Take Up Our Quarrel With the Foe

Every year in November, we hear common phrases with regard to Remembrance Day:

"Lest we forget"; "We will remember them"; "Never again".

Every year I wonder how well we as a culture and generation have thought this out.

Remember Them
Certainly, we should "remember them". The human factor can not be ignored. An astounding number of people died, were maimed, were psychologically and emotionally scarred, were bereft of husbands, fathers, sons. These were real people, the survivors of whom had to deal with the effects long after the wars were over. These were lovers and loved ones, whose bonds were destroyed or damaged. In some cases, these wounds are very fresh - Canadian soldiers have fallen even in the past weeks.

Some of these were my own ancestors: my grandparents, great-uncles. The human toll is not lost on me. I see and hear the pain when they talk about the war, fallen comrades, fallen siblings. They do not want to recall or retell these memories. But how soon we would forget, if they did not.

Lest We Forget
Yes we care about and support veterans. Yes, we sympathize with the bereaved and the grieving. But why was their sacrifice noble? Why was it necessary? Read this anecdote from the Corner by Hans von Spakovsky on the anniversary of the "fall" of the Berlin Wall. Shortly after the wall was torn down, he went from West Berlin to East Berlin:

West Berlin was full of bright colors, from shop windows and pennants flying on buildings, to the clothes worn by Berliners on the street. All of the buildings in East Berlin were gray and dirty. Some were still unoccupied and had bullet holes; they had never been repaired or renovated after the end of World War II. West Berlin was full of bright, sparkling vistas and shops filled with consumer goods of all kinds. East Berlin was dark and dingy. The few shops were empty of the everyday necessities and luxuries that give us the quality of life we enjoy. All of the differences between the liberty and prosperity of the free West and the prison conditions and poverty that characterized life behind the Iron Curtain were easy to see.

So easily we say that our fallen fought for freedom; so easily we still forget what this means. Freedom really is at stake. Freedom really is never free. Yet we acquiesce to encroachment on our real freedoms. Instead of freedom of religion, we would prefer freedom from religion. Instead of freedom of speech, we would prefer freedom from free and unregulated speech. These freedoms are the very things won for us by shed blood and sacrifice. Our fallen considered freedoms such as these worth fighting for. They still do - over in Afghanistan, soldiers from Canada, Britain, America, and other countries are doing hard work that they deem worthwhile.

Never Again
John Philpot Curran said,

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

Or, as Thomas Jefferson famously paraphrased,

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

Do we even think about the third stanza of John McCrae's famous poem?

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

There is a foe. There is a quarrel. Vigilance is necessary. If we want to retain our freedom, we have a fight on our hands. Let us not allow our hard-won freedoms to be encroached upon, denied, or abridged in ways big or small.

So let us disregard this pacifist hippie nonsense of "Why can't we all just get along?" and "no more war". If that's the message of "Never again", you can count me out. It denies and denigrates the sacrifice of those who fought for something real and worthwhile. Let us be clear: refusal to fight is no way to prevent war. It is a sure way to surrender our freedom.

The failing hands did not throw a white flag of surrender or regret. They had a foe, and they had a quarrel with the foe. They charged us to take up this quarrel, to hold the torch high, and not to break faith with them. Let us indeed do what we can to prevent full-scale war; but let us never fail to hold high the torch of freedom, at whatever cost.