Not to miss: Donald Sensing's Veterans Day post.
It brought tears to my eyes.
Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote the best definition of veterans that I have ever read. He was a medically-retired US Navy officer himself when he wrote his classic novel, Starship Troopers. In it he said that there is only one distinction between veterans and non-veterans. It isn’t intelligence or education or class. It is only the fact that veterans are those who have put their own mortal bodies between their loved ones’ homes and the war’s desolation, a fact that the full verses of the Star Spangled Banner first recognized. Veterans are those who love others enough to risk laying down their lives for them, especially people they do not even know. That’s all patriotism is, really: the willingness to risk yourself on behalf of people you do not actually know.So the firemen and police and rescue workers of New York and Arlington, Va., are veterans of a new kind for a new kind of war.
Talking about bringing tears to my eyes: Here is this.
And then this post on Armed Liberal - which I remember from last year - and which has resurrected itself this year.
This isn’t a perfect country. I think it’s the best county; I’ve debated this with commenters before, and I’ll point out that while people worldwide tend to vote with their feet, there may be other (economic) attractions that pull them. But there are virtues here which far outweigh any sins. And I’ll start with the virtue of hope.The hope of the immigrants, abandoning their farms and security for a new place here.
The hope of the settlers, walking across Death Valley, burying their dead as they went.
The hope of the ‘folks’ who moved to California after the war.
The hope of the two Latino kids doing their Computer Science homework at Starbucks’.
I love this country, my country, my people. And those who attack her…from guerilla cells, boardrooms, or their comfy chairs in expensive restaurants…better watch out.
Let me add my voice to the clamor.
Thank you, veterans, past, present, and future. Thank you to all who make it their business to protect this country, who are willing to lay down their lives for all of us.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Great round-up of links (as always), over on Winds of Change.
Michele has a great essay of acknowledgement and thanks up as well - not to mention a ton of links.
And Patrick Belton at OxBlog has a moving post of remembrance up as well.
Stephen Green links to a photo essay, which believe me: you don't want to miss. Green writes: "Greg Seitz sent me the link to a series of pictures of a big rock out in rural Iowa, on which the local kids used to spray paint profanities. But no longer." Click here, to see the photos.
Oh, and Bill McCabe - who has a knack for posting the most incredible photos - has a bunch up now. Go.
Posted by sheila