The Greatest Generation, the men and women who won World War II, held the home country together, rebuilt and empowered the countries they had battled, and came home to build a thriving economy, promote scientific progress, and enact social reform were not gifted with a different kind of DNA than that which all of us share today. What they had, and what we sorely need, is as strong a commitment to civic duty as to personal independence. They used their personal strengths and skills to inform and guide their collective effort and united citizenship.
In short, they believed in one another.
They were as imperfect a people as we are, yet they saved the world. They were as plagued by personal weakness as we are, yet they chose to set their pride and fears aside to fight prejudice, tyranny, despotism, and ignorance. They knew that there was more to know than the world had known and lived by before, and they ran toward discovery with as much passion as the adventurers of centuries past had set out upon the seas with.
They didn’t perfect the world for us, but they worked hard and they moved us a lot further down the road toward accomplishing the original ideals that form our American creed: equality, tranquility, justice, the general welfare, and liberty.
If there is work still undone in any of those areas then it is our work to do. On this Veteran’s Day I can’t help but feel that the best way to honor the men and women who sacrificed their lives, youth, bodies, and minds for the ideals of freedom, is to ensure that they didn’t sacrifice in vain. The best honor is given through emulation. May we dedicate ourselves to the kind of selflessness, civic duty, and sacrifice that they showed us by the lives they lived.
Years ago I heard a great man, Elder L. Tom Perry, invite the youth of America to come and take the title of “Greatest Generation” from his generation. He could think of nothing better than to lose that title to a new generation who believed in one another.
I believe in America. I believe in us.
Let’s become the people we know we can be.
(Originally shared to Facebook on November 11, 2020)
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