Memorial Day

Let us pause to remember those have died for the United States, some of them buried only two miles or so from where I sit, in Arlington National Cemetery. We should thank them, whatever their individual faults and misdeeds, that the Slaveowners’ Rebellion was crushed, that Wilhelmine Germany did not dominate Europe, that the Third Reich and Imperial Japan did not extinguish freedom and the rule of law from the world, and that Communist aggression was blunted in Korea and then in Southeast Asia.

I do not imagine that every exercise of American military power has been blameless or successful; there was, for example, the bloody suppression of Philippine independence. Nonetheless, with all my country’s sins, it is easy to picture a world dominated by another power, with another kind of government and set of traditions, being far worse.