May 30, 2022 - The Benny Show - Benny Johnson
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| The dignity, daring, and devotion of the American military is unrivaled anywhere in history and any place in the world. | ||
| Every time we sing our anthem, every time its rousing chorus swells our hearts with pride, we renew the eternal bonds of loyalty to our fallen heroes. | ||
| We think of the soldiers who spend their final heroic moments On distant battlefields to keep us safe at home. | ||
| We remember the young Americans who never got the chance to grow old, but whose legacy will outlive us all. | ||
| Americans gave their lives to carry that flag through piercing waves, blazing fires, sweltering deserts and storms of bullets and shrapnel. | ||
| We stand with you today. | ||
| All days to come, remembering and grieving for America's greatest heroes. | ||
| In spirit and strength, in loyalty and love, in character and courage, they were larger than life itself. | ||
| They were angels sent from above, and they are now rejoined with God in the glorious kingdom of heaven, wherever the stars and stripes fly. | ||
| At our schools, our churches, town halls, firehouses, and national monuments, the names of these fallen warriors will be woven into its threads. | ||
| For as long as we have citizens willing to follow their example, to carry on their burden, to continue their legacy, then America's cause will never fail and American freedom will never, ever die. | ||
| And with God as our witness, we solemnly vow this majestic flag will proudly fly forever. | ||
| God bless our military. | ||
| God bless the memory of the fallen. | ||
| God bless our Gold Star families. | ||
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And God bless America. | |
| My name is Benny Johnson and this is The Benny Show. | ||
| Today is Memorial Day and it is with an extremely grateful heart that we have a very special show for you today. | ||
| We are going to go through the history of Memorial Day, the history of the sacrifice, as 45 said there in our open, angels truly sent from heaven to protect us here on earth. | ||
| Memorial Day is the... | ||
| Day where we remember those who sacrificed their lives gave the fullest measure of devotion, as Lincoln said, or as it is put in the Bible, love has no equal than those who sacrifice for their friends. | ||
| Greater love has no one than this, than somebody who laid down his life for his friends. | ||
| John 15, 13. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to talk about the greatest love, the love of the nearly 3 million American combat casualties in the history of this short country. | ||
| America, as a country, since its founding, has been engaged in nearly 100 different conflicts and many different wars. | ||
| Among these wars, the highest casualty rates for... | ||
| Combat deaths are wars on our own soil. | ||
| The American Civil War had over 1 million American deaths associated with it. | ||
| 214 combat deaths directly. | ||
| The World War II had 291,000 combat deaths directly. | ||
| Forgive me. | ||
| World War I had 53,000 American combat deaths. | ||
| The Vietnam War had 47,000 direct combat deaths. | ||
| The Korean War, 33,000 direct combat deaths. | ||
| But of total deaths, ladies and gentlemen, in the armed services during wartime or conflict, there has been nearly 3 million. | ||
| So we wish to honor the 2,852,901. | ||
| American soldiers, seamen, marines, flyers, all of the above, every single one of you who sacrificed the greatest possible sacrifice for the rest of us and to be what you should be today, which is grateful and thankful and have gratitude in this country. | ||
| We lack gratitude so much in this nation. | ||
| It's truly... | ||
| I think the thing that we are in the least supply of as a country there is no further gratitude in this nation and if you wish to find gratitude in your heart do what many families are doing today which is head to the numerous military cemeteries around this nation where you will be able to see the headstones of the nearly three million Americans who gave their lives so that we could be having this conversation today so that I can be raising my We | ||
| want to talk today about the history of Memorial Day. | ||
| Where does it come from? | ||
| How did we come upon this day of remembrance? | ||
| And what does it mean? | ||
| And we thought we'd present for you a people's history of Memorial Day so that we could just get this day kicked off. | ||
| I know there's going to be plenty of barbecues, lots of pool parties, truck sales. | ||
| Furniture sales, you see it on your TV screen, right? | ||
| What Memorial Day has sort of turned into. | ||
| It's been Americanized and commercialized as everything does. | ||
| But we are going to get back to the basics on this show. | ||
| And again, ladies and gentlemen, we are a patriot channel. | ||
| We are grateful and have deep abiding gratitude in our country and in those who serve this country. | ||
| And so please, if you have a member of the armed services that you want for us to recognize or to thank, leave their name in the comment section. | ||
| Let us know a little bit about them. | ||
| We want to honor your loved ones too with this show. | ||
| Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day originated in the years following the Civil War. | ||
| Again, over one million Americans died in the Civil War. | ||
| It became a federal holiday in 1971, officially. | ||
| In 1868, Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order 11, designating May 30th as Memorial Day for the purpose of sewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of the comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion and whose bodies now lie almost in every city, village, and hamlet and churchyard in the land. | ||
| So this was Decoration Day. | ||
| Decoration Day was to go and to decorate the graves of your fallen comrades in arms in order for them to be remembered. | ||
| And this is why you see to this very day the decoration of tombstones. | ||
| In our national cemeteries. | ||
| Flowers, adornments, photos, grieving families. | ||
| You'll see this all day today, but you'll also see American flags placed in front of each and every single grave and each and every single solemn resting place. | ||
| So it continues to this very day as we decorate in remembrance those who sacrificed all. | ||
| The first national celebration of this day... | ||
| Memorial Day took place on May 30, 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery, where both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried. | ||
| Originally known as Decoration Day, at the turn of the century it was designated Memorial Day, and in many American towns this day is celebrated with a parade. | ||
| Now, what's interesting about Arlington Cemetery is that Robert E. Lee owned Arlington Cemetery, and they buried the American dead during the Civil War on his property. | ||
| They essentially confiscated and took his property. | ||
| You can still go and find remnants of where Robert E. Lee lived and where he had a house and structure there. | ||
| A bit of a statement by the American Armed Services to a man who was trained by West Point. | ||
| Could have been a commanding general. | ||
| Lincoln wanted him to be the commanding general of the Union Army, and he said, I will go with my home state of Virginia, famously, and of course was the key general for the Confederacy. | ||
| So they took his land and they buried the dead on that land of that Great War. | ||
| Again, a bit out of spite, but who can blame them? | ||
| The bloodiest engagement, of course, in American history, the Great Civil War, to make this Union whole again. | ||
| And to embody the full encompassing of our founding fathers who stated that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is for all men who are created equal before God. | ||
| That is the realization of the American promise in the Civil War. | ||
| And millions of Americans gave their lives for that promise. | ||
| God bless them. | ||
| Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War's end. | ||
| Records show that in 1865, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedence for Memorial Day. | ||
| When a Women's Memorial Association in Columbus, Mississippi, decorated the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers in 1866, this Act of generosity and reconciliation prompted an editorial piece published by Horace Greenlee's New York Tribune, a poem by Francis Miles Finch, The Blue and the Gray, of course referring to the blue uniforms of the Union and the gray uniforms of the Confederacy, published in the Atlantic Monthly. | ||
| The practice of sewing flowers on soldiers' graves soon became popular throughout the reunited nations for healing of this country and the healing of the North and the South in one union together again. | ||
| Memorial Day, as Decoration Day gradually became known, originally honored only those who lost Their lives while fighting in the Civil War. | ||
| But during World War I, the United States found itself embroiled in another major conflict and the holiday evolved to commemorate American military personnel who died in all wars, including World War II, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| The Uniform Monday Holiday Act For decades, Memorial Day continued to be observed on May 30th, and the date General Logan had set for the Decoration Day, General Logan being the Civil War general who began this day and this memorial holiday. | ||
| In 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May today. | ||
| In order to create a three-day weekend for federal employees. | ||
| The change went into effect in 1971. | ||
| The same law also declared Memorial Day a federal holiday. | ||
| President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed Waterloo, New York as the birthplace of Memorial Day because it began a formal observance in May 5th of 1966, back when they were observing Civil War deaths again. | ||
| Day of Remembrance gets its origins. | ||
| Today, national observance of the holiday takes place at Arlington National Cemetery with the placing of a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier and the decoration of each grave with a small American flag. | ||
| Protocol for flying the American flag on Memorial Day includes raising it quickly to the top of the pole at sunrise, immediately lowering it to half-staff until noon, and displaying it at full-staff from noon to sunset. | ||
| For other Guidelines, please see the flag code. | ||
| If you do have a flag in your yard, we encourage you to follow flag code especially on this day. | ||
| If you haven't been to Arlington National Cemetery, you can see images of it on your screen. | ||
| I encourage you to go. | ||
| If you are near Washington, D.C., it is the most important place to visit. | ||
| The monuments for Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson are stunning. | ||
| There are beautiful places all around Washington. | ||
| I lived in Washington, D.C. for 15 years. | ||
| In spite of what these communists have tried to do to that city, there still remains gorgeous and truly awe-inspiring monuments laying throughout the city. | ||
| None is more important than Arlington National Cemetery directly across the Potomac. | ||
| If you haven't seen the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and watched what happens at the changing of the guard, it will, again, take your breath away. | ||
| You will be so in awe of our military and the reverence, and you'll see the white headstones clearing Across the hillside. | ||
| As far as the eye can see. | ||
| And in fact, if you wish to see Arlington Cemetery, look out your plane window if you're landing at Reagan National in Washington, D.C. If you're there on a tourist trip or school trip, no doubt you land at Reagan National and you can see the cemetery laid bare and it just stretches on for miles and miles and miles. | ||
| There are the soldiers that died. | ||
| in the Revolutionary War in Gettysburg. | ||
| There are the soldiers who died at Bull Run, who died in the storming of Vicksburg. | ||
| There are inlaid the soldiers who died on D-Day and the soldiers who died in the Argonne, those men Who stormed the beaches to free an entire continent from radicalized fascism and socialism. | ||
| Those are the men who bravely sacrificed everything for the man next to them during Korea and Vietnam. | ||
| Often forgotten wars and wars that have mixed emotions for Americans. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| And if you speak to the Vietnam veterans who show up every single year for Rolling Thunder, as they did just this last weekend, we've gone there and covered that before, you'll see precisely the value and the heartache of many of these men. | ||
| And the wounds are still open to this very day. | ||
| There you will find the treasured and honored souls. | ||
| Who fought in my generation, in technically my generation, Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan, the young men and women that I went to school with, the young men and women who I knew and who lost their lives in the global war on terror. | ||
| And you see their headstones and they're a little bit crisper and they're a little bit cleaner and they're younger and they're newer than some of the older. | ||
| Worn headstones, but they are all of the same mold, and they all are of the same beautiful stone that sort of glistens in the sun, and it's like angelic. | ||
| It shines bright, and there's almost like a sparkle to it, much like these young men and women themselves, their lives. | ||
| Living as angels, guardian angels, to protect the rest of us. | ||
| And so it's fitting that their headstones are those colors and that we decorate them today. | ||
| And I just encourage you, again, if you wish to have an emotional experience, if you wish, if you have an hour in Washington, D.C., please go to Arlington National Cemetery. | ||
| See it for yourself. | ||
| It is... | ||
| The personification of being an American and what this nation means. | ||
| You will leave with your heart sunken in gratitude beyond measure. | ||
| Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, if you haven't seen it, go. | ||
| It will remind you that there is something much greater than the battles of politics that we have to this very day. | ||
| Everything will begin to seem very small when you're at Arlington National Cemetery. | ||
| So again, please go. | ||
| Many veterans of the Vietnam War and relatives and friends of those who fought in that conflict make the pilgrimage over Memorial Day weekend to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., where they pay their respects to another generation of fallen soldiers. | ||
| This is, of course, very difficult to walk through the Vietnam War Memorial during this time because there are so many personal items. | ||
| There are so many who are still living today. | ||
| That know that conflict, that have loved ones in that conflict, who perished in that conflict, and the wall just engulfs you as you travel through the Vietnam War Memorial. | ||
| It just sort of swallows you whole as you sink into the names, and the names aren't printed. | ||
| The names are printed so small, and they just engulf you. | ||
| And the pathway is quite large in front of that memorial, and it's just laid bare, laid full with wreaths and with personal totems and memories of these men and these women who died in that conflict. | ||
| And it is hard to see. | ||
| You'll see large men in leather motorcycle jackets with big beards. | ||
| And patches sewn onto those jackets, crying at that wall. | ||
| And it is tough. | ||
| It is tough, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| But it reminds you. | ||
| It gives you a special gratitude. | ||
| Again, today's episode is about gratitude. | ||
| It gives you a special gratitude for what they went through and for the sacrifices that were made to keep us free. | ||
| Presidents visit Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. | ||
| This is tradition. | ||
| Those presidents often lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. | ||
| Inside of that tomb are soldiers. | ||
| Who could not be identified. | ||
| And so their remains were laying in that tomb. | ||
| And it is a holy place in this country. | ||
| You'll see families who are mourning the loss of their loved ones. | ||
| There's a famous moment where Donald Trump, we don't want to make this overtly political, but Donald Trump was there and seeing the young son of Christian Jacobs. | ||
| His name is Christian Jacobs. | ||
| His father, Christopher Jacobs, had lost his life in battle, and he was a Marine, and his son was dressed in his uniform in honor of his father, was grieving, and Donald Trump, as a president should, in the most important role of a president, walked over to the boy, hugged him, and spent some very moving time with this family. | ||
| It was, I think, my favorite memory, perhaps, from the entire Trump presidency, was this, this being the distillation of what a president should and must do as commander-in-chief for those families who gave everything. | ||
| Please watch. | ||
| On this Memorial Day, I know that everybody is remembering the fallen soldiers. | ||
| Who have paid the ultimate price for our country. | ||
| And it's a country that we all love. | ||
| Last year, at Arlington Cemetery, I met a young boy named Christian Jacobs. | ||
| He was special. | ||
| He was standing fully in a uniform. | ||
| His father was a great man to him, and he was a great man to me. | ||
| And Christian was standing over his father's grave, saluting. | ||
| It was something I'll never forget. | ||
| Arlington is a special place, and our country is a special place. | ||
| As Americans, we come together to remember our great heroes on this Memorial Day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
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Thank you. | |
| So on this day and as we. | ||
| See on our social media feeds programs like this and photos of families mourning, photos of remembrance. | ||
| I saw even Google had a testament to remembrance this morning. | ||
| Perhaps it's time for us to put aside the petty politics of the day and recognize that there is something much bigger than our current battles and that something is... | ||
| Those who sacrificed so that we could even be here in this moment, live streaming this show, and remembering that America is only one generation away from being plunged into darkness. | ||
| And it is those mean, rough men who stand guard in the dark, small hours of the night to protect your children. | ||
| Your spouse, your home, your life. | ||
| The histories of the world has been a history of war and blood and carnage and evil and conquest. | ||
| And this illusion of peace and prosperity is truly in and of itself an illusion because it is all because. | ||
| Of those rough, dark men, soldiers, service members who stood in the gap and said, you will come no farther. | ||
| You, the forces of evil, whether those forces be imperialism in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, whether those forces be the forces of slavery, And the enslavement of other human beings in America's tumultuous civil war. | ||
| Whether those forces be the forces of communism or fascism in the 20th century. | ||
| Communism and fascism, of course, taking far more people in their own countries than on the battlefields. | ||
| We discuss this often. | ||
| That the real killer in these ideologies, these wicked, sick ideologies, are the people of China. | ||
| Who lost 60 million people under communism. | ||
| The people of Russia, 20 million of their own people lost under communism to their own party, right? | ||
| These are evil ideologies, and it's time to call them out as the true battle. | ||
| And this is what we try and talk about on this show. | ||
| Because these soldiers, these service members who... | ||
| Lie in hallowed ground underneath those gleaming beautiful headstones. | ||
| They didn't fight for communism and they didn't die for socialism. | ||
| They died for freedom and eternity of God's design for us as individuals to live free and to have as our pursuits life, liberty, property. | ||
| Happiness. | ||
| They died to protect our last great hope here of Western civilization, of a society that is based on the enlightened principles of Christianity and of Western thought and of all men being created equal. | ||
| They did not die for communism. | ||
| They did not die for fascism. | ||
| They did not die for the erosion of those rights. | ||
| And so, let us take unto ourselves renewed devotion to which these men gave their last full and final testament, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln. | ||
| And let us take unto ourselves a devotion to continue to protect those things in this, our memorial day. | ||
| That would be the most... | ||
| Perfect way to remember these men. | ||
| To continue their fight. | ||
| To continue their fight. | ||
| To continue their fight with our lives. | ||
| And to ensure that this nation remains the land of the free and not the land of the enslaved. | ||
| This is our battle. | ||
| This is our fight. | ||
| This is why we remember And this is why we say, thank you. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| You are in heaven as angels now. | ||
| You precious few. | ||
| You great defenders and protectors. | ||
| You American heroes deserving fully of that title. | ||
| We honor you and we remember you today. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| My name is Benny Johnson. | ||
| This has been The Benny Show. |
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