Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a day that we as a nation should take a moment to thank and remember all of the service men and women who have fought and died defending our nation. Over 650,000 United States soldiers have been killed in action since the Revolutionary War. That is a staggering number of lives lost preserving the principles spelled out in our Constitution. It will never let up because the United States will always be under attack because the founding principles of our nation will always be under attack as they are antithetical to every totalitarian who has ever sought to rule the world – whether that authoritarian calls himself a fascist, a communist, a socialist, an Islamist – it does not matter. They want rule the world and control the lives of every person in the world. Our Constitution flips that on its head. Our Constitution is designed to preserve and protect the natural rights of all human beings that have been endowed by our creator from the authoritarians who want to strip our God-given rights from us. There is never going to be a time when we are not under attack, when we do not need brave men and women protecting our rights. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And that’s why our fighting men and women are so vigilant. These attacks on our Constitution and our rights are everywhere and they are ongoing. They are relentless. We need eternal vigilance to protect our country because our enemies are eternally vigilant to destroy us.

The problem with our military is that they have done too good of a job protecting us from our enemies to the point that our enemies do not want to attack us militarily anymore. They know that it is a losing proposition. So now they are attacking us from everywhere and everyway non-militarily. Look around at what is happening in our country and ask this question, did 650,000 United States soldiers willingly lay down their lives defending our country, so that we would simply open our southern border and allow 15 million unvetted foreign nationals mostly military age men to walk into this country, and we give them debit cards, cell phones, hotel rooms, free healthcare and the ability to vote in our elections? Did all those servicemen and women die protecting our country so that Chinese Communists and Middle Eastern Islamists could take over the curriculum at our major universities so that they could teach anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-Christian, anti-white hate to the students there? Did they all die so that we would import millions of low IQ, lazy, corrupt Somalis to take over large sections of Minnesota and Ohio so that they could steal tens of billions of dollars from US taxpayers and send it to Somalia?

That’s not the deal they signed on for. And if they would have known that future generations would so easily give away our country to foreign interests and ideologies diametrically opposed to our founding principles, they probably would not have fought so hard or have been willing to give up so much defending a country whose greatness and uniqueness so many of our citizens, not only take for granted, but so easily denigrate. They say, “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” We are on the bottom of that cycle right now. For most of our country’s existence, we have had strong men and women battling hard times, fighting fierce enemies, and all those wars and battles created the good times that we have been experiencing, and those good times have created the new iteration of the Democrat party filled will weak men and women – pathetic, delusionally self-righteous weaklings – who know in their heart that they are so undeserving of the greatness of America, that they want to destroy it out of sheer misguided guilt.

They cheer when Muslim protestors and BLM rioters burn the American flag. A Democratic candidate for the Maine Senate in 2026, Graham Platner, a man with a Nazi symbol tattooed to his chest mocked a U.S. soldier, Pfc. Ted Daniels, who was severely injured in combat, calling him a “mouth breather” who "didn't deserve to live" on social media. Platner was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His mother was a successful restaurant owner and his father was a prominent lawyer. His grandfather was famous architect Warren Platner. Graham went to the exclusive elite border school Hotchkiss in Connecticut. The life that he was handed at birth was the product of the American dream, yet he hates America.

Likewise, Mai Vang, a Democrat California Congressional Candidate refused to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance, and has been known to intentionally turn her back on the flag during the pledge. Vang was born in Sacramento, California, to Hmong refugees from Laos who fled after the Vietnam War. Vang's family relied on food stamps, government social programs, and the Salvation Army for resources to live. She received a Bachelors’ Degrees in Biology and Sociology from the University of San Francisco and Master degrees from UCLA. So, she lived the American dream but hates America. How would she be doing if her family were forced to stay in Laos? She probably would be dead.

We have a mayor of New York City who was also born into privilege – his father is a prominent professor at Columbia University and his mother is an award-winning film maker, whose combined net worth is estimated at $22 million. Mamdani was born in Uganda. His family fled to the United States and lived the American dream, and you guessed it, he hates America and he hates the system of capitalism which enriched his parents and himself. I could provide example after example, but the common threat is that the Democrats and the socialists who benefitted the most monetarily from the United States and capitalism, are the very ones who hate the United States and want to destroy our capitalist system. 650,000 United States soldiers did not willing die on battlefields so that we would elect politicians who hate America.

So, on this Memorial Day, we can thank and honor all the United States soldiers who laid down their lives defending this country, by also acknowledging the greatness of the United States of America, its Constitution and free market economic system – the very institutions that these brave men and women fought and died for. The United States is the greatest country on the face of the earth, not because it is perfect but because of our founding principles and our Constitution, and we must reject and defeat anyone who denigrates and wants to destroy that which makes America great.

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Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.