Earn This

In the climatic scene of the 1998 movie, "Saving Private Ryan," Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks) lies dying and implores Private James Ryan (played by Matt Damon), 

"James..., earn this.  Earn it."  

The "it," of course, is the sacrifice of most of Miller's special detail sent on an almost impossible mission to find and retrieve one American paratrooper among the tens of thousands of American soldiers scattered across Normandy in the immediate aftermath of the June 6, 1944 landings. 

The movie is fiction.  The sentiment is fact.

Nearly a million and a half young American men and women have given their lives in the wars of our Republic since its founding.  

It's not possible to accurately determine an average age of the fallen -- but it can scarcely be more than 20 years of age. 

Twenty years old.  A life just begun.  

Think hard on this.  When we say that a soldier "sacrificed his life" we aren't talking about someone giving up the last few years of a  full and rewarding life.  We're talking about someone giving up the vast majority of his adult life.  Never experiencing any of the joys of adulthood. 

Never falling in love.

Never marrying.

Never hearing the birth cry of a first son or daughter.

Never experiencing the pride of a first civilian pay check..., a first home..., a first car.  

Never seeing a child's first steps..., hearing a child's first words..., watching that child grow to adulthood.

Never having the opportunity to teach a son how to be a man, or walk a daughter down the aisle.   

All of these things, and so much more, are given up -- sacrificed on the altar of freedom -- when a young American soldier dies.

Picture in your mind's eye, Arlington National Cemetery, or any of the dozens of American Cemeteries around the globe, in which young American soldiers are buried.  

Listen intently with your heart as you gaze upon row on row of white markers.

Listen.

Do you hear it?

Thousands of voices, imploring us,

"Earn this. Earn it."

On this Memorial Day, the most sacred day on the calendar of our great Republic, perhaps the foremost question we -- the living -- should ask ourselves is,

"Have I earned it?"

How do we earn the soldier's sacrifice?  May the Colonel be so bold as to make a recommendation beyond just the flippant "be a good citizen" tripe?

May the Colonel recommend that we earn the soldier's sacrifice of
his adulthood by being...

Adults.

In the Colonel's not-so-humble estimation we are fast becoming a nation of spoiled children -- all 300 million of us.  

We are allowing politicians (the Colonel refuses to refer to the current crop as leaders) to tax and spend our earnings in wanton disregard of even the most basic tenets that have grounded our grand Republic for the better part of three centuries.  

Adults don't allow that.

We are allowing a nanny-state bureaucracy -- the intrusive breadth and depth of which our self-reliant and liberty-loving forefathers would have found horrific -- to deny our rights, trample our freedoms, and restrict our liberty in ways that the tyrannical enemy governments -- against whom the sacrificing soldiers fought -- could only dream they had the power.

Adults don't allow that.

We are allowing self-appointed social justice and political correctness priests to determine the altars at which we are allowed to worship, the history we are allowed to read, the traditions we are allowed to keep, and the manner in which we are allowed to speak...; the very definition of fascism -- against which the sacrificing soldiers fought. 

Adults don't allow that.

We are allowing children -- who have never contributed anything to our Republic outside of using their parents' money to stimulate the economy --  to drive policy, determine our national mores, and tear down monuments honoring the fallen.

Adults don't allow that.

We are allowing college educators (the Colonel uses the term as loosely as a new-born's diaper deposit) -- who have never contributed anything to our Republic outside of using exorbitant tuition to stimulate the economy -- to indoctrinate our children in the most vile and anti-American doctrines imaginable.

Adults don't allow that.

The Colonel could go on, but he tires of his own pedantry.  

May the Colonel not-so-humbly suggest that it is time for us to earn the soldier's sacrifice and tell the "children,"

"Enough!" 

It is time to stand and draw a solid line beyond which we will no longer allow spoiled children -- of any age -- to dictate to us. 

That's how we can earn the soldier's sacrifice.