Hurrah for the USA!

by Kerry Blair

Today is the 4th of July. Do you know where your children are?

I ask because the 4th has evolved into one of the most family-centered holidays on our calendars. Most of us anticipate a weekend spent with family—me included! But, knowing me, you knew I’d feel compelled to point out the more than quarter of a million empty chairs at today’s cookouts; the child-shaped holes in so many parents’ hearts; the thousands of children whose parents aren’t here to take them to a parade because they are helping ensure latter-day independence by sacrificing so much of their own at a bases, stations, camps, outposts, installations, or ships at sea worldwide. They are America’s modern freedom fighters. Do you know where they are?

According to recent statistics from the US Department of Defense, America has 1.3 million active-duty servicemen-and-women, 289,000 of them abroad. Iraq has claimed over half that number. Next, in descending order: Germany, Japan, Korea, and Afghanistan. Many more are deployed in another 152 nations or territories or, in the case of 92,000 naval personnel, on ships at sea. The United States’ soldiers, sailors, airmen, National Guard, and Marines make up more than half the world’s troops who serve outside the borders of their homelands. Our troops outnumber those of all the other nations. Combined. How far we’ve come since 1776!

Or have we?

Two hundred and thirty-two years ago, a document penned by men of inspiration and ratified by others of vision and courage, declared certain rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) to be inalienable, an endowment from God. They pledged to fight for these rights for themselves and their families, and to die for them if necessary. Thomas Pain wrote:

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Here we are again, but it is 2008 and an election year. (If that is not enough to try anybody’s soul, I don’t know what is.) We are again at a crossroads, facing a new crisis. But this time our enemies are not as easily identified. The lines our leaders draw in the sand are often blurred and indefinite. Aa a people, our faith, optimism, and even virtue appear to wan, while self-centeredness and the quest for instant gratification rises. On September 12, 2001 we were united in a common cause, patriots all. Seven war-weary years later, it is summer in our great nation—literally and metaphorically. Military enlistment is at an all-time low. Worse, many Americans—too many Americans—have come to regard terrorism as more of a political beach ball to be batted back and forth than the living, breathing, plotting, growing, grasping horror that it is.

We simply cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized, complacent . . . or worse. Last year, a young Marine from Phoenix, Arizona was killed by an IED in Iraq. You’d think his death would have been the greatest tragedy in his parent’s life, but that came days later, at his funeral. His mother wrote of being unable to pass into the church to mourn her son without first confronting a small but vitriolic and aggressive group of anti-war protestors. The police were called; the press arrived. The situation would have grown uglier than it was if not for one man: her husband, a soft-spoken father of two whom she had watched age a decade in a few short days—or perhaps over the course of a few long hours. Nevertheless, with the police and his son’s supporters at his back and the mob in his face he said to the authorities, “Leave them alone. My son died so that, God willing, these people will never lose the freedom to say and do what they want. Just leave them alone.”

President Ezra Taft Benson wrote:

Brave Americans gave their lives in the settlement of this nation—and in its preservation. Let us remember our heritage and recognize that the day of courage, labor, and sacrifice is never done.

May we remember that today as we celebrate our nation’s independence, and revel in our freedom. May we, like that father of a fallen hero, step forward with courage and compassion whenever and wherever the need for patriotism is great.

As Daniel Webster observed:

. . . this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood: but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both . . . I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence, now, and independence forever.

I know where my kids are today. Two of them are here to celebrate with me, or soon will be. Two more are away, one abroad, offering their lives in the preservation of that great Declaration and the God-given Constitution that soon followed. I miss them more than words can say. But if they cannot be here, I am grateful and more than a little proud that they are where they are—and who they are. America needs them, and the men and women like them, as never before.

I love the 4th of July! The parades and pomp and family-centered celebration bring joy to my heart and tears to my eyes. But like so many of my peers, I’ll watch the fireworks from a distance tonight, if at all. The “rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air” are just a little too realistic for those of us who have children willing to put themselves between their country and the real thing. Remember them today, will you, if only in passing? Take just a moment as you ask for Our Father’s blessing on your food to ask God to bless them—to bless America—today and always.

Then, tomorrow and all the days that follow, get out there and do your part to make it so!

(Note: The quotes I used today, and many others, can be found in Packets of Sunlight for American Patriots, complied by Marnie L. Pehrson. You can buy the book HERE.)