I so rarely quote other people at length, but I found this one quite illuminating and timely.

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

"It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

"Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

"So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

"What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

"And all music is."
-Kurt Vonnegut from Breakfast of Champions

Now that's not to say I agree with Mr. Vonnegut. I appreciate what veterans do, I truly do, even as a pacifist Quaker. But his description is beautiful. I remember the veterans in my high school being asked to stand during an event of some sort, and the number of people who stood was astounding.

I thank you all.

I may not agree with what you do, but I am eternally grateful for why you do it, and that you do.