To all my Veteran Friends:
As I listen to the stirring music of John Philip Sousa on this gray day in the Northeast, I am reminded again this year of your service to our country.
Permit me to thank you again personally. You all made sacrifices at a cost to both yourselves and your families. If I do not shake your hand on Veterans’ Green this morning I want you to know that millions of Americans are filled with gratitude on this day.
You served in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq and in peacetime. Without your service, and the service of a million servicemen who did not return from the battlefield, the world would be a different place.
Abraham Lincoln understood as much as anybody in our history that our country and its fundamental principles are worth preserving. One of our national traits is that we are relentlessly judgmental, both of others and ourselves. Lincoln knew that we made mistakes. But he also knew that our goals were greater than our failings.
Call it American exceptionalism. It is as true today as it was in the heat of the Civil War, when our national experiment was at risk. Jefferson had called our young country the “world’s best hope” in his first inaugural address. Lincoln, in his second annual address to Congress in 1862, concluded with a stirring call to arms that explains why our country is worth fighting for:
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”
