The old men aren’t marching, exactly, not at their age, but they move with purpose. Watching the old men walk down the street, and the really old men riding in cars, few of us standing on the sidewalk as the Memorial Day parade goes by think of what they suffered, nor of all the men who might have been marching too had they not died in battle.

At least I don’t. I find it hard to feel as grateful as I should. Going to the parade has always been mainly a thing to do with the children. Now that our youngest is seventeen, we don’t feel much reason to go. The day is hot and muggy. The different bands play over each other and the fire trucks blare their sirens at a painful level. A disturbing number of local politicians drive by grinning and waving. The sooner the old men march by, the sooner we can get back out of the sun.

Robbed of Pleasures and Lessons

People raised when and where I was were robbed of the pleasures and the lessons of gratitude. I grew up in a New England college town, whose university was then known for its Marxists. The public schools were not that leftist, but many of our teachers taught a radical-ish view of America.

We were taught that national heroes and patriotic stories could be exposed as at best a mixture of good and evil, and more likely as an act mainly of self-interest or desire. That is, when the story wasn’t simply made up by the mythologizers. The Constitution may have spoken of liberty, but only the rich and powerful got to enjoy the liberties it proclaimed. We read something in a social studies class by the historian Charles A. Beard that America fought wars to advance its self-interest or the designs of businesses who directed the government to their own profit-increasing ends. 

We weren’t being taught a Christian recognition that nothing in this fallen world comes to us uncorrupted. We were being taught to think that once we’d seen through anything we held great or good, we’d know it wasn’t really all that good or great. It might be really bad. 

To be fair, our teachers and the writers they pointed us to exposed a real mythology that did justify many bad things. Some of the traditional story was a lie, and a lie that substituted a vision of America’s greatness for the salvation the Christian knows comes only through Christ. This training directed me to Christianity and its moral realism. It made the secular kid I was look for the deepest truths in God and not in anything of this world. It helped me say with the psalmist, “My hope is in God,” not “My hope is in the nation.”

That was to my eternal good. But it did make feeling gratitude for men like the soldiers walking by much harder.

The Old Duffers

Now that we’re older, I think, we’ve learned to value our country in a way we did not before, but that has not translated into feeling the way we should. Knowing my peers, including the politically conservative ones, and listening to conversations along the parade route, I’m sure we don’t feel as grateful as we should. Even people with more conventional upbringings than mine have never really learned to feel it. 

Child of my schooling though I am, I’m still disturbed by my inability to feel moved as the old men march by in the Memorial Day parade. Yes, of course American motives were impure. Yes, some things the nation did were wicked. But that is not the veterans’ fault. Yes, some were drafted and went to war under duress. Not every war was justified. But that doesn’t reduce our debt to the old men marching down the street on Memorial Day.

They sacrificed for others, and are due praise for that. Much they accomplished made the world a better place. The Nazis did not get a chance to kill all the Jews. Japan didn’t conquer countries like the Philippines. One-hundred million or more live in free South Korea. America saved them from living in the North Korean horror show.

One Thing to Do

Even if we can’t gin up the feeling of gratitude, we can act out the gratitude we know we should feel. For one thing, we can pray for these men. Pray for servicemen when you think of them. Pray for them when you read about them in a history book or see an exhibit at a museum. Say a prayer for the those you see in public, especially the old men marching in the parade. If you’re Catholic, when you go to a cemetery, pray for each soldier or sailor or marine whose grave you happen to see. They may have no one to pray for them.

A little thing, a tiny investment of time, but something. And go to the parade and applaud the old men in their uniforms as they walk by. Another small thing, but at least they’ll hear our cheers.