WHAT THEY MIGHT SAY....

This week -- 235 years later -- we are still proudly celebrating our independence. With fireworks, music, and most of all oratory. The audiences ohh, ahh, and applaud, for this is the day a great and noble experiment in nation-building was launched.

We might remember, though, there will be another audience on this glorious day. Only they can't ohh and ahh. They are the dead. The honored dead in all the honored cemeteries in all the states and lands on which they fell fighting so that this nation might still be here to celebrate.

So just a moment here between speeches to listen to what THEY might say.

They might say....please don't repeat the teary cliche "they gladly gave their lives for their country." Yes, we gave our lives, but not always gladly, for there is nothing about war and death that is glad. In our case, the first was forced upon us; the second, was rushed far too soon. Just like you, we would have wished to live, to celebrate there rather than here, to have had more time to appreciate this noble experiment.

They might say....but if there are to be other wars, let them at least be wars with a purpose as noble as the experiment. Wars for causes and crusades which have moral merit. Which are our leaders' last resort. Which are for the collective safety and welfare of our land and people, not mostly for the hubris and wealth of our rich and elite.

They might say....you there, the living, please pause as the trumpets and star-bursts fill the night sky. Pause and think deep enough to value what you take as a given: one more celebration, one more year, one more chances to get this thing right. Try -- harder than ever before because there may be less time than ever before -- try to save your flags and furies only for the ideas and battles that count.

They might say....we do have one advantage over you. Our struggles are over, our rest is assured. You, on the other hand, still have the gift and the burden of life. Please, for God's sake, use them better than we did!