By Bob Hoyt / Chronicle contributor
This is the season of Veterans Day, of Thanksgiving Day and of Christmas. We paused to remember our war dead. We gave thanks for all that our country means to us. And as Christmas nears we exercise traditional expressions of hope for life beyond this imperfect place.
Lack of peace is one imperfection. Young Americans are buried in cemeteries across half the world. They sacrificed their chance to see their own children running to them with open arms through autumn leaves. They will not sit and rock in old age on their front porches and watch puppies playing with grandchildren. We also remembered those who served and came home never to be the same. And what of the millions in other lands who lost their lives?
How have we failed each other? The elderly long remember other generations praying for peace. But repeating, “God has a plan,” is not enough. Merely saying and praying that we believe in peace has not produced an end to war. Humanity needs to replace limp slogans with a good plan and leaders who will carry out that plan. Perhaps that is what God is waiting for.
Peace will not come so long as religions do not teach their followers to get along with others who believe different things. Peace will not come so long as nations use war as the response of choice to political transgressions. Peace will not come until those who believe in the right to life understand that too much other life is being lost to ignorance and stubbornness. Peace will not come until humans learn that shouting harsh lies at each other only sets us all back. And peace will not come until we become as proficient at seeking peace as we are at building and wielding war machines. We must find better tools to revitalize ourselves and our land. Our nation must once again become the world’s unquestioned example of what is possible.
Extremism does not improve the world. Shouting “no” to every progressive idea may be free speech, but it is not speech for freedom. It is time to reassure each other that freedom and knowledge will light the way. Perhaps the older generations dropped the ball. But now it falls to the young to demonstrate freedom so the oppressed of the world will take up the cause.
So what must change? No person, country or religion has the right to force itself on the rest of the world. We must be free to choose, and we must choose wisely. We shall resist wrong if we must, but never forgetting that too many foreign cemeteries are already populated with Christian crosses and Stars of David. The fallen never got their shot at a full life. But they did their part for us. They paid for our freedom with their young blood. Let’s hope each New Year will offer new opportunities for today’s young to pay their price with learning and sweat and not their own blood. If our leaders face the real problems and do more things right, perhaps new generations will soon give thanks as they build a monument to the day that dreams for world peace came true. That hope endures at the heart of much that this season is all about.
