There are cemeteries all over the world just like Arlington National Cemetery filled with our war dead.
Thousands and thousands of acres in country after country filled with silent memorials.
Each grave marks a life violently and painfully ripped from an American. A family left with an unhealable wound.
But that is not the great American tragedy.
The great American tragedy is that there are many millions of Americans who neither understand why they died nor what the freedom they secured for us means.
Many millions of Americans have grown up with no real knowledge of Thomas Jefferson, the father of the Constitution, nor even who George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights, was.
To them freedom is the air they breathe — they can’t see it, they didn’t earn it and they have no idea what it’s made of.
It just is.
American history used to be a required subject in grammar and high school until a few generations ago.
The idea in teaching history was that those who know the mistakes of the past do not repeat them.
What changed?
Personally, based on what I’ve seen in the past 40 years, those in power didn’t want that knowledge out there.
When people don’t understand the treasures they’ve been given it’s much easier to get them to give them up.
Little by little over time, the little thefts occur and the alarm does not sound.
Then one day the cage door closes.
That day is getting closer.
Mike Keegan,
Port Angeles