A Time for Shared Sacrifice
Veterans Day always leads me to reflect on the stories of gallantry, pain, and loss that yearly appear with it. The sacrifices of today's veterans, and all veterans who came before them, merit the honor, gratitude, and remembrance we give them. One day of thanks hardly seems enough. So many paid with their lives. So many others pay every day of the life they have left.
Their sacrifice is ennobling. It reminds us that the price of freedom is paid by many young people in each generation, an investment they have made on our behalf.
Sacrifice for the greater good gives meaning to the lives of those who contribute, and our lives need meaning to nurture our spirits. For veterans, it binds them to each other through shared values and commitment. For all who sacrifice for others, it binds them into a community of caring in our society, where so much tears at our ability to form community.
America needs much more sacrifice for the common good. Sacrifice is a treasured and essential pillar to our present and an investment in our collective future. The men and women of our armed forces, law enforcement, firefighter and first responder communities take on much of this burden. Many other Americans give their time and resources to groups, friends, neighbors, and those in distant communities and lands who have suffered personal and natural tragedies. Americans, both red and blue, are empathetic and generous, despite the image that hyperbolic pundits, social media and politicians portray of so many of us. In sacrifice, their redness or blueness ceases to matter, itself an important contribution to our civic life.
Yet, as a nation and as individuals, we have not asked enough of ourselves. Too many of our citizens live in poverty. Too many are still out of work or struggle to find jobs that provide the dignity that work should provide - and the pay to support their families that is part of that dignity. Too many are ill-educated. Too many are alone, isolated from each other, when human connection is so important to physical and emotional health.
As a nation, we have too much public debt. Too many of our common resources and too much of our common infrastructure - of roads, bridges, rails, water, energy, and environment – are ailing. We are also over-investing in political warfare and under-investing in civility.
We can fix such problems, but not without sacrifice. In 1961, President Kennedy charged us to "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." But the tenor of our times, for too many, is to focus on what we want not on what we can give, on what is good for us, not on what is essential for others and thus good for society as a whole. That may be human nature, but that does not mean it is healthy.
Adjustments to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – changes that could be small for each of us yet have a profound impact on securing the future of these programs for all of us - and reducing our indebtedness – are “off the table.” Corporate subsidies and tax breaks are "essential" – at least the ones "my" corporation gets. Executive salaries have no limit, though the pay and benefits for those closer to the bottom of the organizational pyramid do. Needed investments go wanting for lack of taxes. Instead, we celebrate tax cuts, the payment for which we pass on to future generations. We're not totally against tax increases, of course, as long as they apply to someone else.
Americans have sacrificed before. Sacrifices built this nation, in war and peace. But leaders are unwilling to ask us to sacrifice again. Sacrifice is a political "third rail." Our leaders claim we are overburdened with government, forgetting that freedom is the dividend that past sacrifices have earned.
It is just historical circumstance that Veterans Day comes shortly before Thanksgiving. But both express profound gratitude for what has forged a nation and given us good lives. As among those who protect and serve, so among all of us, sacrifice for the civic good is the duty of citizens. It makes us better people and sets a powerful example for our children, who will also need to sacrifice in their time.
It is time for leaders to ask more of us. It is time to demand they do - and respond to that call. Together we can build a stronger, more caring society - and take pride in the fact that we did not ask only a few to bear the responsibility that belongs to all of us.
Photo Credit: Carol Donsky Newell
