Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. Take time to think about the members of our armed forces who have given their lives since 1775 so we can live in a free country.

Memorial Day used to be on May 31, but then the American people got spoiled and didn’t want a holiday to fall willy-nilly on just any day of the way, so now we remember our citizens who have died on the battlefield on a Monday so we can combine it with trips and furniture and car sales.

No excuse is too small for retailers to make a buck on such a sacred day.

My guess is that most Americans have no idea what Memorial Day is really about. When I hear someone say, “Happy Memorial Day,” I have to shake my head. What is happy about a day of remembrance of our war dead?

Since Memorial Day falls on May 25 this year, it shares the day with the opening of the 1777 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

After we declared our independence from Great Britain, we needed a framework for a government to replace the monarchy. The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress in November 1777. It was in that document, penned by John Dickinson of Delaware, that the name “United States of America” first appeared.

The Continental Congress continued to govern the new country through the end of the Revolutionary War.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.