Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Veterans Give Us the Liberty to Forget Them
Veterans Give Us the Liberty to Forget Them
Mar 18, 2025 7:53 PM

Spend a day with your local military recruiter, and you’ll be encouraged by the number of people who go out of their way to say how much they support our troops and how much they appreciate the service of these young veterans. Then watch as the recruiters casually ask when they’ll be bringing their son or daughter to the recruiting station to learn more about serving their country.

Their spines stiffen, they smile blankly, and a es over them. If they are quick-witted, they will find a joking way to dismiss the question. More often, though, they will simply blurt out that there is no way they’d let their own child enlist. They’ll support someone else’s children being soldiers, but not their own.

Dealing with hostile parents is just one of the myriad reasons recruiting dutyis considered second only bat on the list of most stressful jobs in the military. Most of the Marines I have known, though, would rather do a tour fighting insurgents in Iraq than a tour recruiting teenagers in America.

During the late 1990s I served a three-year stint as a Marine recruiter in Olympia, Washington. After a typically grueling week in October, a fellow recruiter and I decided to amuse ourselves by taking a trip out to Evergreen State College. Our area of Washington was the recruiting equivalent of Al Anbar province, but that particular school had a reputation for being like Fallujah — a place so ing that it was rumored that no one from our office had visited in a decade.

Evergreen, considered one of the most liberal colleges in the country, prided itself on being one of the first schools to hold a protest against the first Gulf War. About the only thing my fellow recruiter and I shared mon with the students was that our alma maters both had Latin mottos. (For the Corps:Semper Fidelis, “always faithful”; for the Greeners:Omnia Extares, “let it all hang out.”) As we stepped on campus in our dress blue uniforms we prepared ourselves for what was bound to be a hostile environment.

We were disappointed by the reception we received. There were no spontaneous protests, no name-calling, no confrontations with patchouli-wearing hippie chicks. Instead, we received a cool, almost apathetic reception. Stares and smirks and polite bemusement, but no one went out of their way to be rude or unkind. They simply ignored us, assuming (correctly) that we would soon leave, never to return.

Disappointed, we walked to the student union, ordered lunch, and sat at a corner table by ourselves. Most of the students did their best to avoid making eye contact but one young woman, dressed in Birkenstocks and sporting white-girl dreadlocks, walked up and smiled. “Are you Canadian Mounties?” she asked.

My friend snorted, thinking that she was making fun of our uniforms. But I could tell from her expression that her question was sincere. “Um, no,” I said, “We’re U.S. Marines.”

“Oh,” she said, looking puzzled. “So what do Marines do?”

I invited her to join us and we talked for half an hour. She was in her third year, studied “sustainability,” and had grown up in Aberdeen, the hometown of the grunge rock star Kurt Cobain. Her lack of understanding about the military turned out to be genuine; she had truly never been exposed to Marines before.

As we drove back to the office, my fellow sergeant was fuming.He couldn’t believe that anyone could make it to college without acquiring a basic familiarity with the military. While I agreed that the girl’s ignorance reflected poorly on the educational system, it had a surprisingly different affect on me: I couldn’t remember ever being more proud to be a Marine.

The encounter reminded me that the reason I served my country was because I loved freedom. I loved it so much that I was willing to sacrifice some of my own freedom, or even my life if necessary, to secure it for myself and for my nation. The young woman had the luxury of being uninformed about the military because veterans had bought that liberty for her. For over two centuries, American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines had paid the cost necessary to give her the freedom to think — or not think — as she chooses. We had provided her with the safety and security needed to forget that liberty-defending veterans even existed.

It’s true that freedom is only valued when it’s taken away. But freedom can only be truly be appreciated when it’s taken for granted. When we have to concentrate on each breath, we cannot truly enjoy our health. When we have to remain constantly vigilant, we cannot truly enjoy our liberty.

After 9/11, we lost many of our illusions of security. And after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you’re unlikely to find college students — even at Evergreen — who pletely ignorant about the military. But it has been twelve years since the terrorists attacked us on our own soil; time enough to allow us to relax our guard, if only slightly. We haven’t defeated the enemies that are working to destroy us, and we have many battles ahead. But we should all take pride in the men and women of our military whose constant vigilance keeps our enemies outside our gates.

Today is Veterans Day, a time when our fellow countrymen will remember to shake our hands and thank us for our service. While I’ll appreciate the generous sentiment, what I really want is to see the day when they can take us for granted again.

Because the world is a dangerous place, that day e any time soon. But because there are Americans willing to sacrifice to protect our liberties, I know that day e again.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Socialism is dead (Part 2): What’s wrong with the market-based evolution of socialism?
I spent my previous postexplaining that orthodox socialism is effectively dead and what remains is really different variations on societies that effectively accept the market as the standard frame. Here, I would like to explain, in part, why the Bernie Sanders approach to market-based socialism (after the death of socialism) is not the right way forward. As I stated in the previous post, this Americanized “socialism” is definitely of the half-hearted variety. Strong socialism would mean government ownership of the...
Liberalism needs natural law
The great British political thinker Edmund Burke regarded what some call “liberalism” today as prehensible, unworkable and unjust in the absence of mitment to natural law.A similar argument can be made in our own time, says Acton research director Samuel Gregg: Without natural law foundations, for instance, how can we determine what is and isn’t a right other than appeals to raw power or utility, neither of which can provide a principled case for rights? Or, on what other basis...
Church and politics: Necessary definitions and distinctions
A few weeks ago The Gospel Coalition ran a review of Jonathan Leeman’s book, Why Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age. A snip: Leeman’s analysis is guided by a few central convictions. One is represented in Psalm 2 and the title itself. He explains, “History’s greatest political rivalry, it would seem, is between the nations of the earth and the Messiah.” Another guiding insight is that all of life is religious, including politics. This is true...
What can economics teach us about moral ecology?
In exploring the various connections between morality, theology, and economics, we routinely long for philosophers and theologians who understand economics, just as we crave economists who understand the bigger picture of self-interest and human destiny. That sort cross-disciplinary dialogue and mutual understanding can be beneficial, but for economist Peter Boettke, it can also serve as a distraction. In an article for Faith and Economics, Boettke argues that economics as a scienceoffers plenty of tools for “moral assessment,” and that economists...
Justice Scalia explains why the ‘living Constitution’ is a threat to America
A majority of Americans—55 percent—now say the U.S. Supreme Court should base its rulings on what the Constitution “means in current times,” while only 41 percent say rulings should be based on what it “meant as originally written,” according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Not surprisingly, the divide is mostly along partisan lines. According to Pew, nearly eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (78 percent) now say rulings should be based on the Constitution’s meaning in current...
The (just) price of salt (and cancer drugs)
A recent episode of the very fine podcast EconTalk reminded me of one of the more remarkable episodes during my time here at the Acton Institute involving our internship program. The EconTalk episode is about the price of cancer drugs, and the various factors that go into the often astronomical prices of the latest cancer-fighting drugs. These can run up to an in excess of $300,000 per year. A question implicit in the discussion is whether such high costs are...
The miracle apple: Co-creative lessons from the fall of the Red Delicious
In the Age of Information, much of our work now takes place in the realm of the “intangible”—creating and trading products and services that can feel somewhat obscure or abstract. Even still, in our technological, data-driven world, we should remember that we are cooperating withnatureandco-creating with our Creator. From the social-media giants to the sawmills, from the blockchain banks to the barbershops, we are using our God-given intellect and creativity to transform a mix of matter and information into something...
How geography affects economic growth
Note: This is post #78 in a weekly video series on basic economics. You could fit most of the U.S., China, India, and a lot of Europe, into Africa. But if pare Africa to Europe, Europe has two to three times the length of coastline that Africa. Why does this matter? As this video by Marginal Revolution University explains, geography can have profound effects on a nation’s economic growth. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d...
Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. Socialism is dead.
I recently gave a presentation to students about foreign aid in the developing world. I tried to explain that many ing to the conclusion that what is really necessary is to establish conditions suitable for a market-based society. In other words, there must be a transparent administration of justice, the predictable rule of law, private property rights, ease in doing business, a real lack of arbitrariness, etc. Both as I prepared and as I spoke, however, I realized that some...
Dalio’s animated adventure in common grace-infused wisdom
Ray Dalio is a fascinating character. Founder of the“world’s richest and strangest hedge fund,”he’s been dubbed the “Steve Jobs of investing” and “Wall Street’s oddest duck.” He’s currently #26 on Forbes list ofrichest people in Americaand Time magazine once included him on their list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In 2011, Dalio outlined his personal philosophy on life and business in a self-published 123-page PDF called “Principles.” (It was re-released as a book in 2017 and e the#1Amazon...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved