Veterans and Their Sacrifice

Over the last one hundred years many thousands of men have died on the battlefield fighting for Canada and the freedom we have today. To this very day Canadian soldiers are still on foreign soil battling enemies that would kill us in a second because we don’t aspire to their beliefs. What is disturbing to me is that the population in our country has been growing rapidly over the past 60 years since the last Great War and most of these people have no sense of the sacrifices that were made so they could live in a land like Canada. The children born in this country do not learn about these things in schools today because some group in their wisdom decided that it was not a good thing to teach youngsters this part about the Country’s history. The immigrants that arrive on our shores do not get much information on the World Wars either as it has not been a priority for the governments at any levels to do this. The Federal Government over the last 50 years has allowed our military to erode by shifting more dollars into social programmes rather than into defence. As I have said before we are lucky to live beside the USA because they provide us with security that we can no longer provide for ourselves. It would be interesting to bring some of these dead soldiers back to life for a day to get there take on how the Country stands today and find out if they feel their sacrifice has been worthwhile. My guess is that they would be saddened to see how the freedoms they fought so bravely for have been carved up into pieces of government controlled bureaucracies. They would see how the special interest groups hold the balance of power and the freedom of speech they so valiantly protected is now in the hands of commissions and “politically correct” dictators. They would see that the Government contains a political party that wants to break up the country and is given every opportunity afforded patriotic parties. They would carefully scrutinize the armed forces of today and wonder why certain groups of people are not represented in the honourable job of protecting the citizens of our Country. They would be glad to see the recent outpouring of grief and recognition of our fallen soldiers and wonder why it has taken so long for this to happen. I’m not sure how I would answer their questions as I have a hard time understanding these things myself. I sometimes wish I had paid attention to politics a little more when I was younger so that I may have been able to influence our Country’s direction some years ago. But it is what it is today and moaning about the past isn’t going to help. Perhaps the younger generation can be educated on the things that must happen to retain our freedom. Part of this learning has to be the understanding of history and the sacrifices of our military veterans and war heroes. If the schools won’t do it then we as parents and grandparents must take the time to explain to our children so they can draw their own conclusions. Keeping them in the dark does no one any good and people that believe this are sadly mistaken.