Memorial Day 2025

Let us resolve to earn our country back

In the final moments of the 1998 WWII film Saving Private Ryan, a dying Captain John Miller exhorts Private James Ryan to “earn” what Miller and his company sacrificed for him. The film then cuts to the present day where an elderly Ryan tearfully asks his family if he has led a good life.

27 years after the film and 81 years after D-Day, we must ask ourselves the same question. Have we earned the sacrifice of those who gave the last full measure of devotion to our country? I asked that question last June:

Today our country is fractured, divided, more so than anytime since the Civil War. We stand on the verge of a third world war, led by bureaucrats and diplomats who are not fit to shine the shoes of our leaders of yesterday. The cheap goods that improved our quality of life after WWII now keep us distracted and addicted, while the manufacturing jobs that created the postwar economic boom have all been shipped overseas.

Job growth after the Covid lockdowns has entirely come from migration, as the American people are increasingly losing hope and either taking themselves out of the workforce or accepting underemployment.

The decrepit and senile occupant of the White House is a symptom of the decline of our country. He is propped up by what remains of the postwar managerial state as the only thing stopping its utter entropic collapse. In the name of stopping the so-called Fascism and Nazism always looming on the right, our leaders are going to imprison the leader of the opposition while also jailing peaceful protesters, anti-abortion advocates, and, just this morning, conservative pundit Steve Bannon.

• More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War, only for their descendants to be dismissed as racists for not supporting DEI, affirmative action, and reparations.

• Over 100,000 Americans died in World War I, “the War to End All Wars”, yet we have political leaders today champing at the bit for more.

• Another 400,000 Americans died in World War II, fighting Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese imperialists, only for their descendants to be denounced as Nazis, Fascists, and imperialists for opposing gay race communism.

I have nevertheless felt a surge of optimism over the past six months. In November 2024, the American people firmly rejected the leftist progressive revolution, and for the first time in decades it seems we might have a real chance to turn back the decline of our country. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.

As I wrote last year:

We must teach our children the stories and ideas of Western Civilization. Fill your house with the old books and raise your children to know the history of our country. We must involve ourselves in the political process so as not to let it be used to fundamentally change the nation we love. Most of all, we must never lose sight of the truth — the truth that men are men, women are women, and children are innocent; the truth that all human beings have dignity as image bearers of God, but crime must be punished, lest criminals terrorize the populace; and the truth that if you’re not teaching children your values, someone else will teach them theirs.

We can’t go back to the America of 1944 or 1984, but we still have it within ourselves to direct the future toward a place where our grandchildren can celebrate our faith, family, and freedom. That is what our grandfathers fought for, and that is what we must fight for today. Let’s not waste the time we have left.

64 years ago, John F. Kennedy exhorted us to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Doesn’t it seem that it’s been a while since we had a country worth sacrificing for? Yet tens of thousands of young men and women have still put on the uniform and given their lives for our nation and its people, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq. No matter whether you think those conflicts were just or proper, the heroism of those who answered their country’s call cannot be denied.

It’s not for the fallen to justify their sacrifice, but for us to live up to it. Let us make America great again, a country worth the blood of her finest citizens.

But grief is not the end of all. I seem to hear the funeral march become a paean. I see beyond the forest the moving banners of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death–of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and joy of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Feature image courtesy of Arlington National Cemetery