Celebrate Memorial Day

 Celebrate Memorial Day

Preserve Democracy

 

On Monday, we celebrate Memorial Day, a federal holiday, to honor those who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces to preserve our Democratic experiment.

 

The first national Memorial Day was celebrated in May 1868. Then known as Decoration Day, it was started by the commanding general of the Grand Army of the Republic to honor Union Army soldiers who died in the Civil War. The states aligned with the Union had all adopted the holiday by 1890. Congress finally made the day a national holiday, Memorial Day, in 1971 and designated the last Monday in May for the observance. Southern states, aligned with the Confederacy, marked their own versions of the day on differing days trying to preserve the memory of a defeated alternative that depended upon the exploitation of slavery for its existence.

 

Across the nation, the holiday is marked by parades, the decoration of fallen soldiers’ graves with flags and flowers, speeches and gatherings to honor those who died in service.

 

I choose to honor my maternal uncle and namesake, Lt. Waring Roberts, who died while flying weather reconnaissance in Hawaii in 1944. Lt. Roberts left a promising legal career in New York City to enlist in the Navy in 1943. He went to flight school in Florida and was assigned to a unit in Hawaii that flew PBY Catalinas used for anti-submarine and search and rescue operations. He enlisted to join the fight against fascism and imperialism rampant leading up to the United States’ entry into World War II. I was named after him by my mother when I was born a year after his death.

 

He was not my only ancestor to serve in our country’s military. The earliest was Maj. Andrew Finck, an upstate New York farmer, who fought in the Revolutionary War serving as a Quartermaster. He too volunteered to fight so that a fledgling democracy had a chance to succeed in this country. While he outlived the conflict and returned to civilian life, his service is noted as an integral part of our grand experiment in Democracy.

 

Memorial Day must be celebrated not only to honor those who fought and died in service of Democracy, but to remember that Democracy is the only political system that stands between us and the tyranny of fascism and totalitarian authoritarianism.

 

We Americans occasionally fall prey to the lure of the authoritarian who offers simplistic solutions to complex problems. We become enamored of the snake oil salesman with the pitch that solves all our problems. We are drawn to the cult of the “me firsters” with promise of a brighter future that excludes those put up as the scapegoat causes of all that ails our society.

 

America is in the throws of another one of those eras that our ancestors stood up against. We must resist the siren’s call and insist once more that we fight problems with facts, science, and the rule of law, not platitudes and snake oil. Democracy takes vigilance and hard work. It is not easy nor formulaic. Each new hurdle requires that we work together to overcome the obstacle. We cannot do it in isolation from each other.

 

We do not have to agree on every issue, or every solution proposed to solve a problem. We do have to agree that we are all in this together and must work together to resolve our differences to solve them.

 

Right now, the threat to our Democracy is not external. No one is threatening to invade our borders, including those who want the better life a democratic society offers. The biggest threat to our Democracy is internal caused by the divisive, polarizing nationalism promoted by an extreme faction following and guiding a former resident of the White House.

 

Just as our ancestors fought and died to preserve our Democracy, we need to honor their service and sacrifice by standing up for the Democratic ideals that make America great. We are a nation of many races, creeds, national origins, and religions. Unless you descend from the indigenous first residents of these shores, we all descend from immigrant stock. We need to recognize that we all have contributions to make for the greater good.

 

Lt. Waring Roberts and Maj. Andrew Finck, I honor your service and sacrifices. I pledge to continue to fight for what you stood up for, preserving our Democratic experiment by working together so we can all do better.