Leadership

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Years ago, I sang a terrific song, “Freedom Isn’t Free.” The chorus rings in my memory even now:

“Freedom isn’t free, freedom isn’t free
You’ve got to pay the price, you’ve got to sacrifice
For your liberty.”

Subsequently, every Fourth of July, every Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day, I go out early in the morning to the vast Veteran’s Cemetery in Westwood, California. I walk alone between hundreds of rows of crosses and markers, covering many acres of rolling green hills. I read the names on those markers out loud, sometimes for hours.

I figure that’s the very least I can do to partially express my eternal gratitude to these valiant young men—and too many women—who paid the ultimate price for my freedom. I can at least say their names aloud, often with tears, realizing that many of those names haven’t been spoken by anybody for years.

But that’s not enough, not nearly enough. See, too many of us just take the Guard, our first line of defense since our pre-colonial days, 372 years now, for granted. We’ve lost sight of the fact that these brave soldiers aren’t drafted—they’re volunteers! Like their forbears, in our earliest days, who put aside their plows and picked up muskets to defend their settlements, these young Americans have left offices, practices, paying positions and even plans for college. They’ve asked the Guard to train them and use them to defend our country and our way of life.

They don’t form national policy or military strategy; they go where they’re sent and they do what they’re asked to do. And they do it heroically.

Right now, the Guard makes up half or more of our fighting forces, and at tremendous sacrifice of personal goals, family and career concerns, and even life and limb, they’ve played a vital role in turning the war in Iraq from humiliating defeat to stunning victory.

These are our finest fellow Americans, and they deserve this tribute. Please join me in honoring them—and in contributing to Paralyzed Veterans of America, our wounded warriors.

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