The three-day weekend, observed all across America, competing with the observance of the deaths of the countless soldiers who fought and died in wars beginning with the American Civil War. Most people don’t know that it dates back that far. That war, of course, claimed the lives of over 600,000. War is an ugly thing, resulting in the death or maiming of young men (and now women) who might otherwise live out productive lives. It corrupts their morals, soils their souls with acts of savagery. We honor the dead not for the ruination it brought to their lives but for the service they rendered, ostensibly in the defense of a noble cause. In the history of the wars Americans have fought in, there have been those with an arguably just cause–the American Revolution, the first and second world wars. Then there have been those whose essential purpose or rationale seems to have a more cloudy, politically controversial result. Those predominate in the conflicts from Vietnam on, perhaps from Korea as well.  Continue reading Another Memorial Day–2014 →