Remember the Freedom Givers

I wrote this a long time ago and as I was rereading it I was constantly making corrections in my head. However I left it exactly as little fourteen year old me wrote it. I memorized and then performed this piece for my middle school debate competition. It's not the best work I've done but there is a lot of heart and meaning to it. I hope you take the time to reflect and remember those service men and women. It's a little after midnight so it's not veterans day anymore which is just as well. We shouldn't only remember them on a few choice days of the year. 

Original Oratory
Topic: Remember the freedom givers.
By: Aubrianna Hockett June 1, 2008
Dedicated to Mr. Whitson,

Thanks for giving me my freedom. I really appreciate it.

            Have you ever thought about those heroes that died for our freedom? Have you ever thanked their mothers for raising heroes? Have you ever thanked their fathers for telling them they could accomplish anything that they put their mind to? Have you ever even thought about how lucky you are for living in a free country? Have you ever thanked those people who have recurring nightmares of the horrors of war? Do you ever think about these people on days that aren’t set aside for their remembrance?

            War is not glorious. War is not divine. War is hideous and simply ridiculous. Death is not merciful, death is not kind. Death is greedy and ruthless. The nightmares of war never really go away. They are always there deep in your mind. The veterans of wars relive battles each and every day. Not many people in this world have the stomach to take another human’s life. Fewer yet can watch someone’s life slowly slip away and do nothing to help them. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that “it requires more courage to suffer than to die”. I know that it takes even more courage to watch someone else suffer than to suffer yourself. War is definitely not kind.

            What is courage, is it the ability to fight, to hurt someone, is it standing up for what you believe in, is it being not afraid? What is courage? “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear” Ambrose Redmoon. I can guarantee you that anyone who was ever in a battle was scared to death if they weren’t they were later. So does that make them no longer heroes because they were afraid? No, it makes them even more heroic because they could see that something was more important than their own life their own fear.

            Does anyone who has never been to a third world country really understand the freedom that we have in this country? The freedom that we have in this country is amazing. Do we ever thank those veterans that fought for our freedom? How many Americans can honestly say that they thank those veterans every day? I know that I can’t remember those heroes and thank them for everything that they did. It would be absurd if we the people in a free land could not even remember the people who gave us our freedom. The next time that you sing the words “and the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”, the last words of our national anthem written by Francis Scott Key, remember that the brave are still around to thank in person.

            Just think if every person in the United States took ten minutes of their day to humbly do something for those veterans and their families in thanks, what would we be like as a nations? As a state? As a city? As a school? As a family? As individuals? The whole world would benefit from it. If we just sit down for ten minutes, ten minutes a day and think about and thank those heroes for what they did I know that they would hear us. And that they would know that they fought for a reason. The reason of freedom. Remember, everything that we have the privilege to do, is because, of the freedom givers.