Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) said at AEI today that Memorial Day reminds us to cherish our freedom and its responsibilities, “Whether it calls us to arms or altruism or politics.”
Giving a brief address at the “Why Memorial Day?” discussion before heading to the Senate for 5 p.m. budget votes, McCain did not mention his six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Yet he noted that in his youth he viewed the holiday as “the unofficial first day of summer,” a time for picnics and days at the beach, as many do.
“The older I become the more meaning Memorial Day holds,” McCain said, “whether you have served in uniform or not.”
The senator said that even though all would not have the “privilege and burden” of serving, the “grim tests of courage and character have made a legend of combat veterans’ devotion to duty” in every part of America.
“We have to love our freedom not just for the private opportunities it provides but the goodness it makes possible,” McCain said, adding “we must love it enough to argue about it.”
And as the world still holds many dangers, many will be called to sacrifice again. “Man’s inhumanity to man is an evil that will never be entirely extinct,” he said. “Americans will be asked again to bear burdens that only the brave can endure.”
On Memorial Day, the senator stressed, we must remember “those Americans for whom duty, honor and love of country were more dear to them than life itself.”
“We must not forget what they did,” McCain said. “Their honor is eternal.”
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Perfectly ‘straordinary how often people’s duty coincides with what they wanted to do anyway…