From the NFRW Armed Services Committee

By Rebekah Bibb, Virginia

GK Chesterton once said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” Volunteering to fight for one’s country requires a willingness to make extreme sacrifices. Those sacrifices are not worth making unless one does so for a meaningful purpose, a purpose worth protecting and defending, even until death. We celebrate Veterans Day, not only to remember the price others have paid, but also because of the reasons for which they were willing to do so.

The meaning of Veterans Day easily can be lost if not taught to the next generation of Americans. This requires cultivating values like loyalty, bravery, national pride, and, most of all, the willingness to lay down one's life in defense of America’s founding principles. It also requires us to understand what is so special about the Constitution of the United States, to which every servicemember swears an oath. No mere document is worth dying for, but the ideas, values, and convictions contained within our founding documents are.

There’s a lot that a veteran can teach us through their actions. Paul Sechrist is a 96-year-old WWII veteran whom I am honored to call a friend. I interviewed him about his time in service and asked why he enlisted. Without reservation, he simply explained that he grew up in a lower-middle-class American family who taught him to love his country. He chose to enlist in the Army because he knew these values were worth fighting for. Paul, like many veterans, is very humble about his service. He doesn’t need constant praise. He saw what needed to be done and did it because he knew it was right.

Paul also stressed that children need to be taught to love their country. They must understand that America is not perfect, but its founding principles give us both the right and the responsibility to address those imperfections. That is what makes Veterans Day so special: not that America has no flaws, but that in spite of her flaws she is still worth defending. We must continue to teach our children about our great nation and the veterans who sacrificed everything to secure its future.