Patriotism

I view myself as a patriotic person.  I pay attention to what is going on in my country and in the world.  I vote in every election. I pay my taxes.  In the past few years I have felt a little uncomfortable with the term patriotism because I feel like the meaning got hijacked.  It seems that patriotism gets tied up with and sometimes is used synonymously with militarism.  I think that patriotism means loving one's country and being devoted to it.  I do love the United States of America.  I feel blessed to have been born here.  At the same time, I am very much against war.  I can't imagine that on the most basic level there is anyone who is pro war.  I worry that because we have a strong military, we use it too frequently and with questionable motives.  I believe that war should be the last resort, or even the resort after the last resort.  I believe it is possible for us to live in a more peaceful world without jeopardizing our system of government or our liberty.

That being said, I am proud of the military service of my father and father-in-law during WWII.  I have had the American flag hanging in our hallway for 20 years.  I did some rearranging and put up some pictures by it to honor my father and father-in-law.

 The top two pictures are of my father-in-law. He was a Marine. The group pictures shows him with some of the men in  his unit in Nagasaki. Nagasaki had been totally destroyed by the atomic bomb and his unit arrived shortly after that horrible event. He and other Marines that were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints got permission to help the Japanese Christians rebuild their Churches. They were allowed to do it on a volunteer basis during their free time. My father-in-law has talked about how wonderful it was to build at a time when they were surrounded by destruction. In the picture he is the third from the left. He also jokes that his shirt is the dirtiest because he was the hardest worker.  (As a side note, any of my readers who are members of the LDS Church may find it interesting that the tall man in the back center of the picture is L. Tom Perry who later was called to be an Apostle in the Church)
The bottom two pictures are from my father's service in the Navy.  He was a radar man on the USS Kasaan Bay aircraft escort carrier. The picture of him shows him at a fun house type photo booth while he was on leave once in Atlantic City, NJ.  His back is facing the camera and all the other images are of himself in mirrors. He didn't talk too much about the war. He said that when he enlisted he thought it would be a grand adventure and he would see the world.  He did see much of the world, Hawaii, Guam, Algeria, France, Malta, Casablanca, the Mariana Islands, but the adventure was, for him,  more disturbing than grand. He was very patriotic and believed that WWII was an unavoidable war. He was however, not militaristic.  He was very anti-war for the remainder of his life.

It will be the Fourth of July in about an hour. I am proud to celebrate the greatness of the United States of America.  My hope for this nation is that we will find a way to promote freedom by promoting peace.