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Pictures
British Flag Raised at State Department
“I want to say one thing: This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners. That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith, it’s mass murder.”
– London Mayor Ken Livingstone
The Last 4th in Taunton, MA
Photo by the Sidekick with the new Nikon D70.
Three Men
In Boston’s Old Granary Burying Ground near the Boston Common lie three of the five Massachusetts men who signed the Declaration of Independence. John Adams, cousin of Sam, lies six miles to the south in Quincy, Massachusetts next to his son – both Presidents of the United States.
Rest in peace….
Cox & Forkum: Memorial Day
Cox & Forkum have a great editorial cartoon and column up about Memorial Day:
In the sloppy terminology so typical of today, it is common to attribute the courage of our soldiers to “self-sacrifice.” But this misses the enormous difference between our soldiers and the malevolent fanatics on the other side, who declare that they want to die because they “love death.” American soldiers do not go into battle because they love death. They go into battle because they love freedom. They love the liberties we enjoy and the prosperous and benevolent society that these liberties make possible. And they realize that someone has to fight to defend all of this.
Our soldiers do not want to die, and they do not expect to die; they know they are far better trained and better armed than their adversaries. But they know that some of them will die, and they believe that freedom is worth that risk. Here is how the family of Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts, the first American soldier to die in Operation Anaconda, expressed it: “He made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that everyone who calls himself or herself an American truly has all the privileges of living in the greatest country in the world.”
Smash: Memorial Day
Smash, the Indepundit, also has a great post up about Memorial Day and his “Flags In” experience with the local Boy Scouts, something I did for many years in and around my hometown of Covington, Indiana.
The World War II Memorial
Last year, when I was in DC, I missed the opening of the World War II Memorial by only a few weeks. I had planned on this trip – if I had any free time at all – to see the new memorial in spite of everything else that DC has to offer. Fortunately, our meetings on Thursday ended early, and we were able to skip down to the National Mall to spend some time at this long overdue memorial to the men and women that served to liberate Europe and the Pacific:
My home state was well represented:
At the center of the memorial, with the Lincoln Monument in the background and facing the Capitol is a field of gold stars on a wall with the inscription “Here we mark the price of freedom”. Each store represents one thousand deaths. There are four thousand of them.
I wrote about my hometown and my family’s contributions to the Second World War last year in World War II: The Price of Freedom and a followup post.