by Nathan McKaskle

oday is veterans day, a day when we are told we should honor those who have served in the arm forces and returned alive. We should be grateful to those who have “fought for our freedom.” To those who have “shed their blood” to “feed the tree of liberty.”

On a side note, one would think if the claim that soldiers are fighting for our freedom were true, and that soldiers are to credit for the freedom we have, we would be more free rather than less free after each and every subsequent war. You would expect to see more economic and social freedom after World Wars I & II than before. Yet we have seen just the opposite, an enormous expansion in the power and size of the state after each and every war over the past 220 years.

In the upper right hand corner of the site is a quote from a review I once wrote:

The tree of liberty is not fed by the raging blood of broken souls but watered by the truth from those willing to pour it.

It isn’t hard to interpret what this means. Today many people, including myself, have made efforts to speak the truth about soldiering and have faced strong opposition, even from those considered to be friends. It takes a great deal of courage to speak the truth, possibly far more courage than one might have during a suicidal charge into a hail of bullets on the battlefield. Personally, I would call that a case of psychotic dissociation rather than courage, but that’s just me pretending to be a psychologist.

At least in the case of a soldier, he has the vast majority to extol him as a hero for doing what it is he is told to do. No one attacks him for murdering other people, so long as they are not the people he represents, or those wearing the same clothing.

To face the inevitable, harsh criticism that “you should be grateful to veterans for your right to say that”, when criticizing the virtue of soldiers, is quite harrowing in my experience. My heart pounds, the blood runs hot in my veins, my hands shake, anger swells up inside me. I feel betrayed for speaking my mind and daring to criticize and question the widely held prejudices of the people around me. And yet it isn’t as if I didn’t expect it.

Why should I be grateful? To whom should I be grateful? What do you mean by “right to say that?” It is as if someone is standing over me, armed to the teeth, just barely restraining themselves from opening my bowels with a few rounds of hot lead should I say anything to provoke them over that line. Should I always be grateful to those who don’t shoot me for speaking my mind? Should I kiss the boots of those who allow me such leniency? How else is it that I have been afforded such a “right” to speak the truth if not for the restraint of one who might take that “right” away with a knife to the back?

When I spend time with my dearest friends, I do not feel that I should be grateful to them for every moment in which they are not using violence against me. What I am grateful for is that their show of vulnerability, honesty, openness, and curiosity. I am grateful to those who are generous but I am not grateful to those who successfully fight the urge to kill me, kidnap me and/or throw me in a dank dungeon where I am to rot for merely saying what I think is true.

Personally, I think it’s another way of telling me to shut up. I’m making people uncomfortable.

They prefer to think that it is I who make them uncomfortable. An easy out.

Do they consider what it is that they are really saying about the nature of the state, the world around them, or their relationships, when they say that I should be grateful for my right to speak so freely?

And so this is my ode to the ungrateful, those who would dare to be so ungrateful as to speak the truth in the face of disapproval from lovers, friends and family. An ode to those who speak the truth despite the inevitable attacks from those who seek to shut us up with threats, shaming and the guilt inflicting, repetitive, tried and true propaganda we have heard all our lives.

How dare I! Such an ungrateful cow am I for not appreciating the meal my farmer has laid before me, that he allows me free range within the bounds of the grassy acreage, and that he has not chosen to slaughter me today!

Nathan McKaskle lives in Philadelphia, PA. When he is not delivering new content to the readers of Lost Liberty Café and studying philosophy as well as psychology, he is working as a Citrix Server Administrator at a major import/export company.