Honoring those who serve

Let's take a moment today to honor those who serve their country in a particularly courageous way. I am talking about those who raise their voices in protest of their country fighting illegal and unjust wars.

When a child does something wrong, we show our love for the child by correcting her or him. There are parents who do not do this, who say that anything their child does is just great. But we do not consider that to be good parenting, it is poor parenting, likely to result in a child growing to adulthood in a state of immaturity. Those who try to correct their country's behavior are attempting to do the same thing as loving parents, albeit on a much larger scale.

The funny thing is, there are a lot of self identified patriots who object to this, who act towards their country as if everything it does is great, by definition. They do not care if the rest of the world sees their country as an immature brat, or worse. Ironically, such people are also fans of the cult of parenting in which hitting is love.

Now why is it courageous to protest a war? One need only look at the numbers of people who oppose wars versus the number who publically protest. People are concerned about losing their jobs, about being ostracized by family and friends, about being harassed or arrested by police. Not to mention, what are you doing when you protest a war? You are telling a government that has no reservations about shooting at and killing people, that such behavior is wrong.