Remembrance Day

The Trumpet of Liberty sounds through the World,
And the universe starts at the sound,
Her Standard Philosophy's hand has unfurl'd,
And the Nations are thronging around.

Fall Tyrants! fall! fall! fall!
These are the Days of Liberty!
--Anon

I once had a conversation with an old roomate of mine, discussing free speech and how best to fight tyranny within our own society. I trotted out the old arguments of Mill, while he went on about living in a society free of insult.

Well, that idea almost offended me. But we just disagreed on methods, not the noble ends of these efforts.

In regards to battling the totalitarian impulses of people who believe in hate and fascism, he believed outlawing hatespeech was the best policy. That is an acceptable position, but I disagreed. My belief was that those who espouse such beliefs need to be confronted, their arguments decimated and their credibility shot. Without this confrontation, their ideas would fester without retort and without opposition.

So my roomate asked "When do we stop fighting these battles? When does it end?"

My response (I'm paraphrasing) "Never. Liberty is not a one time battle. It is fought everyday."

I'm reminded of this on remembrance day as I recall both of my Grandfathers who fought in WW2 against the Nazi menace. One, an officer in the artillery, took so much lead to the chest that it nearly killed him. The other braved the blitz in London and later took to the continent in battle. These were the big fights. The battles the West fights on a day to day basis against would-be tyrants are nothing compared to the sacrifice of our parents and grandparents, and we have to respect their sacrifices with our own best efforts today.

Who is the enemy? The once clearly demarkated enemies of past battles currently elude us. The enemies have no one base anymore, and politically, geographically and ethnically they are all over the map. Some are fanatical secularists, others religious zealots.

But all tyrants share the same conviction: They are right, and they are right beyond doubt. If you disagree, disobey, resist or criticize you might find yourself on the receiving end of a bullet in Netherlands, becoming a guinea pig of poison gas in North Korea, or find yourself facing death on your knees in a soccer stadium in Saudi Arabia.

So on Remembrance Day, let's not only remember the soldiers, or their wars-Let's remember what they were fighting for: Our freedom.

If we don't take action now
We settle for nothing later
--RATM