{"id":492,"date":"2008-05-26T05:15:06","date_gmt":"2008-05-26T10:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinbryant.com\/2008\/05\/26\/memorial-day\/"},"modified":"2008-05-26T05:15:06","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T10:15:06","slug":"memorial-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/memorial-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" align=\"middle\" width=\"444\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thecityreview.com\/s02sampm.gif?resize=444%2C360\" height=\"360\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'\">I want you to close your eyes and picture in your mind the soldier at <st1:place w:st=\"on\">Valley Forge<\/st1:place>, as he holds his musket in his bloody hands.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nHe stands barefoot in the snow, starved from lack of food, wounded from\u00a0months of battle and emotionally scarred from the eternity away from\u00a0his\u00a0family surrounded by nothing but death and carnage of war.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nHe stands though, with fire in his eyes and victory on his breath. He\u00a0looks at us now in anger and disgust and tells us this&#8230;<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nI gave you a birthright of freedom born in the Constitution and now your\u00a0children graduate too illiterate to read it.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nI fought in the snow barefoot to give you the freedom to vote and you stay\u00a0at home because it rains.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nI left my family destitute to give you the freedom of speech and you remain silent on critical issues, because it might be politically\u00a0incorrect.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nI orphaned my children to give you a government to serve you and it has\u00a0stolen democracy from the people.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s the soldier, not the reporter who gives you the freedom of the press.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s the soldier, not the poet who gives you the freedom of speech.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s the soldier, not the campus organizer who allows you to\u00a0demonstrate.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s the soldier, who salutes the flag, serves the flag, whose\u00a0coffin is draped with the flag that allows the protester to burn the flag!<br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'\">Thanks to the soldiers who paid the ultimate price for our\u00a0freedom of speech, even the blogsphere!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I want you to close your eyes and picture in your mind the soldier at Valley Forge, as he holds his musket in his bloody hands. \u00a0 He stands barefoot in the snow, starved from lack of food, wounded from\u00a0months of battle and emotionally scarred from the eternity away from\u00a0his\u00a0family surrounded by nothing but death [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-7W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}