* Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering the people who died while serving in the country’s armed forces.
This holiday was called “Decoration Day” in the 1800s, and seemed to originate in the south.
Following President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, commemorations were ubiquitous. The sheer number of soldiers of both sides who died in the Civil War (more than 600,000) meant that burial and memorialization took on new cultural significance.
* Tim Wildmon, AFA: Sacrifice is the theme of Memorial Day. The sacrifice of individuals. The sacrifice of families. The sacrifice of communities. The sacrifice of a nation.
May God continue to bless America on behalf of those who gave their lives for her.
Please take time with family and friends over this Memorial Day weekend to reflect on the cost of freedom and our responsibility to defend and promote it.
* Patrick J. Buchanan has warned that many of the great heroes of the Civil War Era are being demonized.
He points out that, for 100 years, Americans lived comfortably side by side, honoring the dead of both the North and the South.
But since the 1960s, there has arisen an ideology that holds that the Confederacy was the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany, and that those who fought under the Confederate flag should be regarded as traitors.
Thus, in New Orleans, statues of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, and General Robert E. Lee were just pulled down. And a drive is underway to take down the statue of Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans and former president of the United States, which stands in Jackson Square.
Today, the men we were taught to revere as the great captains, explorers, missionaries and nation-builders are seen by many as part of a racist, imperialist, genocidal enterprise, wicked men who betrayed and eradicated the peace-loving natives who had welcomed them.
As we honor our fallen ancestors this Memorial Day Weekend, let us do so without prejudice against the heroes of “the other side” who were fighting for a cause in which they deeply believed. They felt that it was just and right.
* Ron Paul: Are We Fighting Terrorism, or Creating More Terrorism? – RonPaulInstitute.org
“Do we really believe we are fighting terrorism by terrorizing innocent civilians overseas? How long until we accept that “collateral damage” is just another word for “murder”?
“The real problem is that both Washington and London are more interested in regime change overseas than any blowback that might come to the rest of us back home. They just do not care about the price we pay for their foreign policy actions. No grand announcement of new resolve to “fight terrorism” can be successful unless we understand what really causes terrorism. They do not hate us because we are rich and free. They hate us because we are over there, bombing them.”