Memorials (Links Continuously Added)

It’s a beautiful, clear day, one typical of Southern California in late spring. The smell of BBQ wafts everywhere one goes. However, as I did a two-mile walk around my neighborhood, I counted only four American flags flying in front of individual houses—and that counts mine and that of my neighbor. More happily—and, in some cases, unfortunately--many others remember what this day is really about.

Dennis Prager memorialized the elite on his radio show today. Not the elite who consider themselves the betters of those of us who didn’t attend an Ivy League school or who may not have a bachelor’s degree at all, but the other elite: those who loved their country so much that they were willing to leave their families and sacrifice their lives for freedom.

California Conservative has re-tooled his site into one called ‘Why We Fight’ featuring the stories of contemporary service members.

Project Hero: Q and O has a great running series featuring the heroes of the Global War on Terror, including one that I had known little about, Sgt Leigh Ann Hester, the first female Silver Star winner since World War II. Strange, she looks so harmless. :-)

What’s a Memorial Day without the Fred Phelps vehicle, the Westboro “Baptist Church?” In their perversion of both Christianity and patriotism, some of their number clashed verbally with members of Free Republic. The location? Some 300 feet from the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Oddly enough, there are no reports of the slanderers of God protesting near the Vietnam War Memorial or the Lincoln Memorial today.

Search engines Dogpile and Ask.com know which side their bread is buttered on.

Google, not so much.

Are there any more questions about what time it is with the great Google?

Christopher Hitchens:

This Memorial Day, one might think particularly of those of our fallen who also guarded polling-places, opened schools and clinics, and excavated mass graves. They represent the highest form of the citizen, and every man and woman among them was a volunteer. This plain statement requires no further rhetoric.

No it doesn't.

My thanks to all who have served.

MORE:

Iowahawk
Amy Alkon
Jared Keller
Citizen Smash
Dean's World: A YouTube triple-Kleenex tribute.
Capital Times editorial:

[O]n Memorial Day, we pause from the debate to remember those whose lives have been lost, not merely to the fool's mission of the contemporary moment but to all the battles noble and ignoble that have claimed the sons and daughters of this and every land.

There's always one who cannot resist taking a "shot."

Flopping Aces has some excellent videos
Patrick Martin
'Dust in the Wind': the New York Times, of course.

(Thanks to Gut Rumbles , Pajamas Media , Instapundit, Cathy Seipp and to reader Tully)