The holiday we now know as Veterans Day (and for far too many of us, a day to shop early Black Friday deals) began in the year 1919 with a stirring address "to fellow countrymen" by President Woodrow Wilson, at the White House. Which Wilson delivered a year to the day after the end of the first World War, which ended on November 11th of 1918.
In that conflict, the most destructive and deadly the world had ever known at that point in history, the soldiers of the European allies, and America's soldiers as well (in the decisive final year and a half of the conflict) had fought and endured through unspeakable horrors and hardships "to uphold the barrier of civilization against the aggressions of armed force."
Think about that for a moment, will you please? The "barrier of civilization" was not a wall, nor any physical barrier. Rather it was the very notion of civilization, and the idea that nations possess sovereignty so that their ways of life may be preserved, and they may evolve and grow along their own path, bringing diversity and wondrous variety into existence in the cultures of the world. And the notion that anyone would assault that and seek to squash that diversity and seize lands and nations which were not sovereignly theirs was such an affront that the whole free world rose up against it.
Wilson summed up the feat which America pulled off to win the war in eloquent and powerful words, that no American should ever forget. "With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns, we remodeled our industries, concentrated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output, and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a decisive factor in the victory. We were able to bring the vast resources, material and moral, of a great and free people to the assistance of our associates in Europe who had suffered and sacrificed without limit in the cause for which we fought."
America had come together, standing as one, soldier and farmer, carpenter and welder, engineer and mechanic, doctor and lawyer and housewife and nurse, politician and pilot and every stripe of man, woman and child in our great nation stood shoulder to shoulder with rock solid determination and fellowship in the common cause of liberty and justice for all. As Americans have so many times before and since. And they did so, as Wilson put it so beautifully, "with splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns." Many of them even laying their very lives down.
Wilson foresaw even more greatness on the horizon. "Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert," he thundered. "The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men."
Just a few decades later, however, America had to once again join into the conflict of a world wide war, this time to tamp down a rising tide of fascism. And as whole nations caught the fever of cults of personality, led by demonic men whose hollow morality made them capable of unleashing hell on Earth that they might carry out a hateful genocide against a portion of humanity for their own empowerment and enrichment, it was America and her allies which, once again, kept their sanity, and rose to meet the aggressors in battle, to defend the notion of civil freedom and brotherhood among men.
Today we face a time when fascism is once again on the rise throughout the world, and indeed, within our own nation. And we face a national reality in which the most recent Americans to stand firm in the face of "the aggressions of armed force" by the adherents of a new cult of personality faced a mob who scaled the walls of our Capitol, smashed in its windows, and pushed through defenders at its inner doors. Those defenders wearing the uniforms not of our military, but of our Capitol Police, and our Capital City's Police.
And all this on a planet so damaged that if we don't pull together soon, as we have in the past, we may be facing an existential threat not just from our fellow humans, but from the natural world we all must rely upon. When some among us seek to work against the survival of all, for the profit of some, in their own fleeting lifetimes.
This is why it is essential, this Veterans Day, for all Americans to remember that truly there are no red states, or blue states. No state in America nor any place in the world is occupied by red people or blue people, and we all live in a world where our skies are blue in the daytime, and red at dawn and dusk. Where the grass is green and dirt is brown and the rocks are gray and black and all the colors of the earth, and our buildings are in every color we can paint, and the night sky is always black, and dotted with the light of distant worlds and stars. And we are small in comparison to it all, and should stand together against its hardships, and amidst its wonders.
And most of all, as Americans in this country, on this ball of water and minerals and proteins hurtling through the universe, we would do well to remember, as President Wilson urged us, to take "solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations."
We are one America, on a planet of nations, made up of one our one human race in all its magnificent variety. And we are all traveling on the same vessel, through the same universe, towards the same destiny. And we must remember that freedom and liberty are the birthrights of all, and at times stand up to defend our own birthrights, and at other times to defend the birthrights of our fellow people. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and a fallen house cannot lead in the councils of nations.
Happy Veterans Day. Whoever you are, I thank you for your service. Past, present, or future.
