Memorial Day

Flags, parades and speeches celebrate those who fought and died for their country, but what they did--and still do--is better commemorated by silent grieving over them than with bombast and color.

In "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway had his World War I soldier saying:

"I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations...and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

"There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity...Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene besides the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates."

Today is a day for honoring the fallen but disowning not glorifying what the worst in human nature made them endure.