history

Honor the Fallen … and remember why

/ Richard L. Marrash / Leave a comment

I haven’t posted in a few months. Health issues, especially my worsening eyesight, have sidelined me–and frankly, the relentless domestic political discord and chaotic foreign policy have left me mentally exhausted. I have said my piece in previous posts, and I don’t know that I have anything more to add. But on this day, this day of remembrance, I have chosen to simply re-post my previous Memorial Day comments–as a reminder of why they gave their lives. It bears repeating.

Remembrance is also a reminder. The worst can happen again. In the words of Wendell Phillips, the nineteenth century radical abolitionist and uncompromising champion of democracy and civil rights, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” If you are interested in my thoughts on our contemporary world, read my verse meditation in the tab above “Meditationes Privatae” https://agathopsis.net/contemplations/ It has the Latin title, Adversus Veritatis Contemptores (Against Those Who Despise Truth). I wrote it in November 2020 when denial of the presidential election results began spreading. My feelings haven’t changed. The introduction to my website, Agathopsis, says that this site is dedicated to the search for truth. Sadly, truth has become an obsolete commodity, seldom in demand by the general “consuming” public. The desire now is for whatever nonsense serves to benefit “my team,” whatever fiction gratifies me with what I want to hear, no matter the cost, nor to whom. What a pathetic, unworthy legacy to follow in the footsteps of those we honor today.

Below is my previous summary of why the sacrifice of those we remember today matters, not just to us, the American nation, but to the world, which has for over eighty years looked to America for principled leadership and protection of the rule of law. Where are those values today?

REMEMBER THE FALLEN

Remember why they fell, in what cause: Freedom from political oppression, from religious fanaticism, and from vicious and diabolical prejudice.

In Europe: They fought fascism, and the fascist dictators who were masters of “Big Lies” and deadly actions that turned most of Europe into killing fields for the sacrifice of the innocent to the false idol of the master race and other specious and self-serving myths.

In Asia: They fought to resist the falling dominoes of countries threatened by communist dictatorships and savage coercion into collective action on behalf of the state and the “people.”

In the Middle East: They fought mindless, violent fanaticism that knows no bounds, having defined the will of Providence as its exclusive possession and determined to bring all the world under its rigid theocratic heel.

They fought and died. They held back the tide of evils that continue to threaten us today. Indeed, those evils are gaining strength and spreading their poisonous atmosphere in every direction. The sacrifices of our fallen brothers and sisters in over a century of conflicts cry out to us to keep faith with them. Do not stay silent in the face of evil: lies, deceit, wanton aggression, and lawlessness.

REMEMBER THE FALLEN … AND IN WHAT CAUSE THEY FELL

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IN MEMORIAM (uncles, father-in-law, father, great uncle):

George Marrash, US Army, 23rd Inf. Reg., 2nd Inf. Div., WWII, DOW France, 1944

Tony Marrash, US Army, WWII

Sam Sadie, US Marine Corps, WWII

Louis Gramesty, US Army, 8th Air Force, WWII

Elias T. Marrash, Auto-Ordnance Co., Thompson Submachine Guns, WWII

Elias Tamey, US Army, WWII

Operation Overlord-Epilogue

/ Richard L. Marrash / Leave a comment

For those who have previously read and commented on my D-Day posts, I offer my somber greeting on this annual memorial to the patriotic men and women of the “Greatest Generation”, those who served across the world in our armed forces as well as the civilians at home who stepped up to manufacture the war machines necessary for victory in World War Two. America was a nation united, not by ethnicity, religion, or political affiliation, but rather by a public culture of genuine belief in the worth and dignity of every human being and the liberal values embodied in our Constitution, laws, and social norms. And they possessed the willingness to make any sacrifice to preserve those values. For that, they willingly went abroad to fight and die to deter and defeat the tyrannical plague of Nazism and fascism that had spread across Europe and the Far East, and threatened to engulf the entire world in a vicious and racist authoritarian blight, cynically punishing freedom of thought and expression and individual liberty unhampered by any effective opposition. The latter had been eliminated through the mechanisms of propaganda based on dissemination and continuous repetition of lies, half-truths, disinformation, dehumanization of opponents, along with the weaponizing of social institutions: the churches, the judiciary, schools and universities, corporations, and the media. The goal of those measures is to create a public perception that sees what the authoritarian regime wants the public to see, substituting that false perception in the place of reality. And only that manufactured perception–no matter how bizarre or contrary to fact–is hailed as truth and truly patriotic. Anyone in opposition–no matter how soundly developed and grounded in fact their position–is deemed an enemy of the people. No criticism of the regime or the Fuehrer, the supreme leader, can be tolerated. By definition, what the leader deems good is good for the state. The leader is the state.

That is what the Greatest Generation fought to eliminate from the world: the tyranny of authoritarian government, the loss of liberty and freedom of expression, the assault on human dignity. That’s what the Founders worried about, by the way, and thought about long and hard, applying the grim lessons of European history to their deliberations. They devised a Constitution with safeguards against the unrestricted accumulation of power in the hands of an unaccountable government. They gave us a democratic republic, but they cautioned us to take care lest we lose it (Ben Franklin, 1787).

A true democracy can tolerate in its midst diversity of opinion and even that which it finds offensive. That’s what freedom of speech and assembly means. What a true democracy cannot tolerate is the insidious transformation of constitutional government and the rule of law into irrelevancies to be ignored or weapons to be deployed against critics.

Do you ever wonder if the Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves?

I won’t belabor the point any more. Memorial Day was one week ago, a day when we remembered the fallen from all of our wars. Today remember the generation of World War Two, who fought the ugly blight of totalitarianism and hateful racist policies that saw the murder of countless innocent people across Europe and Asia.

Remember the heroism of D-Day, 6 June 1944, the beginning of the end of the Second World War.

If interested, read my previous D-Day posts for other details.

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IN MEMORIAM (uncles, father-in-law, father):

George Marrash, US Army, WWII, DOW France, 1944

Tony Marrash, US Army, WWII

Sam Sadie, US Marine Corps, WWII

Louis Gramesty, US Army, 8th Air Force, WWII

Elias T. Marrash, Auto-Ordnance Co., Thompson Submachine Guns, WWII

Pearl Harbor Day

/ Richard L. Marrash / Leave a comment

It’s automatic. It’s visceral. Every December 7th, I remember, as do most Americans of my generation–born when World War Two swept in and seized America by the throat–that fateful Sunday morning in 1941 when the world burst into flames. No, I wasn’t there, but throughout my childhood in the 1940s, we learned at home, in school, in the neighborhood about the stealthy Japanese attack on our naval base in the Hawaiian Islands, that dreadful surprise that President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “… a day which will live in infamy.” On the radio, we heard the song, “Let’s Remember Pearl Harbor” again and again. And we followed the course of the war waiting for husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, and friends to come home. Over the decades, the emotions surrounding the “sneak attack” and the sorrow over the losses have faded, but have not disappeared entirely. Few still remember, but mention December 7 to anyone over 70 and you are sure to get a knowing response, “Yes, Pearl Harbor Day.” They know the story.

I have always felt bound to commemorate this day, to honor the sacrifice of those who suffered its grim ordeal. It has symbolized for me the terrible destruction and death unleashed on a sleeping nation and the courage, faith, and resilience of the American people that led to ultimate victory over the aggression and brutal militarism of authoritarian powers across the world, not just in the Pacific.

I don’t think it is necessary to go beyond what I have mentioned here. This brief remembrance is enough, for me, at any rate. There are more details in one of my earlier posts, if you are interested.

Remember Pearl Harbor!