What happened in the scandal of New York City's election of a privileged and wealthy Muslim socialist is typical of the kind of thing this vet was questioning. What has happened to freedom now constrained by those who put boundaries on free speech and governments who monitor and police the public square has made it the very question of our age. What we have done with the legacy of their great and noble sacrifice for a people hidden behind screens and anonymous comments and a growing ignorance of history has brought this hidden taunt to the forefront. Was it worth it? Of course, the brutal version of what the so-called enlightened want to do today is still condemned but the practices and goals of censorship and limitation of freedoms for the sake of the greater good continue to foster some of the same kinds of tests for a people who have almost forgotten what a generation was willing to do in order to preserve liberty.
I think it is a good question for us. What have we done with the gift we were given and what have we done to sacrifice for the sake of its preservation? My dad and my father-in-law put on the uniform in the waning hours of WWII for one and the rise of the Korean conflict for the other. Without question, they believed that the vast heritage of America was not simply in land or resources but in freedoms. What Norman Rockwell captured on canvas in the four freedoms put in image form, they were willing to take up arms and do what was necessary for the sake of those freedoms.
We whine today about the little things like the hard choice between what we want for ourselves and the cost of having children or jobs that are not exactly what we want or like or slow internet or having to listen to people with whom we disagree. These folks sacrificed their personal goals and dreams for foxholes and blood on the far shores of a continent they had never imagined even to visit and for the sake of those whose faces they had never seen. They left behind sweethearts and wives, children and parents, friends and hope -- ready to give them all up so that others might have them while their bodies rested in graves or oceans far from home. They did not know about social media or the great frustration of pages that did not load fast enough on their pocket screens but they did know of news that reported facts and of voices that spoke of the events on the world scene with solemnity and gravity. They were willing to fight so that the voices of those whose opinions they detested might have the same right to speak and so that the world would not become an echo chamber of the rich and powerful or those who were manipulated by their interests.
I am afraid that we have become a people of navel gazing. We look inside ourselves when we should look outside. We consider the greatest truth and opinion the truth and opinion we have formed and those who agree with us. We have made the government into our nanny and presume more what we are owed than we ought contribute. We have killed communities with the online fake versions that offer nothing of the real interactions between people and we have killed Main Street with online retailers who deliver to our door the cheapest things China can produce. We have turned education into self-discovery instead of the pursuit of real knowledge and education and we have conveniently forgotten history because the only day we deem of value is today. Even in the Church we spend more time trying to figure out what people think than what God has said. I hope and pray that we think about this aged vet's question. Was it worth it?
For my part, I admit that daily live with luxuries my parents and grandparents would never have envisioned and I am not nearly grateful enough for them all. I live in debt to those who went before me and pray I have in some way passed on something worthy to those who come after me. It haunts me as I look through the old photos of my dad in uniform or listen to a veteran talk about the sacrifice his friends made on beaches, ships, and battlefields all across the world. It ought to haunt you to.
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Was it worth it? One wonders how many billions of times throughout history the shattered survivors of wars sat in their homes, on battlefields, on blighted landscapes, in ruined cities reduced to rubble, and asked this question? Picture a Roman mother weeping as she has been told her son, a conscript, was killed fighting the, Gauls, the Germanic hordes, or the Celts in far away England. After all, the borders of the Roman Empire needed a constant flow of soldiers to keep possession of distant provinces. Was it worth it? To us, it is a mere historical anecdote or footnote. To the young soldier’s mother, a tragic loss she will remember and take to her grave. I know that there are necessary wars, defensive wars, wars against conquerors and plundering nations. In these situations, we may agree that a war was worth it, that necessity required it. But all wars go further with human loss, and hate filled atrocities always result. As a child I remember watching an old black and white movie on TV about British colonialists in India fighting against the natives. Now, the theme was supposed to be that the English were the good guys to root for. Yet, even my childlike and undeveloped sensibilities caused me to ask, “What are they doing there in the first place? It is not their land?” If we are to be critical thinkers, we must decide if a war was worth it based on its moral cause and objectives. If it is pure adventurism, or simply conquest and acquisition, is it worth the lives of many? Do the Russian people ever question Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine as worth the cost of a million of their young men? As unpleasant as it is to acknowledge, sometimes hyper patriotism is a historical precedent for unnecessary bloodshed. We often fail to distinguish a just war from one that is not. Old veterans like myself remember the young men, our friends and comrades, who were killed in Vietnam. How can one forget? How can one just surmise whether it was worth it or not? History is larger than the individual. What about the collateral damage, those who were neither political nor enemies, just ordinary folks in the wrong place? It remains true that the loudest proponents of war are often those who do the talking, while others do the dying. We have to keep our elected officials accountable for decisions which are rash, which are emotional, which lead to death and misery. Otherwise, we will always be at war. I pray that as 2026 begins, war will not be in our future, but historically, it usually comes about whether we like it or not. Again, after the next one, people will ask, “Was it worth it?” Pray for peace. Soli Deo Gloria
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