You might think this article comes a little late since it’s being published after Memorial Day. But now that Memorial Day has come and gone, it’s worth thinking about what it represents and why the debate about Memorial Day is so crucial. “Debate,” you might say. “What debate?”
Yes, there is a debate. On one side are those who say that the purpose of Memorial Day is, or should be, to honor soldiers who have fought, or are fighting, for our freedom. This is the view we hear a lot on and around Memorial Day. We hear it from presidents, governors, congressmen, mayors, military officers, and military analysts. On the other side are those who say that the purpose of Memorial Day is to mourn those who lost their lives in wars and to reflect on how to prevent this from happening in the future. We hear this view from antiwar activists and those who, more generally, are fairly skeptical of governments’ motives and actions.
I would love not to have such a debate. And that’s why I waited. There are a lot of people in the United States whose relatives or friends died or were wounded in foreign wars. It must be hard for them to hear or read armchair analysts like me talking about the “real meaning” of Memorial Day.
But the debate is important because, unfortunately, one of the main ways most Americans get their history is from what is said on national holidays, especially July 4, Memorial Day, Presidents’ Day, and Veterans’ Day. There is so much emotion around those days that various advocates can get away with historical misinformation cloaked in sentiment. I think that’s why they fight so hard for their meaning of Memorial Day: it’s a way to accomplish with sentiment what is much harder to accomplish with rational argument.
Exhibit A of the tendency to cloak argument in sentiment is a recent essay for National Review Online, “Mystic Chords of Memory,” by contributing editor Mackubin Thomas Owens. “Mac” Owens, as he is known to friends and colleagues, is an associate dean of academics and professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Before I get to my criticism, I want to note that I spent a weekend at a conference with him about two years ago, and I like and respect him. He’s a serious academic with an important viewpoint that he articulates well. It’s exactly that fact, though, that makes his article disturbing.
This is from David R. Henderson, “The Fight for Memorial Day,” antiwar.com, May 27, 2008.
On my Substack, I posted the whole of my 2006 piece on Memorial Day. This covers some of the same ground but also digs into Mac Owens’s argument.
READER COMMENTS
Monte
May 29 2024 at 11:49am
Thank you, David, for this (belated) post of an occasion on which I agree with you that “the purpose should be to remember those who died in past wars.” On the other side:
This is a fraud perpetrated mostly by politicians that glorifies war and effectively reduces the hell of it to a footnote by romanticizing the soldier. Memorial Day is a day Americans should collectively mourn those who made the ultimate sacrifice in combat and regard with sublime reverence the words of those who survived to tell the horror of it.
General William T. Sherman summed it up better than anyone I’ve read before or since:
Reed Bryant
May 29 2024 at 5:35pm
Dear Mr. Henderson:
I read your article with dismay and anger. I served in Vietnam in 1968 and barely survived the war. I have refused to acknowledge the change in Memorial Day which in my opinion just gives most of the citizens a day to party. I go to the cemetery on May 31st to listen to the dead speak. It is a somber day; a day to recall the sacrifice of those citizens that served in the nations military. 997 gave their life in the service of this country on their first day in country, 1448 gave their life on their last day in country. Neither one is more important than the other except to their families that also endured the Vietnam War.
My cousin was KIA on February 12, 1968 and I attended his service before leaving for Vietnam in March of 1968. I go to his grave to clean his stone and to reflect on his death and the others that did not have the opportunity that I have been given over these 56 plus years.
Sincerely with Respect,
Clayton Reed Bryant
The debate(?) to me is nothing more than a clashing of opinions which I thought was democracy in action. I believe that there are those in this country that will never be able to relate to the magnificent of the meaning of Memorial Day.
steve
May 29 2024 at 7:59pm
I treat it as an occasion to mourn/remember those who died sin war, especially those I knew and served with. I think using it to want to honor all who served is part of the effort to lionize the military. Some of that may be legit but I think it has been used by many as a means to falsely justify and avoid criticism for military interventions they wanted to support.
That said, Christmas was supposed to be celebrating the birth of Jesus and it’s clearly now just a day off for gift giving and family get togethers. We may be observing a change that is too far gone to resist.
Steve
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