memorial day

I have often asked myself why human beings have any rights at all. I always come to the conclusion that human rights, human freedoms, and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world. These values are as powerful as they are because, under certain circumstances, people accept them without compulsion and are willing to die for them.

--Vaclav Havel

Bill Moyers (via Dan Gillmor):

...Every Memorial Day I think about what these men did and what we owe them. They didn't go through hell so Kenny Boy Lay could betray his investors and workers at Enron, or for a political system built on legal bribery. It wasn't for corporate tax havens in Bermuda, or an economic system driven by the law of the jungle, or so a handful of media buccaneers could turn the public airwaves into private sewers....

I was never called on to do what soldiers do; I'll never know if I might have had their courage...They thought democracy was worth fighting for, even dying for. The least we can do is to help make democracy worthy of them.