In Honor of True Patriotism

Memorial Day reminds us to remember all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice

Arlington National Cemetery. (Photo by dallasgolden via Getty Images)

Is there a greater act of patriotism than sacrificing your life for your country? Every Memorial Day, we are asked to consider that ultimate sacrifice. It shouldn’t be the only day, of course, but at the end of the Civil War the idea of honoring fallen soldiers took root and expanded.

It was originally called Decoration Day—the laying of flowers on the graves of soldiers, specifically those who lost their lives during the Civil War. On May 30, 1868, James A. Garfield, then an Ohio Congressman who had served as a Union major general, spoke to a crowd of more than 5,000 gathered at Arlington National Cemetery, where over 16,000 Civil War soldiers were buried.

“I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here,” Garfield began, gazing out across row after row of white wooden headboards. “We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke; but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country, they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.”

This may have been the first national-level commemoration, but it wasn’t the first. Historian David Blight found documentation that as many as 10,000 newly emancipated slaves and some white missionaries held a parade around a racetrack in Charleston, South Carolina on May 1, 1865. This was in the first weeks after the war’s end and followed the proper burial of 260 disease-ridden Union soldiers who had been hastily put in a mass grave.

Blight discovered news reports estimating that thousands of Black schoolchildren carried flower bouquets and sang “John Brown’s Body,” the popular anthem of Union soldiers. “John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave/But his soul goes marching on,” they sang. “John Brown died that the slaves might be free/His soul goes marching on.”

After World War I, the annual commemoration of 600,000 fallen Civil War soldiers extended to all who died in America’s wars. But Decoration Day did not become the official national holiday we know as Memorial Day (falling on the last Monday in May) until 1971.

In reflecting on the meaning of this day, I looked back at the essay I wrote last year on Memorial Day. That focused on the powerful words of Judge Amit Mehta, who had just sentenced Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, to 18 years in prison for the crime of seditious conspiracy. This was and is the longest sentence to date for anyone connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

I share Mehta’s remarks again, not only because of the remorseless felon’s proud belief in his own political significance but also the ex-president’s continuing violation of democratic values and the rule of law by calling insurrectionists like Rhodes “patriots.” (We should never forget that Donald Trump—when visiting France to honor the end of World War I—called Americans who died in war “losers” and “suckers.”)

On this day, when we remember Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice, Judge Mehta reminds us what true patriots are willing to fight for. Mehta also helps keep fresh the gravity of what happened on January 6, 2021.

“A seditious conspiracy—when you take those two concepts and put it together—is among the most serious crimes an American can commit. It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country,” Mehta said. “It is a series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons, against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to another. And what was the motive? You didn’t like the new guy.”

“What we absolutely cannot have,” he continued, “is a group of citizens who—because they did not like the outcome of an election, who did not believe the law was followed as it should be—foment revolution.”

Referring to Rhodes’ absence of remorse and his continuing attraction to violence, Mehta said, “It would be one thing, Mr. Rhodes, if after January 6 you had looked at what happened that day and said…that was not a good day for our democracy. But you celebrated it, you thought it was a good thing. Even as you have been incarcerated, you have continued to allude to violence as an acceptable means to address grievances.”

Judge Mehta underscored the central role of Rhodes, which he said amounted to domestic terrorism: “He was the one giving the orders. He was the one organizing the teams that day. He was the reason they were in fact in Washington, D.C. Oath Keepers wouldn’t have been there but for Stewart Rhodes, I don’t think anyone contends otherwise. He was the one who gave the order to go, and they went.”

I concluded last year’s essay like this:

On this Memorial Day, we may pause and recall over 400,000 U.S. military deaths during World War II to fend off the Nazis and myriad attacks against freedom and the democratic way of life. It will take the continuing commitment to justice and service to country by people like Amit Mehta to ensure more seditious conspiracists receive long prison sentences—reminders of the need to hold such violent opponents of democracy accountable and to honor so many Americans who sacrificed their lives. For the good of the country, may there soon be more examples of justice served at the highest levels.

As Judge Mehta warned on Thursday, “I dare say we all now hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. Will we have another Jan. 6 again? That remains to be seen.”

While we have every reason to doubt by Memorial Day 2025 that ringleader Trump will have been held criminally accountable for his inciting role in Jan. 6, we do still have the power at the ballot box to ward off the arrival of fascism in America. With our votes, we can resoundingly declare what true patriotism is—and what a desecration of American ideals and sacrifice looks and sounds like.

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