Op-Ed: This Is What Memorial Day Is About

FORT WORTH, TX – Memorial Day is upon us and many of us are gathering with family and friends. Cooking ribs, steaks, chicken or whatever else. Most of us will be celebrating the long weekend. Let’s remember what the day is about. It is honoring the fallen that gave their all to keep our Country free and helping our allies. It is not about parties or parades or food and fun festivals for kids. Too many of them now don’t understand the significance of our National holidays.

From the American Revolution for the independence from England to the present day it is estimated that over 2,852,901 people have died serving our country. How many more came home scared mentally and physically, crippled for life and left to deal with their problems on their own.

How many came back to a broken VA system that shoved them out the door with a bottle of pills or ignored them completely? How many now live homeless on filthy streets, living under bridges or begging for money to feed themselves or their habits?

How do we justify or condone that these men and women who signed up to serve our Country only to return scared beyond belief, mentally ill or physically compromised? How do we justify that these men live in tents or boxes alongside junkies?

I’ve had members of my family serve all the way back to the American Revolution. Then on to the Civil war on both sides, WW1 where my great uncle Charlie died a week before the war ended on the Hindenburg Line bravely facing the enemy fire. I had another uncle, my Dad’s older brother, Billy, in WW2, and Uncle Jack in Korea and Vietnam, (in Cambodia when we weren’t) and another, Uncle Dick my favorite OG like an older brother in the sub service and UDT in the Navy in between war time. Then me, drafted during the Vietnam conflict.

They didn’t hesitate to enlist because they knew this Country was greater and better than the rest. It was something they had created with their sweat, blood, tears and lives. It was a Country that allowed them to be anything they wanted to be and as successful as they could aspire.

So how do we turn a blind eye to people like Nancy Pelosi and other representatives who allow these conditions to exist all the while doling out dollars to illegal immigrants that have done nothing, sacrificed nothing to be a part of this great but back sliding nation?

I love this Country. I believe in its Constitution verbatim the way it was written and the way our forefathers meant for it to be interpreted. Sure, they didn’t spell everything out but how could they know the ideocracy that this Country is facing or have taken the course it has? How could they have known that some of its elected officials would rather have a socialistic government where the common man was repressed? Ben Franklin said, “We have a Republic, if you can keep it.” And that is fading fast.

Huge government, huge deficits, taxes on everything and the outrages salaries that lawmakers we have duly elected are allowed to have that the rest of us cannot. They work for us but in their pomposity they think it is the other way around.

Excuse me for getting off point but it puts a hair or three across my behind and I say that because they need to be held accountable. We need term limits, voting on their raises, etc., but most of all we need them to pay more than lip service to our Veterans and homeless in this Country before we allow one more illegal alien across our borders, before one more cent is paid to them. For that matter, anyone who is not a citizen. They are illegal and therefore have no rights. They all need to go.

Until each and every homeless person has a safe refuge to live, has enough food without digging degradingly through trash and until every last Veteran has a place to be healed and lives with enough to eat, then no one comes here until that is accomplished. This is what Memorial Day is about.

Whoever our representatives are, whoever our President is, nothing more should be done until these questions are all answered completely. We The People Shall Not Be Denied. We can take it back anytime we want and all y’all better wake up and listen. Because we didn’t let nearly three million men die for nothing.

After all, jus’ sayin’.