Veterans Day In America Is Remembrance Day In The Anglosphere—Honoring Those Who Fought... And Those Who Didn't Come Back
James Fulford writes: Veterans Day in America is on November 11 because that’s when WWI ended. It used to be called ”Armistice Day” until Eisenhower changed it in 1954.
In a Memorial Day post some years ago, the late Kevin R. C. O’Brien, a veteran himself, explained that that day was to honor the dead, not to say ”Thank you for your service”:
Memorial Day is not on occasion to celebrate those many of us who survive. At least, not in the USA. We’ve got a day for that, in the bitter month of November, for good and historical reasons. That’s the day for those who returned upright and animate. [“Happy Memorial Day?,” Weaponsman, May 30, 2016]
It’s not like that in the rest of the Anglosphere.
November 11 is celebrated as Remembrance Day in Canada, England, Australia, and other Anglosphere countries. It’s more like Memorial Day in America, in that it’s dedicated to the honored dead, rather than living veterans.
Writing about Memorial Day, a few years ago, I wrote that VDARE’s overseas Anglospheric readers celebrate Remembrance Day on November 11 (Armistice Day in the U.S.) in honor of a soul-destroying, seemingly pointless slaughter that destroyed the old order between 1914 and 1918.
But by 1914, the United States had already been memorializing its own soul-destroying, seemingly pointless slaughter for fifty years.
In both cases, the participants thought they were achieving something, but in the end, they hadn’t. World War I didn’t prevent World War II, and the Civil War ended in (a) Reconstruction and (b) the failure of Reconstruction.
Read the rest at VDARE.com
