Today is Memorial Day, May seven, twenty twenty four, one hundred and sixty two days before the next American presidential election. This is the warning. This is Arlington House. It sits on a hill opposite the Potomac River, looking towards the United States Capital, with the Washington Monument in the middle facing the Lincoln Memorial. This was Robert E. Lee's home. In this home he resigned his commission in the United States Army and became the commander of the Army of
Northern Virginia. This property was confiscated by the government of the United States and is the Butcher's Bill. For the horror of the War of Secession. The American Army buried instead on Lee's property, and today that property is America's most hallowed grounds, Arlington National Cemetery. There in front of every gravesite is a small American flag, put there to remember the sacrifices and the service. Such it is so
at American cemeteries all over the world. General Colin Powell famously commented that when the American Army came to Europe, it did not come to occupy, and it did not come to subjugate, but rather to liberate and the only land that the United States ever asked for was simply enough to bury its dead. These sacred spaces, these slivers of United States territory, not the world, including at Normandy, France,
the cemetery in Colville, Somaia, above Omaha Beach. Here thirty eight pairs of brothers are buried next to one another, father and a son, almost ten thousand graves. Every headstone faces west across the Atlantic Ocean, back towards American shores. That they left, that they died fighting in a far away land to protect. They died for a concept, for liberty, freedom, human dignity. They died to free the enslaved and oppressed
peoples of Europe. The American soldier has fought for freedom all across the world, sometimes in wars that should not have been fought, were fought for misguided purposes, ideological purposes, unnecessary purposes. Generation was sent to fight in the Vietnam War when the politicians knew the war cannot be won, that there was no hope of victory. Yet that does not render the service less meaningful, or honorable or noble.
Because the intention of the American soldier for its service of their nation has never been endowed when the cause has been desecrated by the mischief, judgments, or the malice or malfeasance of political leaders who were unworthy of the responsibilities handed to them by the parents of those soldiers through elections. There is no issue more important than peace. There are major wars underway in the world on this
Memorial Day. Some demagoguic politicians in the United States say, these wars do not involve us, these wars do not threaten us. But that is not the lesson of history, and that is not borne out by the sacrifices of a million American dead who laid down their lives in what Abraham Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion. What history teaches us is that freedom comes at a
terrible cost and price. This Memorial Day, we should remember the price and the cost of that freedom, because so many Americans seem utterly indifferent to it, indifferent to the freedom that they have that they possess that came with such great cost. Yet there seems to be no memory of the struggle, no recollection of the sacrifice, for so many multitudes of Americans who go about oblivious to the fangs that bear down on them even as we speak.
The jackboot is not a foreign disposition that is alien to the American way of life. Make no mistake, it can come down here and in many ways. It has in many places. In difference is the friend of that jack boot. It is the fuel of government thuggery. It is what causes despotism. Today's a day when we celebrate freedom by honoring the last full measure of devotion, where we member the American soldier, sailor, airmen, marine coastguardsmen, and merchant marine men who gave their life so that the
United States could endure. There is nothing in any of our lives that is more important, Not our marriages, not our children, not our money, not our prosperity, not our health. Nothing more important that during the short span of our lives, that we play our part as custodians and stewarts, preserving, protecting, and defending, through acts small and large, the Constitution of the United States of America for which they pledged their
lives and gave their lives. This is the cause of American citizenship, This is the obligations of its duties and responsibilities. And today we celebrate the greatest Americans amongst all Americans who have ever been, there have only ever been seven hundred million Americans. One million have given their lives in uniform. They have represented every creed, every race, every faith. They are the whole of the American people, and every one of them was laid to rest under the national colors.
And today that flag, our American flag that we share, our united symbol, that we lower to half mass and then raise up to full staff, has fifty stars on its canton. And that flag is truly the flag of American freedom because it is the fifty star flag where all Americans, of all creeds, all fates can finally participate
equally as citizens of the Great Republic. And that's something worth celebrating and something worth remembering as we honor America's fallen war dead today with the deepest gratitude and the greatest love. They died for people they did not know, people like us who were not born yet, so that our children may live in peace and prosperity and freedom.
That is an act of love. Ponder its magnitude today, if even for a minute, it will be a moment that does some justice to the immensity of the sacrifice made by so many so that we could walk free today, look up at the sky or down at the grass, and not worry about a monster behind the tree. Happy Memorial Day. I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning and I invite you to join. Subscribe on our sub stack, on our Utithan channel, follow us. Welcome to the community.