Veterans Day is tomorrow. It’s a chance to honor and give thanks to people who have served in America’s armed forces. Most Americans appreciate the sacrifice these people make when they volunteer to join the military, putting their lives on the line to defend our freedoms.
The far left folks at Salon are not most people.
They have a slightly (ahem) different interpretation of that sacrifice and that’s why they published this piece by David Masciotra:
You don’t protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracyPut a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible.It has become impossible to go a week without reading a story about police brutality, abuse of power and misuse of authority. Michael Brown’s murder represents the tip of a body pile, and in just the past month, several videos have emerged of police assaulting people, including pregnant women, for reasons justifiable only to the insane.It is equally challenging for anyone reasonable, and not drowning in the syrup of patriotic sentimentality, to stop saluting, and look at the servicemen of the American military with criticism and skepticism.
Jazz Shaw of Hot Air notes that this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sentiment from our liberal friends:
Perhaps one of the only shocking things about finding this article on the site is that it wasn’t a guest editorial from Chris Hayes. The MSNBC host expressed very similar sentiments back in April of 2012, though in a rather more timid way and he later had to backpedal and kind of apologize for it. But the very existence of opinionators such as these who can find a publicly accessible forum is precisely the reason that we would be making a grave mistake to just write them off as a couple of self-serving kooks. This evil and completely unamerican type of sentiment is more prevalent in our society than many of us would care to imagine.The sad part of having to defend against such erudite commentary from our liberal betters is that the job is made all the harder by the media, who gleefully play up each and every example they can find to support the theory.
The best way to recognize Veterans Day is to thank a vet. Just walk up to a veteran, shake their hand and thank them for their service.
Let the fools at Salon defend their own freedoms.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.
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