Let's remember what people at least thought they were fighting and dying for: freedom, if not ours, someone's.

I'm pretty cynical, so I know plenty who fought and knew good and g-damn well they weren't really fighting for American freedom, nor were they likely to bring liberty of our variety to the people they were allegedly liberating, but I like to believe most of them still believed in the liberty the flag is supposed to represent, and those who died prior to Vietnam were fighting for freedom in the literal sense.

I'm not trying to offend anyone, and if you lost someone after that time, please understand this is a comment about our government, the one that sent them, not about them. My purpose in writing this is to call on all of us to make their deaths mean something. Redouble our efforts to defend the principles of liberty they believed in, and would likely fight and die for again given the chance. That's the kind of liberty that would prevent their children and grandchildren from being used as cannon fodder, or people widgets for the same small, petty tyrants who sent so many of them to their deaths, only to turn around and infringe on freedom here at home.

There are many battlefields and hills right here we can, and should, be willing to "die" on, and while we can do it figuratively, not literally as they did. I suggest most are within the territory I'll call Absurdistan, aka, the Education Industrial Complex. This includes the makers of its weaponry, and the bizarrely-named "For-Profit Philanthropists" like Gates and Zuckerberg foundations that seed them with money to start-up, and then cheer as they win govt "grants" of our tax dollars to arm the govt with weaponry with which to slaughter our children's potential to live individual lives in pursuit of individual happiness.

The enemies of liberty today have an edge over the ones our fallen heroes fought: we are delivering the spoils of victory to them in the midst of battles we don't even realize they're waging against us. I can imagine them chuckling to themselves, amazed at the magnitude of their success at fooling us, manipulating us, and winning without firing a single shot--indeed, while being lauded as "heroes" and "experts."

We who love liberty, and our children enough to defend it for them, need to stop nipping at the heels of our enemies. We need to stop giving them time and space to manipulate others into seeing us as the problem. We need to use every opportunity, in real life, online, wherever we may be, to speak out, raise the alarm, support the front-line "troops" putting it all on the line to expose the real "terrorists" of Absurdistan, and we can't rest until every last one of them has been removed from their jobs, elected offices, classrooms, and polite society. Vanquishing them will mean they are literally prohibited from having anything whatsoever to do with the education of other people's children.

For most parents, the first battle will be within your own home. If you can't or won't unenroll your children, then you must accept their are now officially guerilla fighters, and equip them accordingly. Are you prepared for what that means? Are you prepared to disillusion and alienate your kids from their peers, teachers, and possibly even some well-meaning people because they can't be allowed to trust any of them, lest they fall prey to the bad actors amongst them?

Are you prepared to support their dangerous efforts to eek out some value from their time behind enemy lines, with tutoring, supplemental counter-lessons, and constant monitoring of their edtech? What about your legal acumen? How well do you know your rights, and theirs, and do you have a lawyer who'll help you protect yourselves? Can you afford that lawyer (if you can, you can afford to homeschool btw).

What if the school catches wind of your position in the rebel alliance? Are you prepared to defend against attempts to take your child, literally? Yes, you do need to think about these battles before you hand them their first victory: possession of your child, "in loco parentis," for 9 months of the year.

So on this Memorial Day, look ahead as well as backwards. How do you want your kids to remember you? Do you want them to say "My parents fought for liberty, no matter the cost?"

Scratch that. Do you want them to even know what "liberty is?" If so, the time to fight is NOW, and it starts by walking away from Absurdistan, and teaching your kids what we remember today is not just the lives lost to war; we also take time to remember the idea they fought and died for: that individual liberty is more important than "security."