Troops fight for our freedom? No/

Troops don't fight for our freedom

I am going to make a very controversial point in this letter, but I hope people will stay with me to the end. It is a quite often said statement that troops who fight in our nation’s wars have fought for our freedoms. That the price of freedom isn’t free, that it is paid for by the blood of patriots. Ok, but how often have our wars been fought for the freedom of Americans? WWII freed the peoples of France, Belgium, Norway, Italy and yes even Germany and Japan. But, did our fighting in WWII curtail a possible German invasion of the US? Unlikely, the Germans couldn’t even invade much smaller England only 22 miles across the English Channel from France. Maybe if we didn’t fight (which I am glad we did though because we freed millions) the Germans could have become powerful enough to one day threaten the US, but probably not. Was the Spanish American War fought for the freedom of Americans? Cubans ok, but not Americans. Neither the Mexican American War nor WWI. The Korean War was fought for the freedom of Koreans but not Americans. So too for the Vietnam War, fought for the Vietnamese and the surrounding region to thwart the threat of communism. The War of 1812 was fought in part to stop the British from forcing American sailors into the British navy and the war against the Barbary pirates before that was fought because of piracy against American ships. So, those wars were fought in part for our freedoms. I believe that the history of the world has been improved by the fact that the US has existed. Hundreds of millions of people have been freed from tyranny because we exist. Even the statement that troops have fought for our freedom would be basically ok, if not quite accurate to the history of our nation’s wars, if not for the fact that it is often used as a statement in support of a war. For example, it is commonly said to those who are opposed to a war that the troops in a given war are fighting for our freedom or anti-war protestors are told that troops are fighting (or have fought in previous wars) for their freedom to protest. But, again, that statement really isn’t true. That is not to say that a war wasn’t fought by American soldiers with great courage and that wars shouldn’t have been fought (most of our nation’s wars should have been fought) but that the very statement that Americans fought for our freedoms isn’t necessary correct. Obviously an American who believes a war is wrong will not believe that a war is being fought for their freedom. An argument remains to be made in that case why a war, any war, is moral and correct. This is not an argument against the Iraq war. I believe that overall the mission in Iraq is a good mission, to help bring democracy to that part of the world. Again I realize this is a very controversial statement I make but I hope that people will read my words carefully and give them some thought.



Women have the right to vote:

Would anyone today, deplore a Court decision in 1880 that had ruled that women had a fundamental right to vote, 40 years before a Constitutional Amendment that did just that? No one would, but strangely a court decision favoring same sex marriage is "Judicial Activism". Ah, but same sex marriage is against the tradition of one man and one woman. OK, but didn’t the very idea of democracy violate the multi-thousand year tradition of a divine right of kings? Didn’t guaranteeing women the right to vote later violate the idea that democracy was that only men could vote? I understand some oppose same sex marriage because of religious reasons but no church has been ever forced to marry someone that they didn’t wish to marry, including those of other religions. To “defend marriage” by limiting it is just the same as defending democracy as limiting it to only men.