For months, our country has been divided over "ObamaCare," Bush tax cuts and Wall Street bailouts. But with the election finally behind us, it's time for all Americans to come together and find some common ground. It won't be around immigration reform or deficit spending, but it can be around one critical and universal issue: Veterans Day.
Veterans Day is easily forgotten. It falls right after the election and right before the holidays, and for many Americans, it's a holiday that usually drops off the radar. Yet, for the millions of veterans who have served our country throughout history, this is our day. A day to be honored, a day to remember our fallen and a day to remind all Americans that we are a nation at war.
But this wasn't always the case.
Many of us have read about the important leaders behind our country's defining social movements. Rosa Parks and civil rights. Susan B. Anthony and women's rights. Harvey Milk and gay rights. But what many people don't realize is that there is a leader behind the movement to honor our nation's veterans: Alvin King.
For a long time, Veterans Day didn't exist as Americans know it today. Celebrated initially as Armistice Day, Nov. 11 was a day to honor veterans of World War I. And up until 1953, Americans continued to follow that tradition, even though we saw waves of veterans return from World War II and Korea.
But Alvin King, a shoe store owner in Emporia, Kan., refused to accept that our country should honor only one generation of veterans. Why wouldn't our country recognize the service and sacrifice of all generations of veterans? From his store in Emporia, King rallied fellow shopkeepers to transform Armistice Day into something much bigger. Word spread through town, the community put pressure on Emporia's elected officials, and before King knew it, the movement had spread like wildfire across the nation, and Veterans Day was born.
Today, as a testament to King's determination and vision, veterans and their families will gather nationwide to march in Veterans Day parades across the country. From Houston to San Diego to Washington D.C., veterans of all generations will proudly march and remind Americans of the sacrifices that they and their families have made for our country. I will be marching in the New York City Veterans Day Parade, the largest in the country, with over 400 other veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. I can't even begin to explain the pride my fellow veterans and I will feel marching up Fifth Avenue with hundreds of thousands cheering.
As vets, we need every American to have our backs. You don't have to be a veteran to support the new veterans movement. Alvin King new that. He wasn't a veteran and he didn't do it alone. It took an entire groundswell of civilians and veterans alike. It's on each of us to build the movement he started back in Emporia, Kan. and take it all the way around the world. And unlike Alvin, we have social media tools and virtual communities to make our movement that much greater. And this year, it won't take more than a minute of your time to show your support and gratitude to these brave men and women. In just a few clicks you can march with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American (IAVA) on Facebook or Twitter to show them that we've got their backs this Veterans Day.
It doesn't matter if you voted for the Green Party or the Tea Party, live in Boston or the Bayou; Veterans Day is about uniting as a country and supporting our nation's troops and veterans. We can turn the page on a divided America and unite the country on this important day.
I know Alvin King would be proud.
Follow Paul Rieckhoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PaulRieckhoff
How about the other 364 day of the year?
The temporal chamber of a human journey is also a collective chamber and all humanity in the legacy of identity is sharing the same unique chamber of life between beginnings and ends.
Hence truth is an awareness of particular and universal existence as a meaning to the value in identity to the meaning of self, given authority is measured in the conduct, from beginning to end in the private choices of ones own right to awareness.
When we conform to perceptions of authority with no rational appreciation of meaning to the value of qualities in all selves, we own a lesser awareness of civilized, than ownership of self awareness would imply. The implications of unity in existence between all men, women, children and species are an awareness lost in the meaning of choice, to the detriment of freedom.
Remembrance should be awareness that all life spans are equal and unified in the same principle dynamics of real motion every day.
trigger a draft! First the Lawyers,
and the Doctors! this alone will keep the
various Bar associations, opposed to war!
Good stuff!
Besides, they are now enraptured by the concept of "there's a little soldier in all of us" as espoused by the 'Call of Duty' video game.
"...accept this flag on behalf of you husbands’/wife's comrades and a proud and grateful nation.”
My wife was a Vietnam era vet and her flag holds a place of highest honor in my home.
When these vets return en masse we need to be informed.
I concluded after watching it all that they can help and heal each other much better than any "professionals". This was borne out in World War I by the huge difference between the British and French policies. The French would help a man with shattered nerves and nightmares to a cot behind the lines. There he was left with some little comforts and ignored, in the middle of his comrades comings and goings. The British cooked up this notion of "therapy" for these "sick" men and yanked them OUT of the whole war into psychiatric hospitals in Britain. It is a sad read how that worked out for most of them.
Our vets will go to conventions with their wives for decades, like the 8th Air Force here in Savannah. They will build a museum or two...they will need a lot of quiet time and endless patience from family. I was a guide at the 8th AF museum here and met many wives who had spent years accompanying their husbands on these trips...they would take in the kindergarten graduations of their grandkids and come to the Veterans gatherings. They will always need and help each other.
"We can turn the page on a divided America and unite the country on this important day."- a few words from the President would have shown good leadership today.
I don't need to answer to you about my allegiance to our military personnel. You have no right to accuse a total stranger of lacking respect.
Why do you attempt to assassinate the character of a total stranger with unprovoked projection?
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/memorialday.asp
Your Hunger to crucify belittles your Mind,
and devalues your words! Our president
cant be every where!
But at least he aint busting brush,or chopping wood!
Prior military service should be a requirement to be President.
And I will advance the argument that a man can not command unless he first learns to obey.
Therefore the Commander in Chief today can ONLY be Admiral Mike Mullen.
To all who have served
THANKS AND WELCOME HOME.