If modern journalism ever returns from its self-induced stupor and becomes the beacon of light and freedom our Founding Fathers intended it to be, it will be largely because there are still journalists writing today whose profession need not be enclosed in quotes to signify their lack of genuineness. He is truly one of a kind. His Memorial Day column is — there is no other word for it — beautiful. It can be accessed here. After discussing the real reason for this day — hint: not burgers and beer- he discusses that great poem from “The War to End All Wars”, in Flanders Fields. Here, he talks movingly about how important our traditions are:
Traditions are an important means for a people trying to stave off cultural betrayal. This is why traditions are often targeted by agents of change. The old traditions remind us who we are, what we were, reminding us of our ideal selves, of virtue lost to time and what we call progress.
But today is Memorial Day, 2022, when we mourn the fallen of the United States Armed Forces who died for our liberty.
He then discusses the history behind the writing of that great poem; I cannot recommend highly enough reading the entire piece as it represents the very essence of this day:
It involves us taking time out to think hard and long about a soldier’s poem and the poppies, row on row.
“In Flanders Fields” is that soldier’s poem, written in World War I by Col. John McCrae, a man who’d seen the devastation of war, and hopelessness. Yet with clear eyes and a clean heart he wrote of poppy blossoms as rebirth of hope, those bright orange/red papery thin blossoms, as delicate as dreams, waving in the breeze over the freshly dug graves of the dead.
The scene was Ypres, Belgium at a farm converted to a military hospital, where McCrae was an Army doctor, doctor, dealing with pain and death and disease. Flanders Fields is particularly tragic. The political leadership had led their citizens into hell, and still the citizen soldiers marched toward death and the trenches and the barbed wire, and the gas.
Lest we forget.