conflicts. I have to say that after WWII, the quality of the marching deteriorates, but it’s still an extremely impressive parade.

But then the Brits know very well that, whatever the current state of their society, it would be infinitely more miserable were it not for the men and women represented by those marchers. They take it very seriously indeed, as well they should.

So here’s your chance to think about this relationship—last week you exercised the fundamental right of our American society to vote for leaders from President to municipal judges (an exercise that millions in the world can only dream of). Whether your guys won or not, you were equal with everyone else at every precinct across the land in your ability to choose for yourself which crack-brained policies to support.

Just remember that in addition to the Founding Fathers' foresight and confidence in the inherent ability of engaged citizens to contribute to the common good by participating in the democratic process, we also owe our Constitutional liberties and duties to the veterans—living and dead—who defended those rights with vigor and stalwart devotion.