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| English: Arlington House also known as the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery. Section 32 of the cemetery is in the foreground. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
With tomorrow a national holiday in the United States, MEMORIAL DAY, I thought I would look at the history of the day. Here it seemed the government would be the most accurate source.
I didn't set out to try to make a point with this; the point came to me as I read and demanded that I let it out.
Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.
The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The ceremonies centered around the mourning-draped veranda of the Arlington mansion, once the home of Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Various Washington officials, including Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, presided over the ceremonies. After speeches, children from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphan Home and members of the GAR made their way through the cemetery, strewing flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns….
Gen. Logan’s order for his posts to decorate graves in 1868 “with the choicest flowers of springtime” urged: “We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. ... Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”
The crowd attending the first Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery was approximately the same size as those that attend today’s observance, about 5,000 people. Then, as now, small American flags were placed on each grave — a tradition followed at many national cemeteries today. In recent years, the custom has grown in many families to decorate the graves of all departed loved ones. http://www.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp
In effect on Memorial Day we honor the sacrifices made by so many for everyone's most basic civil right: Freedom of Self-Determination. Yes, there are arguments that the Civil War was fought for economic reasons, and fantastic speeches and proclamations aside, it may well have been. But, we remember it and we honor the sacrifices made in that and other wars, not because it preserved a way of life held as vital by a certain group of people, but because it held up civil rights over economics. And, wars without a greater moral directive are not remembered well.
Slavery was something a nation built on ideals could not afford. I am certain that at the time, anti-abolitionists had a multitude of moral rationales they employed to justify the ownership of another person. Rationales do not make an action right; they simply assuage the conscious of the one doing wrong.
Every time a civil right is restricted we dishonor the the sacrifices made by those who have stood and fought for freedom.
We should remember that as a nation we evolved to end slavery, and further evolved to allow people of color to and women to vote. Law evolves. All of these things were championed against with moral rationales―justifications employed via some belief that people of color and women were lesser and not able, therefore, to stand as full citizens. God was often invoked as the source of these rationales. I cannot imagine most people would employ those rationales today to go back, but people often refer to the founders of the nation as having written the Constitution as if it were the Ten Commandments.
We're seeing it again, the use of rationales invoking an Almighty God to prevent marriage of two members of the same gender because it is supposedly written in the Bible. There are a lot of thinks prohibited in the commandments, like adultery, that are not legislated. I don't know where the Bible states anyone's civil rights should be limited.
That's one version of belief, one God, not mine. I have a constitutional right not to share another person's religious beliefs. My civil rights cannot be restricted by a set of religious beliefs or we get a little something like Shariya Law. Nor can the government force a religion to allow marriage within that religion except as thus proscribed. But guess what—that street goes both ways.
Whenever government regulates and records an event it is a civil event. When you block the ability of one group of citizens to receive the rights and protections afforded by a civil event, you violate their civil rights. Yes. You. Do. When you violate someone's civil rights you disrespect every life sacrificed to protect those rights.
So, Evolve already.
Slavery was something a nation built on ideals could not afford. I am certain that at the time, anti-abolitionists had a multitude of moral rationales they employed to justify the ownership of another person. Rationales do not make an action right; they simply assuage the conscious of the one doing wrong.
Every time a civil right is restricted we dishonor the the sacrifices made by those who have stood and fought for freedom.
We should remember that as a nation we evolved to end slavery, and further evolved to allow people of color to and women to vote. Law evolves. All of these things were championed against with moral rationales―justifications employed via some belief that people of color and women were lesser and not able, therefore, to stand as full citizens. God was often invoked as the source of these rationales. I cannot imagine most people would employ those rationales today to go back, but people often refer to the founders of the nation as having written the Constitution as if it were the Ten Commandments.
We're seeing it again, the use of rationales invoking an Almighty God to prevent marriage of two members of the same gender because it is supposedly written in the Bible. There are a lot of thinks prohibited in the commandments, like adultery, that are not legislated. I don't know where the Bible states anyone's civil rights should be limited.
That's one version of belief, one God, not mine. I have a constitutional right not to share another person's religious beliefs. My civil rights cannot be restricted by a set of religious beliefs or we get a little something like Shariya Law. Nor can the government force a religion to allow marriage within that religion except as thus proscribed. But guess what—that street goes both ways.
Whenever government regulates and records an event it is a civil event. When you block the ability of one group of citizens to receive the rights and protections afforded by a civil event, you violate their civil rights. Yes. You. Do. When you violate someone's civil rights you disrespect every life sacrificed to protect those rights.
So, Evolve already.
