Being a veteran, and the son of a veteran who served in the Second World War, this day has special meaning to me. During my 13 years of service I was fortunate not to have found myself on the battlefield fighting for my country.

The same cannot be said for many who dedicated a portion of their life in the service of their country. Arlington National Cemetery is filled with over 300,000 people who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Normandy American Cemetery has 9,387 U.S. service men and women buried who lost their lives during the Second World War.

My fathers ashes rest upon the bottom of the Pacific Ocean at Kula Gulf, where 170 of his fellow crewmen lost their lives when the U.S.S. Helena was sunk by Japanese Torpedoes.

The veterans this holiday honors served their country, and the ideals they felt it stood for. There are many stories and songs written about those ideals, but the one I feel best describe those ideals is My Country Tis Of Thee.

My Country, ‘Tis Of Thee,
Sweet Land Of Liberty,
Of Thee I Sing;
Land Where My Fathers Died,
Land Of The Pilgrim’s Pride,
From Ev’ry Mountain Side
Let Freedom Ring.

It used to be that those words held great meaning, not any more. I think it is fair to say that very few understand the importance of their rights, or what the words freedom and liberty actually mean.

Our Nation’s Founders believed that we are all endowed “…with certain unalienable rights…” They believed, “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...” They felt so strongly about these ideas that they mutually pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

When they said that our rights are unalienable, they meant that they cannot be taken, or given away. The Bill of Rights contains certain rights that our founders felt were among the most important to emphasize, although they are not the only ones.

Federalist 84, written by Alexander Hamilton supports this position, “I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.”

You have the right to breath as part of your right to live. I cannot deprive you of that right, no matter if you practice poor dental hygiene and your breath is offensive.

By the same token, the Second Amendment clearly states that I have the right to keep and bear arms, and no one has the right to say I cannot own, or carry on my person firearms.

Yet why am I prohibited from doing so? Why do I have to take special classes to carry a firearm? My right HAS been infringed the same as if a person with bad breath was told that they could not breath in public places.

Thomas Sowell writes, “What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.”

There is that word again…FREEDOM. I don’t know what freedom means to you, but I would like to think as did Marcus Tullius Cicero when he said, “What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.”

Thomas Jefferson said that “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”

Internationally renowned self-help advocate Wayne Dyer states, “Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.”

Most people my age will remember Walter Cronkite, the face of the evening news. Well Cronkite once said, “There is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free.”

Our rights, our freedom, and our liberty, have been, and continue to be under attack by the very people whose sole purpose is to safeguard it. How would you feel if you hired a security guard to watch over your home while you go away on vacation, only to return to find that the very person you hired to protect your valuables had robbed you of them? That is what our government, at all levels has been doing to our freedom.

The French philosopher Voltaire once wrote, “So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”

Poet Robert Frost aptly stated that, “If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.” Society does fit most people comfortably enough. They have their homes, their wide screen televisions, and their cable TV with over 200 channels of garbage to keep them entertained.

They have network news anchors and around the clock cable news networks to feed them their daily dose of news. The problem is that people never bother to check to see if they are being lied to.

We are brought up being told lies about our nations history and the purpose of our government. The sad thing is that we believe them because we just can’t accept that our teachers might be lying to us.

The hell you say! Well, let me give you just one example, then you see if you have been lied to or not.

If I were to fly a Confederate flag, or proclaim that Abraham Lincoln was a rotten President, you would probably consider me racist or an idiot. That is because our schools teach us that Lincoln was the Great Emancipator, that he held our nation together while freeing the slaves.

Lincoln care very little about the slaves. In fact, he once said, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

Not only did Lincoln care whether or not he freed the slaves, he felt that they were inferior to the white race, “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

I will be you never heard those quotes in your U.S. History class, did you? Yet research them for yourselves if you don’t believe me.

The truth of the matter is that the Civil War was fought because the federal government did not wish for the states to retain their sovereignty, their right to sever the bonds that tied them to the Union.

After all, isn’t that exactly what the original thirteen colonies did when they proclaimed their independence from England? Jefferson said as much when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…”

Jefferson later was to say that the states retained the right to sever the ties that bound them to the Union as well, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.”

Yet Lincoln felt differently. In his first inaugural address he said, “I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.”

Lincoln went on to say that, “In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts…”

Belonging to the government? I wonder where in the hell did he get that idea from? The government is/was and entity created to serve the people, and to protect their rights. Lincoln declared that it was the owner of the states, and by proxy the people.

As I said, you probably didn’t learn this in school, and you would never have known about it had I not done the research for you. Therein lies the problem in this country. People are too content with their cozy little lives to take the time to question the things they believe to be true, the lies being fed to them by their elected representatives, the media, and by their educational system.

Is it any wonder that they do not understand the true meaning of freedom and liberty? Even going back to the 1800’s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

For some the idea of being totally responsible for your own actions, having no governmental safety net to catch you if you fail, is a frightening prospect. For me however, the prospect of being beholden to a government that cares nothing for my rights and liberty is even more frightening.

Thirty years ago I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I raised my right hand and swore the following oath, “I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

Notice that the first thing it says is that the enlistee will swear to support and defend the Constitution. I subsequently took that oath on two more occasions, each time I reenlisted.

Even though I have long since been honorably discharged, that oath remains as sacred and binding as the day I first swore it. And as Malcolm X once said, “If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”

In fact, with the attitude of most Americans today, I say we strike the words rights, freedom, and liberty from the dictionary, as they no longer have any meaning. And that my friends, is a dishonor to all those who took similar oaths and served their country.