This is my seventeenth consecutive Memorial Day message. You can find the previous sixteen at the end of this message.
On this Memorial Day, and on each one, we remember and honor all those servicemen and women who paid the ultimate price in America's wars. And we remember and honor their families too.
One way we can honor them is by using the occasion of Memorial Day to recommit ourselves to the ideals for which those who fought sacrificed. These ideals are embodied in our Constitution: To “establish Justice” and “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
If we don't continually recommit, and there is an erosion of the uniquely American spirit, they shall have died in vain.
From the Republic's beginning, there always have been important philosophical and political divisions between factions, interest groups, and political parties. This is to be expected in a healthy democracy. Indeed, the absence of such divisions – and especially the absence of the ability to debate these differences freely in the public square – are truly signs of an unhealthy democracy.
So, divisions within the American body politic regarding major social and economic issues are by no means new. But in the many ways with which we are all familiar, today's divisions appear deeper and the manifestations of them more uncivil, in some ways even more threatening. There are many reasons for this but, to my mind, the still-metastasizing Cancel Culture plays a significant contributing role.
The curtailment of free speech, and silencing of so many people, whether by government compulsion or private sector actions, or at times the sub rosa entwinement of the two, have the effect of shrinking the public space in which matters of legitimate public concern ought to be debated. This silencing only serves to deepen our political and philosophical divisions, especially considering the perceived leftward bias exhibited by dominant Big Tech social media platforms, and at times the mainstream media, exercising their "cancellation" discretion.
For more than two years now, I've been exploring the Cancel Culture, its deleterious impact and ramifications, and various potential means of combatting it, in a series of now nineteen essays, all under the "Thinking Clearly About Speaking Freely" mantle. You can find them all here.
In considering solutions to combat the Cancel Culture, I've explained that many of the proffered "cures," such as giving government more power to combat so-called "misinformation," are much worse than the disease. So, I've often returned to what Madison would call republican virtue, that is a reinvigoration of our Constitutional Culture. For instance, in Part 17, "Combatting Cancel Culture with a Reinvigorated Constitutional Culture," I said this:
"Regardless of whether the First Amendment jurisprudence requires allowing particular speech under a particular set of facts, a greater appreciation of the value of robust debate that impelled the Founders to include the Free Speech Clause in the Constitution should serve to induce greater tolerance for diversity of thought and speech than currently exists."
I know. Easy to say, but hard to achieve in times of bitter divisions.
But no matter how deep the philosophical and political divisions, on this Memorial Day, among men and women of good faith, there should be no disagreement at all about remembering and honoring the fallen who fought and died for our country. While the words were spoken to a particular audience on a particular piece of hallowed ground at a particular moment in time, no one could have expressed what ought to be the true meaning of each Memorial Day more eloquently, or more universally, than President Lincoln did at Gettysburg:
"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…."
The cause then, and always, is – by remembering and honoring – to sustain an America that embodies the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
With that in mind, I wish you and your family the best for a safe, healthy, happy, and meaningful Memorial Day!
PS – My past Memorial Day messages are here: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.
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