(photo: marsmet461/flickr)

As I sit here at the comfort of my desk on a rainy morning I’m reflecting on the
approaching Memorial Day holiday and its meaning in my life.  The
quiet rain caused me to slow down long enough to realize that this traditional
American holiday has again sneaked up on us after a pretty easy winter and
spring that has endured about as long as the blink of an eye.

Let me preface my comments by saying that I don’t believe  in war and I’m profoundly turned off by the excesses in nationalism that leads to  it, costing millions of lives.

That said, I’ve decided to write about the holiday for the second year in a row.  I also wanted to include some comments about  my father, a World War II  veteran.

The first thing I realized was that I needed to make sure I  had the facts right about my father’s military record so I could write about it  with the accuracy it deserves.  This morning my mother said the  exact information is at the cemetery.  So I took Mom over to plant  two geraniums at my father’s headstone this morning with my clipboard and pencil  to jot down the information from an engraved flat bronze memorial in front of  his grave.

My father was a World War II Veteran and POW.  The flat memorial reads “NJ 1^st Lt 52 FTR Intcp Wing AF  WWII BSM AM 2 OLC PH.  Translating it to the best of my ability, it  means First Lieutenant from New Jersey 52^nd Fighter Interceptor Wing  of the Air Force in World War II, Bronze Star Medal, Achievement Medal two  times, Oak Leaf Cluster and Purple Heart.   The Oak Leaf Cluster  was a small oak leaf issued to indicate a second  award of a previous medal, such as the Purple Heart or the Bronze Star  Medal.

He was shot down while flying a mission over  France and remained a prisoner of war until June 6, 1944, his 21^st birthday and otherwise known as D-Day, when Allied Forces invaded  Normandy.   Dwight D. Eisenhower Commanded 156,000 Allied Forces in  this decisive victory against Gerd Von Rundstedt’s 10,000 Nazi forces.   I’m truly humbled by my father’s legacy and I can only hope that some of
that courage has been passed on to me.

That day in June when  the Western Allied Forces liberated mainland Europe from Nazi  occupation during World War II was a turning point in freedom for the entire
world.   The Third Reich, also Nazi  Germany, is the common name for Germany when it was a totalitarian state  ruled by Adolf Hitler.  Racism, especially anti-Semitism,  was rampant in Nazi Germany. The Gestapo destroyed the liberal, socialist, and  communist opposition killed millions of
Jews.

The number of concentration camps had quadrupled as  slave-laborers from across Europe, Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally ill  and others were thrown in prison.   This assault on humanity  culminated the mass genocide of Jews and other minorities in The  Holocaust.

Germany was eventually overtaken in 1945 by the Soviets from the  east and the Allies from the west. The victorious Allies initiated a policy of  re-democratizing Germany and other parts of Europe, putting the Nazi leadership  on trial for war crimes.  These became known as the Nuremberg  Trials.

The particularly murderous and enslaving strain of  fascism that Nazism represented has given good reason for Americans to this day  to remain wary of uniform, centralized power in government.  This  totalitarian monolith would not tolerate even a hint of diversity in any segment  of German (or Continental) society.  Every command would be  dictated by the Führer und Reichskanzler from a central post.   Dissension would be crushed by the Gestapo within Germany and by the  Luftwaffe beyond Hitler’s ever expanding reach until his final  defeat.

On Memorial Day it’s important to remember that we honor the  veterans of other wars as well.  They include the War in Afghanistan, War in Iraq, Gulf War, War of 1812. Vietnam War, Korean War, World  War I and the American Civil War.

Observance of Memorial Day originated after the Civil War to  commemorate the allen Union soldiers of the Civil War.   Over  600,000 Americans were died.  Another 400,000 were wounded.  And this, over opposing views on the preservation of one  uniform law of the land. Contrast this to Americans’ alternative  kneejerk condemnation of centralized government in the long wake of
Nazism.

But the Civil War best exemplifies why a blanket  condemnation of a unified but consistent federal law of the land can be just as  shortsighted as hypnotic praise for the political philosophy of Mein Kampf.  Fast forward to Arizona’s “Support Our Law  Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” (SB 1070), currently  awaiting adjudication in the United States Supreme Court and we have another  case of state v. federal law, although on a far, far less egregious scale than  that prior to
1865.

In addition to being two contests in American federalism, these  two divergent scenarios also portray a struggle of civil rights in vivid blood  red detail, one far more than the other. So, have we progressed in  our “memorialization” of a consistency in American law?  This  struggle in states’ rights v. federal supremacy, (in part rooted in the  10^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Supremacy Clause) is  still evolving 147 years after Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on  April 9, 1865 at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court
House.

As our troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan  they’re often greeted with joblessness, homelessness and post-traumatic  syndrome.   I think it’s safe to say that their brethren who fought  before them would ask above all else that we treat today’s survivors of war with  the support services they deserve.

A 21^st century Civilian Conservation Corps  that includes all eligible veterans returning home with a promise of employment  would be a huge step forward on this Memorial Day

The Oxford Dictionary defines the term nation as  “a large body of people united by common descent, history,  culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory.”  Yet, on Memorial Day 2012 our “nation”  remains profoundly divided.

We continue to suffer through an assault on the Voting Rights Act; the officially sanctioned racism that ended at  Appomattox Court House has now morphed
into new insidious shapes and sizes despite the election of the first African  American to the White House; and despite what may be the most serious threat to
our democracy, the worst income  inequality in decades, an insurmountable chasm of public opinion and  sentiment exists about whether it even matters that one
in four American children has slipped into poverty.  While  unemployment remains persistently above 8 percent, members of Congress insist on  focusing on legislation to limit women’s health rights rather than work to  create jobs.

On this Memorial Day, let’s ask ourselves why our  veterans fought and died in so many devastating wars.    Did the Allied Forces, many of them our own parents,
grandparents and other family members led by General Eisenhower to defeat the
westward march of a Nazi dictator, be gratified as we sit back watching at the same time that very American democracy is painfully replaced by the one percent  representing a ruling plutocracy?    Did 600,000 Americans, who  died over 19^th century American slavery and a mistaken argument of  states’ rights, do so only to see the 44^th President of the United  States witness an attack on his citizenship, loyalty to democratic ideals and  sense of humanity because of the same race that enflamed the entire nation in  the deadliest war in its history a century and a half ago?   I don’t think so.  Not on our  watch.

When all is said and done, the best gift we can give to those we  remember on Monday is to end war and the injustices that lead to it.   When we can, there will be no more names to add to Monday’s list.   But unless we can end the deep divide in sentiment currently festering in  this country and abroad, that’s one Monday that will never come.