Musings on history, never forget why you are free.

Feb 07, 2010 01:42

Recently it has occurred to me that we live in a very special time.

In the time of my life, there are still those with first hand memories of the great depression.
Those who were witness to WWII and who set foot on the beaches of Normandy.
We still have holocaust survivors to remind us of the evils that can happen when we look the other way.
There are still people who were fighting in Korea and dredging through the trenches in Vietnam.
Men and women who can recall with avid details the cold war and being stationed in Berlin or Russia.

It is easy to believe and understand something when you have someone who was there telling it to you like it was. There is a difference between reading about a war that happened over fifty years ago in a book and listening to your Grandpa tell you about how he was one of the few who got to "take a piss in the Yellow River".
There's just something about seeing your dad take out his old army trunk and showing you pictures and telling you the stories behind these pictures.

It occurred to me that it is only a matter of time before we will only have old newsreels, pictures, and movies trying to document these voices.

We have so many movies and dramatic TV programs that supposedly are supposed to give us an idea of what happened. Something we only feel while watching it and wonder how much is historically accurate and how much is just 'director interpretation'.

We read about all these famous speeches that the founding fathers supposedly gave. We just accept the fact that they were delivered and try to imagine how it must have sounded. Did they deliver these things with passion and emotion? How did they sound? Did they stare down at their notes and mumble them or did they have fire and conviction as they read.

It's hard to imagine what the future holds for the past. How they will remember us. How they will choose to interpret our legacies. I can't help but feel a little fear that what we fight for today will be forgotten or just another passing sentence in a high school history book.

In time, we eventually forget why things were started. The outcomes can be twisted and bent out of shape. Sometimes there are wars that are controversial, sometimes there are shameful patches on a countries history. In the end, I take a great pride in knowing that regardless of the deed or outcome, WWII or Vietnam, those that gave their lives were all fighting for the same thing: Freedom.

Good war or not, we should always remember to pause in a moment when we are feeling particularly free to thank them.

I hope that history remembers us all in the same light. We went through our trials and suffered our plights so that those of the future would not have to.

I end on a quote I find rather fitting.
"We do not honor the war, we honor the peace and the freedoms that were sought." -Carter

history, war, soap box

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