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Home – American Heritage News – Victor Davis Hanson: The 1.2 Million Reasons America Exists Today

Victor Davis Hanson: The 1.2 Million Reasons America Exists Today

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.  

This Monday was Memorial Day. It commemorated all the Americans who died on behalf of the United States from its beginning to the present. It started out as Decoration Day. It was a phenomenon that grew out of the horrific Civil War in which 650,0000-700,000 Americans, North and South, died. 

And people in that postwar era felt that their graves should be commemorated. And once people started to decorate the graves or put flowers on them or flags, that custom spread to the North, and each state then started to commemorate it. And it was finally federalized as an official holiday not until 1971. 

I can remember when I was a senior in high school, it was announced that from now on, the last Monday coinciding with a three-day weekend would be commemorated as Memorial Day. I found a lot of students confuse it, or they do not even know what it is. They think that Veterans Day, which always falls on Nov. 11, is the same. 

No, it commemorates anybody, everybody who served in the armed forces, whether they were wounded, killed, or survived. And that is always on November 11 for a reason. It grew out of Armistice Day, and that was the ending of the First World War. It was decided to make it an iconic time or date, so it was the 11th month, November, on the 11th day, at the 11th hour of the day when the fighting stopped. 

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