Memorial Day and Arlington…
Monday, May 28th 2007
Today we honor those who have fallen, past and present. Even though we Southerner’s have our own memorial day, I like to honor our Confederate ancestors along with those who have fallen before and after our War for Southern Independence.
While I don’t agree with our Government or its Wars of Empire that it is currently conducting across the globe, I feel we must acknowledge those who are currently serving in the military.
Most of us know someone who is either in Iraq or Afghanistan currently, or have known someone who has fallen there, a friend , a family member.
While many have their different reasons for joining, whether feeling it was their patriotic duty, or the belief that they are defending America, most agree that this country is caught in a dilema.
Does it "stay the course" even though its policies have proven a failure? Or does it come to the realization that it is now caught in a Civil War with no clear solution besides pulling our troops out A.S.A.P.?
It is also evident that those who were wounded in these theaters are not getting adequate care, when they do come home and it is a sad thought when one realizes this is the thanks they get for following orders.
Memorial Day is often associated with Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington , Va.
Few realize that this place of honour achieved its position by accident. As columnist and League of the South leader, Mike Tuggle so aptly points out in his article "1913" , Arlington , the home of great Confederate leader, patriot and statesman, Robert E. Lee, was seized by the Union army as a punishment and insult to the great Confederate General…
"1913 was the fiftieth anniversary of that war’s greatest battle, Gettysburg, and the approach of that momentous date must have intensified ongoing efforts to realize this new blueprint, as well as inevitably reminding its architects of the great difficulty facing them in making this vision a reality. Chief among these architects was Woodrow Wilson, who served as president from 1913 to 1921. Despite the utter confidence he publicly expressed for realizing this new conception of the United States, even going so far as describing it as determined by the hand of God, Wilson privately confessed nervousness about his mission. While penning his speech commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Wilson wrote a letter to his wife:
"It is no ordinary celebration….It is to celebrate the end of all feeling as well as the end of all strife between the sections…. If the President should refuse to go this time … it would be hotly resented by a very large part of the public. It would be suggested that he is a Southerner and out of sympathy with the occasion."
Wilson’s Southern birth – of Ohio parents – worked to his advantage, allowing him to address Southerners as one of their own, though he disdained Southern distinctiveness to the point that he urged his wife, Edith, to "rectify" her Southern accent. Wilson’s mission was always nationalistic, aimed at redirecting Southern martial spirit toward supporting an aggressive foreign policy. At the national convention of the United Confederate Veterans he told the old warriors that the war they’d fought was a crucible that transformed the nation into an instrument of God’s will:
"God was working out in His own way the method by which we should best serve human freedom – by making this nation a great united, indivisible, indestructible instrument in His hands for the accomplishment of these great things."
At the July 4, 1913, commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, Wilson proclaimed:
"We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather… How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic."
And at Wilson’s 1913 address at the dedication of the monument to Southerners at Arlington National Cemetery, he again referred to his vision for the new America:
"Let us first heal our own divisions. Let us first see that we are a united and irresistible nation, and then let us put all that force at the service of humanity."
Wilson correctly recognized the simmering resentment Arlington symbolized. Union general Montgomery Meigs had seized Robert E. Lee’s family home and turned it into an estate for the dead in 1864 – certainly as a deliberate insult to the South’s most cherished hero. Like Woodrow Wilson, Meigs was born in the South of Northern parents, but unlike Wilson, did not attempt to conceal his contempt for the Southern cause. Even after the war, Southern women were refused permission to place flowers on the graves of their loved ones buried at the national cemetery Meigs founded. No wonder so many Southern families removed their loved ones from Arlington in the 1890s and 1900s – they couldn’t stomach the idea of having their men buried in a Northern shrine."
Despite the Yankee attempt to humiliate Lee and dishonor his home , Arlington House, in the end it has become a place of great honor.
It is sobering when one views pictures (or personally visits the site) and sees nothing but white headstones that represent the last resting place of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice.
It is also a reminder that our government should never enter into unnecessary or unConstitutional wars for the sake of special intrest, profiteering or to seize more power and freedom from the citizenry.
Perhaps Congressman , and Presidential candidate Ron Paul summed it up best in an article entitled: "Presidential Candidate: U.S. in Danger of Dictatorship", Paul states that the erosion of our personal freedoms is the overriding issues for Americans today…
"Probably it’s the threat to individual liberty. because our government is growing endlessly by leaps and bounds and nobody seems to want to put a hold on it. every time government grows it is at the expense of personal liberty."
Congressman Paul goes on to state that if he were elected President his first military action would be to start bringing our troops home…
"As a Commander in chief you could certainly handle the troops around the world. I would start talking to all our allies and tell them what the plans were and start coming home. We are now spending close to a trillion dollars maintaining our foreign policy. It’s a lot bigger than most people realise if you add up the Dod, the supplementals, the interest on the money we spend and taking care of our veterans." {Editor’s note: Which our government is doing a horrible job of!}
The article also goes onto to state that:
"The Congressman made it clear that aggression abroad and America as a world police force has had a disastrous impact upon the very fabric of the country.
"We have turned our own country into isolationists, diplomatically we don’t talk to anybody, we have more enemies than we’ve ever had before and fewer allies, and at the same time our ability to defend this country is being diminished on a daily basis. We worry about borders, all around he world, we worry about borders in Korea, about borders around Iraq, and what do we do with our own borders? Here we don’t do anything."
Ron Paul, in my opinion is right, we should bring our troops home.
A quote to honor Missouri’s Confederate veterans:
"In all their motley array there was hardly a uniform to be seen, and then, and throughout all the brilliant campaign on which they were about to enter there was nothing to distinguish their officers, even a general, from the men in the ranks, save a bit of red flannel, or a piece of cotton cloth, fastened to the shoulder, or to the arm, of the former. But for all that, they were the truest and best of soldiers… Among them there was hardly a man who could not read and write, and who was not more intelligent than the great mass of American citizens; not one who had not voluntarily abandoned his home with all its tender ties, and thrown away all his possessions, and left father and mother, or wife and children, within the enemy’s lines, that he might himself stand by the South in her hour of great peril, and help her to defend her fields and her firesides. And among them all there was not a man who had come forth to fight for slavery." – Thomas Snead."
For soldiers of all wars…
"It cheers my heart to think that many of God’s people are praying to our very kind heavenly father for the success of the Army to which I belong – General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson"
Clint, Missouri Bushwhacker
On The Web: http://mobushwhacker.bravejournal.com/entry/20984
