Honoring veterans means honoring Americans' rights
Throughout Idaho and across the country, American citizens on Memorial Day rightly paid tribute to those soldiers who sacrificed their lives on the battlefield, a demonstration of what President Abraham Lincoln described at Gettysburg as “the last full measure of devotion” to the nation.
Speakers here, and afar, surrounded by fields of America flags fluttering in the wind, exalted the bravery, heroism and courage of the fallen, those who had died so that we, the living, might enjoy our freedoms.
“So that these dead shall not have died in vain,” as Lincoln said of the fallen at Gettysburg, we citizens in Idaho should not reduce their sacrifice with shallow allusions — mere platitudes — to the freedoms that they protected. Rather, we should ask ourselves, perhaps educate ourselves, about the rights and freedoms for which they gave their lives.
And then, if we are to avoid cynical, that is hollow, recitation and invocation of those freedoms, then we must fight to preserve and protect them. Anything less than our own full devotion to the freedoms for which they paid the highest price, mocks their genuine sacrifice.
In World War II, American soldiers vanquished our enemies — authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that suppressed freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Those dark governments summarily executed dissidents, assaulted newspaper reporters, repressed religious liberty and burned books. They represented the antithesis of the values and freedoms for which America has stood since the dawn of the republic.
In our time, we honor the sacrifice of our soldiers by promoting, indeed, championing robust, vigorous speech and debate, from Boston to Boise to Berkeley. Our citizens should readily defend dissident speech. That includes left-leaning students at the University of California, Berkeley, who may be opposed to the conservative, doctrinaire speeches of invited guests.
Students should be eager to learn. Learning surely encompasses listening to ideas that challenge their own views, values and beliefs, including those that may be uncomfortable to hear and even repugnant to their platforms. Students, like the citizenry as a whole, can inform themselves, sharpen their own analytical abilities and improve their argumentative and debating skills, by listening.
The founders of our nation were among history’s greatest dissidents. They stirred debate against England’s policies, programs and actions, and paved the way for wholesale changes in thoughts about governmental powers, and the rights and freedoms of individuals. They were so committed to the value of free speech that they enshrined it in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
The founders were equally, if not more, committed to the value of freedom of the press, which they conceived as “the people’s right to know.” The republic that they created was dependent upon a free and independent press, constitutionally protected so that American citizens could be informed about the thinking, reasoning and actions of their elected officials — to hold them accountable, criticize them and improve upon their proposed measures.
Our soldiers, accompanied by intrepid reporters in every major battle throughout our history, surely did not give their lives for an authoritarian regime in America, that might emerge with such hostility to the principle of a free press that it would denounce the press as “the enemy of the people,” and encourage supporters to “rough up” reporters covering campaign rallies. Nor did they sacrifice their lives for candidates for Congress who would body slam a reporter asking the candidate a very important question about the most pressing domestic policy matter affecting tens of millions of people.
We honor those who have given their lives by honoring the rights and freedoms for which they fought. Let us not sacrifice their sacrifice.
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Dr. David Adler is President of the Alturas Institute. He has lectured nationally and internationally on the Constitution and presidential power.