Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Monday is Memorial Day 2011 – a national holiday to honor those men and women who gave or were willing to give their lives to defend the freedoms all Americans cherish.

While the vast majority of all Americans hope that those veterans who have died in establishing and preserving America’s freedoms for nearly 240 years have not died in vain there is a small minority of Americans, those on the liberal left now financed by George Soros, who are now attempting to destroy those precious freedoms that were deeply embedded in America’s four foundational documents by a hand full of colonists in 1776, 1787 and 1791, they who risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to restore those freedoms based on the laws and statutes given to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai anciently.

And in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson acknowledged the source of their inspiration for breaking the bonds of ‘Rulers-Law’ they then lived under – their ‘Creator’ and their ‘Supreme Judge of the World.’ They then asked for His divine guidance to guide them on their dangerous journey and – I believe – He gave them his blessings and was there in their times of needs. George Washington was never ashamed of asking for His divine help, which was strongly evident when the British surrendered at Yorktown. He then inspired a unique Constitution to protect those freedoms – and then caused those freedoms to become a part of the Constitution that are now known as America’s Bill of Rights.

But it took time for America’s Tree of Liberty to become firmly rooted in American soil following the signing of these world changing documents but when that tree’s roots became firmly rooted those freedoms – economic, property and religious – became the envy of the world – and all dictators and would-be-dictators soon realized they would have to allow more freedom to their subjects. Some did and some didn’t with many of those subjects leaving for America and its constitutionally protected freedoms.

We who live here in Cherokee County often have an opportunity to witness those who have made those sacrifices for freedom as the veterans from current and past wars are honored as they traverse 575 on their way to their final resting place in the National Cemetery west of Canton where they are interned with honors. On Monday those Americans who died defending freedom will be honored here in Cherokee County and in similar cemeteries nationwide.

I occasionally ask why war and will war ever end? And who perpetuates it? Revelation 12 helps me understand these questions somewhat. It tells about the “war in heaven” before this world was created, a war that Satan, along with a third of the “hosts of heaven” lost and were then cast down to earth. Verse 12 states: “Therefore rejoice, ye heavens and ye that dwell in them [Satan’s gone]. [But] Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the sea, for the devil is come down into you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” This story adds an eternal perspective to mortality.

As horrible as war is, slavery is worse. Once enslaved it takes mankind centuries to break that bondage. It took the Israelites many years of pleading before the Lord heard their prayers, and another 40 years of training to learn to “self-govern themselves.” Following 256 years of self-government – Joshua to Saul – often with serious ethic issues (corruption) the people said to Samuel “now make us a king to judge us like all other nations.” (I Samuel 8:5.) The Israelites had rejected God as their source of light, as is America today, along with much of the western world. Israel’s kings, beginning with Saul, led the Israelites into idolatry, and finally into total dispersion. This history, well recorded, is a reminder of what happens to those nations who reject God or his laws.

Those who would “sell-out” America and “make a king to judge over us” ignore the reality of God’s wrath, or of the time and price required to regain a nation’s freedoms once lost. Ask the Germans, the Japanese, the Russians, even the Iraqis. The price: often death and destruction.

Memorial-Day 2011 is a day to remember those who were and are willing to pay the ultimate price to protect mankind’s freedoms, and to thank God for restoring freedom to the world, via America. Also remember that harsh political rhetoric is still preferred over bullets for settling disputes, local or worldwide.