Christopher Holshek's Blog
June 11, 2020
Is Freedom Just Another Word?
This article appeared in Medium.com on June 5th 2020...
As editor of my high school newspaper, I interviewed our principal, Herbert Fliegner. Starting in the Hitler Youth, he was pressed, as a child soldier, to defend Berlin, then again involuntarily inducted into the Young Pioneers in the Soviet zone before escaping to West Germany. After he emigrated to the United States, the Army drafted him. Unlike most Americans, with conscription in three national armies, Mr. Fliegner experienced three modern forms of government — fascism, communism, and democracy.
During the discussion of freedom of expression, including inflammatory articles in our paper and spontaneous student protests, Mr. Fliegner peered at me over his spectacles. “Freedom is not license to just do what you want,” he said in his thick Teutonic accent. “With each and every right comes an equal and concomitant responsibility,” he paused. “When you fail to assume those responsibilities, sooner or later you will forfeit the rights that go with them.” Those words have stuck with me ever since.
Freedom, at least as a word, has had quite a bit of airplay lately. There was a “distorted discussion of freedom” in the hyper-politicization of the false choice between economic livelihood and personal and community safety, culminating in the imagery of beachcombers and partygoers massed in defiance of coronavirus social protocols.
In many ways, the fear-based stay-at-home messaging has worked too well, as British author Frank Furedi suggested in Spiked. “This is why so many people seem willing to accept such a grievous loss of freedom — because they want to be safe.” Especially since 9/11, the deification of safety and security has pervaded nearly every aspect of life to the point of dominating all other social values — played out in narratives that heroize those in the business of protection, from soldiers to police to health care professionals.
The barrages of bad news, political upheavals, and rapid-fire crises of late have accelerated an acculturated insecurity and its addiction to safety. All the made-up mayhem distracts from any sense of control over personal or community life, shoving us toward simple autocratic solutions for complex, collaborative problems. It tears the guiding threads of age-old norms in the fabric of civil society and our resilience to manipulation. “Control requires a willingness to attempt to manage and live with uncertainty,” Furedi pointed out. “Unfortunately, the capacity for dealing with uncertainty has been undermined by a culturally induced sense of helplessness.”
In the swirl of worldwide pandemic, telling others to “stay safe” has become a ritualistic twist of narrative — a way of reinforcing the widely held belief that we are constantly at risk, so we have to accept and do what we’re told. Except that more and more of us aren’t buying it.
The tension between freedom and security is nothing new. Security is among the most basic of human motives, as Abraham Maslow would attest. Alexander Hamilton warned that “even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates.”
Freedom, on the other hand, is an appeal to something much higher in the human condition, and thus much harder to gain and sustain. The struggle for liberty, not security, is the traditional default of America’s national operating software. Some have explained it in terms of “freedom” meaning different things to different people. Irbam X. Kenid recently posed in The Atlantic that this dichotomy in American culture lies in “reconciling the unreconcilable: individual freedom and community freedom,” or the freedom of the slaveholder versus the slave. One is the individual freedom to enslave, disenfranchise, exploit, impoverish, demean, and silence; whereas the other is the communal freedom from all these injustices.
“From the beginning of the American project, the powerful individual has been battling for his constitutional freedom to harm, and the vulnerable community has been battling for its constitutional freedom from harm. Both freedoms were inscribed into the U.S. Constitution, into the American psyche.” The current pandemic, Kenid further argues, is eviscerating “the very core of American existence: the slaveholder clamoring for his freedom to infect, and the enslaved clamoring for our freedom from infection.”
This is an interesting framing of the problem. In understanding freedom, however, it is also inadequate. What Kenid and others, including white supremacists, are really missing is the difference between freedom and privilege — another word for freedom without responsibility. Digital journalist Justin King, in his video essay, noted how “those who have focused solely on their rights and not on their responsibilities, their obligations to humanity and society… it just reeks of privilege.”
Privilege is the entitlement of a few to do anything without obligation; freedom is the right of all to do what they deem essential to their way of life — provided they respect the right of others to do likewise. The Golden Rule. When Amy Cooper, a self-professed liberal, threatened to call the cops on Christian Cooper in Central Park, she was exercising privilege, because she took no responsibility for the consequences of her action. Even “if you have the right to do anything,” King went on, “you also have shared responsibility for everything.” If you refuse the latter, then you can’t expect to have and hold the former — which is what Mr. Fliegner was talking about.
The pandemic has done its part to reinvigorate this core discussion of American identity. The murder of George Floyd in broad daylight by an officer of the law has triggered what retired Admiral Mike Mullen called “an inflection point” on whether all or some are eligible to enjoy the blessings of liberty. Beyond the conflict between the better and lesser angels of our nature, freedom vs. privilege has been the root question since the founders forged a Republic out of a compromise with the demons of racism for the sake of national unity.
Now, for the very same reason, we must exorcise them.
“The hate epidemic is far more destructive to our well-being and survival than the COVID-19 pandemic could ever be,” social scientist Renu Persaud pointed out. “There is no treatment for the malaise of racial inequality. The treatment depends on our pre-existing potential for compassion.” Freedom, however, requires more than empathy.
“Historically, the virtue of courage was regarded as the most effective antidote to fear. Western society still holds courage in high regard,” Faredi reminded us. “As the philosopher Hannah Arendt explained, courage not only provides society with hope — it also underwrites society’s capacity to exercise freedom.” Moral or civil courage — the willingness to walk what we talk — is the responsibility of the many and not just the few.
In today’s post-truth psycho-system, its pursuit is especially arduous. “In everyday life we have become so estranged from it that we do very little to cultivate it,” Faredi observed. “In effect, the ideal of courage has been downsized, reduced to just another instrument in a self-help toolkit.” The same goes for moral consciousness, which the American theologian Thomas Merton called “the soul of freedom” in No Man Is an Island. “Without conscience, freedom never knows what to do with itself.” This is why rights cannot exist without responsibilities.
The struggle we now face is what retired Marine general and former defense secretary James Mattis called, in his rebuke of Donald Trump, “a wholesome and unifying demand — one that all of us should be able to get behind. We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis — confident that we are better than our politics.”
The question of whether there should be “new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln called it, has already been answered. The question is whether we can recognize the call to action of our time and assume its inherent responsibilities, to each other as well as ourselves. “If you want change in America, go and register to vote. That is the change we need in this country,” Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms implored her fellow citizens.
Freedom, indeed, is not free. This generational call to join the march of inclusiveness in the American journey to form a more perfect Union requires far more than social media posts or the cleverest memes or slogans. That journey entails a marathon, not a sprint. Nor is its outcome a given. Whether freedom’s just another word depends on those who use or abuse it. It cannot be doled out to us; we must take it, and all that goes with it.
“Just remember, this country was founded on protest: it is called the American Revolution, and every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals has been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable,” former president Obama reminded younger Americans in a virtual town meeting. “And we should all be thankful for folks who are willing, in a peaceful, disciplined way, to be out there making a difference.” In other words, freedom, like democracy itself, grows from the ground up.
There is a reason why demonstrations for racial justice in America are taking place in nearly 20 other countries as well as 50 states. If the experiment in self-governance fails over here, it will likely fail over there. What Hong Kongese are doing is inspiring, a reminder of how freedom cannot come cheaply. We owe them — and ourselves — the same display of compassion, courage, conscientiousness, and commitment. “Only by adopting a new path — which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals — will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad,” Mattis concluded.
“Follow your bliss,” the American mythologist Joseph Campbell advised his students; but bliss, like freedom, is not just doing what you want. It’s doing what you know is right, as an individual, as you find your place in the world. It’s taking responsibility for the destiny that calls you to a higher purpose than self-preservation.
The author, Colonel, U.S. Army Civil Affairs (Ret.) is a Senior Civil-Military Advisor at Narrative Strategies, LLC and the NATO ResilientCivilians project. He is also founder of the National Service Ride project and author of Travels with Harley — Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity.
As editor of my high school newspaper, I interviewed our principal, Herbert Fliegner. Starting in the Hitler Youth, he was pressed, as a child soldier, to defend Berlin, then again involuntarily inducted into the Young Pioneers in the Soviet zone before escaping to West Germany. After he emigrated to the United States, the Army drafted him. Unlike most Americans, with conscription in three national armies, Mr. Fliegner experienced three modern forms of government — fascism, communism, and democracy.
During the discussion of freedom of expression, including inflammatory articles in our paper and spontaneous student protests, Mr. Fliegner peered at me over his spectacles. “Freedom is not license to just do what you want,” he said in his thick Teutonic accent. “With each and every right comes an equal and concomitant responsibility,” he paused. “When you fail to assume those responsibilities, sooner or later you will forfeit the rights that go with them.” Those words have stuck with me ever since.
Freedom, at least as a word, has had quite a bit of airplay lately. There was a “distorted discussion of freedom” in the hyper-politicization of the false choice between economic livelihood and personal and community safety, culminating in the imagery of beachcombers and partygoers massed in defiance of coronavirus social protocols.
In many ways, the fear-based stay-at-home messaging has worked too well, as British author Frank Furedi suggested in Spiked. “This is why so many people seem willing to accept such a grievous loss of freedom — because they want to be safe.” Especially since 9/11, the deification of safety and security has pervaded nearly every aspect of life to the point of dominating all other social values — played out in narratives that heroize those in the business of protection, from soldiers to police to health care professionals.
The barrages of bad news, political upheavals, and rapid-fire crises of late have accelerated an acculturated insecurity and its addiction to safety. All the made-up mayhem distracts from any sense of control over personal or community life, shoving us toward simple autocratic solutions for complex, collaborative problems. It tears the guiding threads of age-old norms in the fabric of civil society and our resilience to manipulation. “Control requires a willingness to attempt to manage and live with uncertainty,” Furedi pointed out. “Unfortunately, the capacity for dealing with uncertainty has been undermined by a culturally induced sense of helplessness.”
In the swirl of worldwide pandemic, telling others to “stay safe” has become a ritualistic twist of narrative — a way of reinforcing the widely held belief that we are constantly at risk, so we have to accept and do what we’re told. Except that more and more of us aren’t buying it.
The tension between freedom and security is nothing new. Security is among the most basic of human motives, as Abraham Maslow would attest. Alexander Hamilton warned that “even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates.”
Freedom, on the other hand, is an appeal to something much higher in the human condition, and thus much harder to gain and sustain. The struggle for liberty, not security, is the traditional default of America’s national operating software. Some have explained it in terms of “freedom” meaning different things to different people. Irbam X. Kenid recently posed in The Atlantic that this dichotomy in American culture lies in “reconciling the unreconcilable: individual freedom and community freedom,” or the freedom of the slaveholder versus the slave. One is the individual freedom to enslave, disenfranchise, exploit, impoverish, demean, and silence; whereas the other is the communal freedom from all these injustices.
“From the beginning of the American project, the powerful individual has been battling for his constitutional freedom to harm, and the vulnerable community has been battling for its constitutional freedom from harm. Both freedoms were inscribed into the U.S. Constitution, into the American psyche.” The current pandemic, Kenid further argues, is eviscerating “the very core of American existence: the slaveholder clamoring for his freedom to infect, and the enslaved clamoring for our freedom from infection.”
This is an interesting framing of the problem. In understanding freedom, however, it is also inadequate. What Kenid and others, including white supremacists, are really missing is the difference between freedom and privilege — another word for freedom without responsibility. Digital journalist Justin King, in his video essay, noted how “those who have focused solely on their rights and not on their responsibilities, their obligations to humanity and society… it just reeks of privilege.”
Privilege is the entitlement of a few to do anything without obligation; freedom is the right of all to do what they deem essential to their way of life — provided they respect the right of others to do likewise. The Golden Rule. When Amy Cooper, a self-professed liberal, threatened to call the cops on Christian Cooper in Central Park, she was exercising privilege, because she took no responsibility for the consequences of her action. Even “if you have the right to do anything,” King went on, “you also have shared responsibility for everything.” If you refuse the latter, then you can’t expect to have and hold the former — which is what Mr. Fliegner was talking about.
The pandemic has done its part to reinvigorate this core discussion of American identity. The murder of George Floyd in broad daylight by an officer of the law has triggered what retired Admiral Mike Mullen called “an inflection point” on whether all or some are eligible to enjoy the blessings of liberty. Beyond the conflict between the better and lesser angels of our nature, freedom vs. privilege has been the root question since the founders forged a Republic out of a compromise with the demons of racism for the sake of national unity.
Now, for the very same reason, we must exorcise them.
“The hate epidemic is far more destructive to our well-being and survival than the COVID-19 pandemic could ever be,” social scientist Renu Persaud pointed out. “There is no treatment for the malaise of racial inequality. The treatment depends on our pre-existing potential for compassion.” Freedom, however, requires more than empathy.
“Historically, the virtue of courage was regarded as the most effective antidote to fear. Western society still holds courage in high regard,” Faredi reminded us. “As the philosopher Hannah Arendt explained, courage not only provides society with hope — it also underwrites society’s capacity to exercise freedom.” Moral or civil courage — the willingness to walk what we talk — is the responsibility of the many and not just the few.
In today’s post-truth psycho-system, its pursuit is especially arduous. “In everyday life we have become so estranged from it that we do very little to cultivate it,” Faredi observed. “In effect, the ideal of courage has been downsized, reduced to just another instrument in a self-help toolkit.” The same goes for moral consciousness, which the American theologian Thomas Merton called “the soul of freedom” in No Man Is an Island. “Without conscience, freedom never knows what to do with itself.” This is why rights cannot exist without responsibilities.
The struggle we now face is what retired Marine general and former defense secretary James Mattis called, in his rebuke of Donald Trump, “a wholesome and unifying demand — one that all of us should be able to get behind. We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis — confident that we are better than our politics.”
The question of whether there should be “new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln called it, has already been answered. The question is whether we can recognize the call to action of our time and assume its inherent responsibilities, to each other as well as ourselves. “If you want change in America, go and register to vote. That is the change we need in this country,” Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms implored her fellow citizens.
Freedom, indeed, is not free. This generational call to join the march of inclusiveness in the American journey to form a more perfect Union requires far more than social media posts or the cleverest memes or slogans. That journey entails a marathon, not a sprint. Nor is its outcome a given. Whether freedom’s just another word depends on those who use or abuse it. It cannot be doled out to us; we must take it, and all that goes with it.
“Just remember, this country was founded on protest: it is called the American Revolution, and every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals has been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable,” former president Obama reminded younger Americans in a virtual town meeting. “And we should all be thankful for folks who are willing, in a peaceful, disciplined way, to be out there making a difference.” In other words, freedom, like democracy itself, grows from the ground up.
There is a reason why demonstrations for racial justice in America are taking place in nearly 20 other countries as well as 50 states. If the experiment in self-governance fails over here, it will likely fail over there. What Hong Kongese are doing is inspiring, a reminder of how freedom cannot come cheaply. We owe them — and ourselves — the same display of compassion, courage, conscientiousness, and commitment. “Only by adopting a new path — which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals — will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad,” Mattis concluded.
“Follow your bliss,” the American mythologist Joseph Campbell advised his students; but bliss, like freedom, is not just doing what you want. It’s doing what you know is right, as an individual, as you find your place in the world. It’s taking responsibility for the destiny that calls you to a higher purpose than self-preservation.
The author, Colonel, U.S. Army Civil Affairs (Ret.) is a Senior Civil-Military Advisor at Narrative Strategies, LLC and the NATO ResilientCivilians project. He is also founder of the National Service Ride project and author of Travels with Harley — Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity.
May 27, 2020
A Country Worth Our Sacrifices
This article appeared in Medium.com on 23 May 2020...
Over the past few years, every time I heard people thank me for my military service, I responded by asking them about their own careers. Some tell me about their public service as police officers, firefighters, emergency responders, civil servants, teachers, journalists, and so on. Others talk about their volunteer or charity work in their communities. To which my response is always: “Well, then, thank you for your service.”
At times I’ve received strange looks or a dismissal that it’s not the same thing. “It’s one thing to defend your country; it’s another to have a country worth defending,” I explain empathetically, relating a fundamental element of civics in a democratic society — the compact between the citizen and the soldier. “What you’ve done gives value to what I’ve done,” I add.
I put this paradox to practice most recently in thanking the staff of Valley View Nursing Center here in upstate New York for their compassionate care of people like my mother, who succumbed to COVID-19 early this month. While sensing the emptiness many feel in near-catechistic recital of what West Point professor Elizabeth Samet called a “mantra of atonement,” it felt different when I delivered the sandwiches and cookies. Many knew me as my mother’s caregiver and brother of a registered nurse working there longer than my 30 years in the Army. In awe of their vocation and aware of my own unsuitability for it, I was able to return the favor of gratitude with a meaning well beyond a catchphrase.
Since especially 9/11 the military has been the most esteemed institution in this country, because many see soldiers as the ultimate public servants. That wasn’t always true. Inasmuch as Vietnam was a low point in our civil-military relations, we have swung to an equally unhealthy extreme. Too many of our political, economic, social, and media elites unabashedly exploit “patriotism” as a prop in pursuit of their own agendas. Businesses of all kinds cash in on the good PR it generates. To “support the troops” has become equivalent to motherhood, apple pie, and kissing babies.
The more perilous flipside to the militarization of our ethos of national service, however, is that it is intrinsically authoritarian, undemocratic, and elitist. Our decision in 1973 to pay the economic rather than social costs for a large, standing peacetime army has resulted in an increasingly professional but correspondingly disconnected warrior class. And the more they are, the more the 99% of us and our elites who never wore a combat uniform are willing to employ them to execute the last mile of policies they advocate but have little personal stake in. “No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” James Madison warned us.
It’s time for us to move forward again, but in a different way. Gradually, we have been coming to recognize and value the service and sacrifice of others — police, fire, and other first responders at first. As of late, our enthusiasm has swung toward public health and medical professionals and even essential service workers many haven’t believed should make $15 an hour.
There’s also goodness in the rising movement for a comprehensive national service bill. “As a nation, the United States has not unlocked the full, transformational potential of service in all its forms,” National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service Chairman Joseph J. Heck wrote in the introduction to its final report. “We believe that the current moment requires a collective effort to build upon America’s spirit of service to cultivate a widespread culture of service — a culture in which individuals of all backgrounds both expect and aspire to serve their nation or community and have meaningful opportunities to serve throughout their lifetime.”
The national mythology that summons our psychic as well as physical energies should champion role models from all walks of life and every corner of our country, tapping the essential strengths and comparative advantages of a diverse society under the rubric of e pluribus unum. Volunteerism is the way Americans reconcile individualism and community. It defines much of our national character as well as brands our sense of citizenship. Our heroes are avatars of the values in action that form our personal and national identities.
The coronavirus pandemic has opened more opportunities to democratize and demilitarize our national narrative of service, if we seize them. This would no doubt bring us a little closer together — we may still not respect each other’s opinions; but we should at least respect each other’s commitment to community and country as well as personal wellbeing.
It would do more than that. It’s clear to me, as a former citizen-soldier, that a common sense of service would make us better citizens, tempering our narcissist tendencies and helping us meet challenges we must inevitably face together. And when we become better citizens, we become a better country. Our long-standing penchant for charity, volunteerism, and bottom-up change is among the things that has made the United States the country it promises to be. And like charity, citizenship begins on the block.
It would also enable a generational process of passing the baton of leadership to prepare the next cohort of Americans to take their own journey to find an answer to the question of who we are and what we’re about. By encouraging and empowering not just young people to do good work closer to home, paying it forward as well as giving back, they can see how service to others benefits everyone including themselves, helping them find more authenticity in their lives than social media and reality shows. Each of us can set that example, without waiting for political leadership.
It’s more than service itself that does this. Shared values also come from shared cost. Service requires sacrifice, which gives service its value. It’s why we have Memorial Day. Yet, just as with service, we take for granted the sacrifice of the many and not just the few. We lose more police and firefighters in America each year than troops abroad. In the same places we have sent our soldiers, we overlook the loss of civilian contractors, diplomats and developers, and volunteers in organizations like the Peace Corps and the United Nations. Already hundreds of public health professionals have lost their lives on the front lines fighting COVID-19. We need to pay all of these people as much reverence for their sacrifices, great and small, as we do for military servicemembers.
As America itself has, Memorial Day evolved along a path of greater inclusiveness. First called Decoration Day to honor those who died preserving the Union in the Civil War, in 1926, Congress authorized and directed the Secretary of War to designate Memorial Day a national holiday and changed it from honoring Union soldiers to honoring all Americans who died fighting in all wars. We should continue that march. Memorial Day should henceforth honor all who gave their lives in national, public, or community service.
If Americans truly wish to honor veterans and so many others in service, in and out of uniform, who have given the last full measure of devotion, then they should strive to make this a country worth their sacrifice by walking the walk more than talking the talk. It doesn’t require a uniform or even a program; it begins with simple acts of kindness. And when you serve your community, you serve your country.
The best way to stand up for all the fallen is to be citizens as responsible to our neighbors as to our nation, because they are one and the same. Only united can we stand the tests of our times.
The author, Colonel, U.S. Army Civil Affairs (Ret.) is a Senior Civil-Military Advisor at Narrative Strategies, LLC and the NATO ResilientCivilians project, founder of the National Service Ride project, and author of Travels with Harley — Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity.
Over the past few years, every time I heard people thank me for my military service, I responded by asking them about their own careers. Some tell me about their public service as police officers, firefighters, emergency responders, civil servants, teachers, journalists, and so on. Others talk about their volunteer or charity work in their communities. To which my response is always: “Well, then, thank you for your service.”
At times I’ve received strange looks or a dismissal that it’s not the same thing. “It’s one thing to defend your country; it’s another to have a country worth defending,” I explain empathetically, relating a fundamental element of civics in a democratic society — the compact between the citizen and the soldier. “What you’ve done gives value to what I’ve done,” I add.
I put this paradox to practice most recently in thanking the staff of Valley View Nursing Center here in upstate New York for their compassionate care of people like my mother, who succumbed to COVID-19 early this month. While sensing the emptiness many feel in near-catechistic recital of what West Point professor Elizabeth Samet called a “mantra of atonement,” it felt different when I delivered the sandwiches and cookies. Many knew me as my mother’s caregiver and brother of a registered nurse working there longer than my 30 years in the Army. In awe of their vocation and aware of my own unsuitability for it, I was able to return the favor of gratitude with a meaning well beyond a catchphrase.
Since especially 9/11 the military has been the most esteemed institution in this country, because many see soldiers as the ultimate public servants. That wasn’t always true. Inasmuch as Vietnam was a low point in our civil-military relations, we have swung to an equally unhealthy extreme. Too many of our political, economic, social, and media elites unabashedly exploit “patriotism” as a prop in pursuit of their own agendas. Businesses of all kinds cash in on the good PR it generates. To “support the troops” has become equivalent to motherhood, apple pie, and kissing babies.
The more perilous flipside to the militarization of our ethos of national service, however, is that it is intrinsically authoritarian, undemocratic, and elitist. Our decision in 1973 to pay the economic rather than social costs for a large, standing peacetime army has resulted in an increasingly professional but correspondingly disconnected warrior class. And the more they are, the more the 99% of us and our elites who never wore a combat uniform are willing to employ them to execute the last mile of policies they advocate but have little personal stake in. “No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” James Madison warned us.
It’s time for us to move forward again, but in a different way. Gradually, we have been coming to recognize and value the service and sacrifice of others — police, fire, and other first responders at first. As of late, our enthusiasm has swung toward public health and medical professionals and even essential service workers many haven’t believed should make $15 an hour.
There’s also goodness in the rising movement for a comprehensive national service bill. “As a nation, the United States has not unlocked the full, transformational potential of service in all its forms,” National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service Chairman Joseph J. Heck wrote in the introduction to its final report. “We believe that the current moment requires a collective effort to build upon America’s spirit of service to cultivate a widespread culture of service — a culture in which individuals of all backgrounds both expect and aspire to serve their nation or community and have meaningful opportunities to serve throughout their lifetime.”
The national mythology that summons our psychic as well as physical energies should champion role models from all walks of life and every corner of our country, tapping the essential strengths and comparative advantages of a diverse society under the rubric of e pluribus unum. Volunteerism is the way Americans reconcile individualism and community. It defines much of our national character as well as brands our sense of citizenship. Our heroes are avatars of the values in action that form our personal and national identities.
The coronavirus pandemic has opened more opportunities to democratize and demilitarize our national narrative of service, if we seize them. This would no doubt bring us a little closer together — we may still not respect each other’s opinions; but we should at least respect each other’s commitment to community and country as well as personal wellbeing.
It would do more than that. It’s clear to me, as a former citizen-soldier, that a common sense of service would make us better citizens, tempering our narcissist tendencies and helping us meet challenges we must inevitably face together. And when we become better citizens, we become a better country. Our long-standing penchant for charity, volunteerism, and bottom-up change is among the things that has made the United States the country it promises to be. And like charity, citizenship begins on the block.
It would also enable a generational process of passing the baton of leadership to prepare the next cohort of Americans to take their own journey to find an answer to the question of who we are and what we’re about. By encouraging and empowering not just young people to do good work closer to home, paying it forward as well as giving back, they can see how service to others benefits everyone including themselves, helping them find more authenticity in their lives than social media and reality shows. Each of us can set that example, without waiting for political leadership.
It’s more than service itself that does this. Shared values also come from shared cost. Service requires sacrifice, which gives service its value. It’s why we have Memorial Day. Yet, just as with service, we take for granted the sacrifice of the many and not just the few. We lose more police and firefighters in America each year than troops abroad. In the same places we have sent our soldiers, we overlook the loss of civilian contractors, diplomats and developers, and volunteers in organizations like the Peace Corps and the United Nations. Already hundreds of public health professionals have lost their lives on the front lines fighting COVID-19. We need to pay all of these people as much reverence for their sacrifices, great and small, as we do for military servicemembers.
As America itself has, Memorial Day evolved along a path of greater inclusiveness. First called Decoration Day to honor those who died preserving the Union in the Civil War, in 1926, Congress authorized and directed the Secretary of War to designate Memorial Day a national holiday and changed it from honoring Union soldiers to honoring all Americans who died fighting in all wars. We should continue that march. Memorial Day should henceforth honor all who gave their lives in national, public, or community service.
If Americans truly wish to honor veterans and so many others in service, in and out of uniform, who have given the last full measure of devotion, then they should strive to make this a country worth their sacrifice by walking the walk more than talking the talk. It doesn’t require a uniform or even a program; it begins with simple acts of kindness. And when you serve your community, you serve your country.
The best way to stand up for all the fallen is to be citizens as responsible to our neighbors as to our nation, because they are one and the same. Only united can we stand the tests of our times.
The author, Colonel, U.S. Army Civil Affairs (Ret.) is a Senior Civil-Military Advisor at Narrative Strategies, LLC and the NATO ResilientCivilians project, founder of the National Service Ride project, and author of Travels with Harley — Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity.
December 2, 2016
Moving a Divided Nation Forward, Two Wheels at a Time
“Washington is not going to fix America; America is going to fix America. People here have more power to change their country than they may otherwise believe. The sooner enough of us act upon the common sense notion that we do better for ourselves when we do better for each other, the country again moves forward in meaningful way.” Welcome news in uncertain times.
You can’t reach that conclusion, retired colonel Christopher Holshek noted in a Huffington Post article, on talk shows, news programs, or social media, but only through “real, human connectivity in an alienated, narcissistic, and atomized society.” For him at least, this realization got started with a motorcycle ride.
His thirty-year career ending, the Army Civil Affairs veteran took off on his Harley-Davidson for an 8,000 mile adventure across the United States. Inspired by Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, he went out to find out what it means to be an American in today’s world, soon finding himself on a mental and spiritual journey of rediscovery. “When I took at look at the country I served to mark my military retirement in 2010, I came to realize that the future of our nation constantly depends on each one of us, in every generation, taking our own journey to find out who we are, what we’re about, and what we’re willing to do to face the challenges of our times. So, after some prompting, I wrote the book.”
Far more than a motorcycle diary, Travels with Harley – Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity is a stirring memoir that retired Marine General James Mattis has called “an antidote to pessimism and a reminder of what makes life worth living.” Only through service to others, it concludes, can Americans of all ages find their identity by stepping up to national and global citizenship, starting in their own communities.
As a divided nation ponders its future and find its way in the aftermath of a pivotal election, this positive and empowering message couldn’t be better timed or more needed. Travels with Harley, former Center for a New American Security executive vice president Kristen Lord, is “a must-read for those thinking about the future direction of America and what they can do about it.”
But writing the book wasn’t enough. The native of New York’s Lower Hudson Valley is taking its timely and broad-based message on the road. The National Service Ride leverages motorcycling's appeal to freedom, adventure, and moving forward to promote citizenship and service, starting right at home.
“When we become better citizens, we become a better country – because, when you serve your community, you serve your country," Holshek tells his audiences. “It doesn’t require a uniform.”
Funded through book sales, it is an adaptable platform for discussions at schools and other places on service learning are organized between rider clubs and service organizations in communities around the country. Interactive discussions across generational and societal lines aim to help America’s youth see the meaning and value of helping themselves best by helping others, showing them pathways to local, national, international service learning. Encouraging and empowering young people to do good work and help solve common problems, starting in their own communities, also helps them improve their qualifications for personal advancement, helping them to build leadership and teambuilding skills.
A national narrative of service that transcends differences fosters a collaborative mindset, he contends, establishing empathy for real common ground for much-needed civil dialogue on matters inexplicable in 140 characters. Service to others helps develop the internal moral GPS each us needs to navigate a complex, dynamically interconnected, and information overloaded world, discerning fact from fiction. It would also go far to make the country less vulnerable to mass media manipulation and the politics of fear and ignorance played out daily in the obsessive reality show of terrorism, distrust of police and other forms of government. Moreover, it closes numerous engagement gaps and combats a culture of fear and unfounded entitlement, narcissism, and impunity – and the isolation on many levels that goes with it.
“America cannot long remain the land of the free if it’s no longer the home of the brave,” he warns.
Beyond promoting an empowering sense of national unity, the Ride also looks to help pass the baton of generational leadership. The initiative’s locally organized events to promote ongoing dialogue between service veterans from many walks of life who are looking for ways to give back and youth looking for ways to pay it forward. At high schools, colleges, and other places, local service-oriented motorcycle clubs and community, public, and national service organizations are facilitating conversations across generational and societal lines about citizenship and service – all enhanced and extended by mass and social media.
Besides revitalizing citizenship along the lines of thinking globally and acting locally, the project helps close civil-military gaps. Each event starts with a “Mindful Moment of Gratitude,” courtesy of Armor Down, in which the audience reads the names of local veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice since 9/11, in order to connect citizens with soldiers and create a more universal sense of service and sacrifice. “If civilians truly wish to honor veterans, police, firefighters, first responders and others in uniform that put their lives on the line on their behalf, then they should strive to make this a country worth the sacrifice of those they emulate much less than they admire. They need not go far, for there are myriad ways to become citizens as responsible to neighbors as to nation – patriotism being something you do and not just say.”
The reaching out goes both ways. Uniformed veterans in particular have a critical role to play. “’Our mission,’ I tell other veterans sharing a privileged place of veneration, ‘is not complete until we’ve explained to our youth what service and sacrifice has meant to us. What they do with our hard-earned wisdom is up to them, but this much at least we owe them.’”
To test and refine his concept and get the wheels rolling, Holshek has already made several appearances this past year. After appearing at schools in New York and New Jersey in the spring, he visited others in Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, including Kennesaw State University, where he opened a discussion on building peace locally and globally co-hosted by the United Nations Association and TRENDS Global. Since then, his book has become a student text for at least two classes there. In nearby Clarkston, a major refugee resettlement hub in metropolitan Atlanta, he presented at a Career & Education Fair with Refuge Coffee and other community service initiatives. “I got to see America at its best,” he observed.
In addition to service-oriented organizations like TRENDS Global, retired General Stanley McChrystal’s Service Year Alliance, and the Alliance for Peacebuilding, as well as GoodWorld, a highly acclaimed crowdfunding initiative for non-profits, the project is resourcing motorcycle clubs like the Harley Owners Group, BMW Motorcycle Owners Association, American Motorcyclists Association, American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars Riders Clubs – all with many military, police, and other service veterans.
For these like-minded groups, the Ride provides an informal thematic coordinating platform that enables them to more closely leverage each other on events and initiatives in their own areas independently – from the bottom up rather than the top down. It also extends their own platforms and initiatives in a unique and highly visible way – helping to boost awareness, membership, volunteerism, and fundraising.
Holshek thinks his message – and his initiative – can gain traction with most Americans regardless of political or social following. “This is going to be as big as people want it to be,” he adds. “After all, America is in and of itself a composite of individual journeys. We’ll start off in the hundreds, perhaps the thousands – and see how big a dent we can make. And help put the Unum back in e pluribus Unum.”
You can’t reach that conclusion, retired colonel Christopher Holshek noted in a Huffington Post article, on talk shows, news programs, or social media, but only through “real, human connectivity in an alienated, narcissistic, and atomized society.” For him at least, this realization got started with a motorcycle ride.
His thirty-year career ending, the Army Civil Affairs veteran took off on his Harley-Davidson for an 8,000 mile adventure across the United States. Inspired by Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, he went out to find out what it means to be an American in today’s world, soon finding himself on a mental and spiritual journey of rediscovery. “When I took at look at the country I served to mark my military retirement in 2010, I came to realize that the future of our nation constantly depends on each one of us, in every generation, taking our own journey to find out who we are, what we’re about, and what we’re willing to do to face the challenges of our times. So, after some prompting, I wrote the book.”
Far more than a motorcycle diary, Travels with Harley – Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity is a stirring memoir that retired Marine General James Mattis has called “an antidote to pessimism and a reminder of what makes life worth living.” Only through service to others, it concludes, can Americans of all ages find their identity by stepping up to national and global citizenship, starting in their own communities.
As a divided nation ponders its future and find its way in the aftermath of a pivotal election, this positive and empowering message couldn’t be better timed or more needed. Travels with Harley, former Center for a New American Security executive vice president Kristen Lord, is “a must-read for those thinking about the future direction of America and what they can do about it.”
But writing the book wasn’t enough. The native of New York’s Lower Hudson Valley is taking its timely and broad-based message on the road. The National Service Ride leverages motorcycling's appeal to freedom, adventure, and moving forward to promote citizenship and service, starting right at home.
“When we become better citizens, we become a better country – because, when you serve your community, you serve your country," Holshek tells his audiences. “It doesn’t require a uniform.”
Funded through book sales, it is an adaptable platform for discussions at schools and other places on service learning are organized between rider clubs and service organizations in communities around the country. Interactive discussions across generational and societal lines aim to help America’s youth see the meaning and value of helping themselves best by helping others, showing them pathways to local, national, international service learning. Encouraging and empowering young people to do good work and help solve common problems, starting in their own communities, also helps them improve their qualifications for personal advancement, helping them to build leadership and teambuilding skills.
A national narrative of service that transcends differences fosters a collaborative mindset, he contends, establishing empathy for real common ground for much-needed civil dialogue on matters inexplicable in 140 characters. Service to others helps develop the internal moral GPS each us needs to navigate a complex, dynamically interconnected, and information overloaded world, discerning fact from fiction. It would also go far to make the country less vulnerable to mass media manipulation and the politics of fear and ignorance played out daily in the obsessive reality show of terrorism, distrust of police and other forms of government. Moreover, it closes numerous engagement gaps and combats a culture of fear and unfounded entitlement, narcissism, and impunity – and the isolation on many levels that goes with it.
“America cannot long remain the land of the free if it’s no longer the home of the brave,” he warns.
Beyond promoting an empowering sense of national unity, the Ride also looks to help pass the baton of generational leadership. The initiative’s locally organized events to promote ongoing dialogue between service veterans from many walks of life who are looking for ways to give back and youth looking for ways to pay it forward. At high schools, colleges, and other places, local service-oriented motorcycle clubs and community, public, and national service organizations are facilitating conversations across generational and societal lines about citizenship and service – all enhanced and extended by mass and social media.
Besides revitalizing citizenship along the lines of thinking globally and acting locally, the project helps close civil-military gaps. Each event starts with a “Mindful Moment of Gratitude,” courtesy of Armor Down, in which the audience reads the names of local veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice since 9/11, in order to connect citizens with soldiers and create a more universal sense of service and sacrifice. “If civilians truly wish to honor veterans, police, firefighters, first responders and others in uniform that put their lives on the line on their behalf, then they should strive to make this a country worth the sacrifice of those they emulate much less than they admire. They need not go far, for there are myriad ways to become citizens as responsible to neighbors as to nation – patriotism being something you do and not just say.”
The reaching out goes both ways. Uniformed veterans in particular have a critical role to play. “’Our mission,’ I tell other veterans sharing a privileged place of veneration, ‘is not complete until we’ve explained to our youth what service and sacrifice has meant to us. What they do with our hard-earned wisdom is up to them, but this much at least we owe them.’”
To test and refine his concept and get the wheels rolling, Holshek has already made several appearances this past year. After appearing at schools in New York and New Jersey in the spring, he visited others in Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, including Kennesaw State University, where he opened a discussion on building peace locally and globally co-hosted by the United Nations Association and TRENDS Global. Since then, his book has become a student text for at least two classes there. In nearby Clarkston, a major refugee resettlement hub in metropolitan Atlanta, he presented at a Career & Education Fair with Refuge Coffee and other community service initiatives. “I got to see America at its best,” he observed.
In addition to service-oriented organizations like TRENDS Global, retired General Stanley McChrystal’s Service Year Alliance, and the Alliance for Peacebuilding, as well as GoodWorld, a highly acclaimed crowdfunding initiative for non-profits, the project is resourcing motorcycle clubs like the Harley Owners Group, BMW Motorcycle Owners Association, American Motorcyclists Association, American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars Riders Clubs – all with many military, police, and other service veterans.
For these like-minded groups, the Ride provides an informal thematic coordinating platform that enables them to more closely leverage each other on events and initiatives in their own areas independently – from the bottom up rather than the top down. It also extends their own platforms and initiatives in a unique and highly visible way – helping to boost awareness, membership, volunteerism, and fundraising.
Holshek thinks his message – and his initiative – can gain traction with most Americans regardless of political or social following. “This is going to be as big as people want it to be,” he adds. “After all, America is in and of itself a composite of individual journeys. We’ll start off in the hundreds, perhaps the thousands – and see how big a dent we can make. And help put the Unum back in e pluribus Unum.”
November 16, 2016
E Pluribus Service
A few days after the death of five of his officers, Dallas police chief David Brown challenged civilians there to “be a part of the solution” and “serve your community.” His suggestion, though not singular, may be a bellwether for something gaining ground all around the country - the idea that service to others, which doesn’t require a uniform, brings people together.
For some time since 9/11, there’s been talk of national service in one form or another to spread the burden beyond less than 2 percent of the population in uniform. Popular support for it is overwhelming. Demand for service opportunities is beginning to outstrip supply. Already the largest generational cohort, Millennials are also the most service-oriented. The sentiment of late, as one-time infantry officer Will Bardenwerper said in The Washington Post, is to encourage more Americans to “perform a mission focused on the collective good would bridge some of the divides that are weakening us as a country.”
A mandatory or encouraged year of community, public, or national service is now under serious consideration by both parties in this year’s election, thanks in good part to the prodding of retired Army general Stan McChrystal’s coalition of organizations under the Service Year Alliance. Such a commitment to service, he exhorted in The Atlantic ,”teaches young Americans the habits of citizenship, and the power of working in teams to build trust is one of the most powerful ways this generation can help restore political and civic responsibility—and in the process help to heal a wounded nation.”
But the benefits go well beyond this. Service to others helps a person by helping others, providing a sense of personal and collective identity not found in smart phones or social media - real, human connectivity in an alienated, narcissistic, and atomized society. Identity being values in action, it helps develop the internal moral GPS needed to navigate a complex, dynamically interconnected, and information congested world, discerning fact from fiction. All these make for a stronger, less manipulated, and more responsible citizenry only from which, as Jefferson envisioned, more accountable government comes.
It would also go far to make the country less vulnerable to mass media manipulation and the politics of fear and ignorance played out daily in the obsessive reality show of terrorism, distrust of police and other forms of government, and a culture of entitlement and impunity manifesting in everything from bad Olympian behavior abroad to proliferating acts of street violence at home. This does more than tarnish the national brand: America, after all, cannot long remain the land of the free if it is no longer the home of the brave.
A national narrative of service fosters a collaborative mindset, establishing real common ground for much-needed civil dialogue on matters inexplicable in 140 characters. A greater sense of empathy also goes far to close engagement gaps abroad for a neo-isolationist superpower that issues like climate change are compelling to get in the same global sandbox and play nice with others.
Besides revitalizing citizenship along the lines of thinking globally and acting locally, a more universal sense of service and sacrifice remedies an unwholesome civil-military relationship. Rather than slogans and bumper stickers, if civilians truly wish to honor veterans, police, firefighters, first responders and others in uniform who put their lives on the line on their behalf, then they should strive to make this a country worth the sacrifice of those they emulate much less than they admire. They need not go far, for there are myriad ways to become citizens as responsible to neighbors as to nation - patriotism being something you do and not just say.
But those giving back owe something to those paying it forward. “Our mission,” I tell other veterans sharing a privileged place of veneration, “is not complete until we’ve explained to our youth what service and sacrifice has meant to us. What they do with our hard-earned wisdom is up to them, but this much at least we owe them.” Such a dialogue fosters the passing of the baton of leadership to another generation in search of its own answer to what it means to be an American in today’s world.
On a more practical side, as the National Service Ride project points out in its school presentations, service learning is where real education begins. Beyond enfranchising disconnected youth, it’s the easiest way to obtain vital 21st century economic qualifications, among them team-playing, team-building, and team-leading along with interpersonal and problem-solving skills. It helps build the networks from which the majority of vocations are now found. Businesses now looking at labor more as an investment than a cost are seeking people of character, integrity, commitment, dedication, maturity, and reliability that only self-less service can engender. The implications of a better qualified work force for prosperity in general and a revitalized middle class in particular are enormous.
While more hands, hearts, and minds are needed for public and national service, most Americans can best serve their country by serving their community. It is, after all, it communities - not its capital - that makes the United States the exceptional country it is. Besides, as many organizations like the Alliance for Peacebuilding, TRENDS Global, and the UN Association well know, the dynamics of building peace and security as well as civil society and social resilience are the same over here as they are over there - whether with community policing, gender equality, race and religious relations, and so on.
The blessings of liberty ultimately come through inclusiveness and a sense of community fostered from and not despite diversity. This country’s founders were well aware of this, going out of their way to make sure America works better from below than above. Its long-standing penchant for charity, volunteerism, and bottom-up change puts the United States in an ideal position to remain a world leader - morally and not just physically. And like charity, citizenship begins on the block. In today’s world, you can go global by first going local.
Washington is not going to fix America; America is going to fix America. People here have more power to change their county than they may otherwise believe. The sooner enough of them act upon the common sense notion that they do better for themselves when they do better for each other, the country will again move forward in meaningful way. And they will find the “Unum“ in E pluribus Unum.
This post was originally published in The Huffington Post on the 23rd of August 2016: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christo...
Travels with Harley: Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity
Follow Christopher Holshek on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chrisholshek
For some time since 9/11, there’s been talk of national service in one form or another to spread the burden beyond less than 2 percent of the population in uniform. Popular support for it is overwhelming. Demand for service opportunities is beginning to outstrip supply. Already the largest generational cohort, Millennials are also the most service-oriented. The sentiment of late, as one-time infantry officer Will Bardenwerper said in The Washington Post, is to encourage more Americans to “perform a mission focused on the collective good would bridge some of the divides that are weakening us as a country.”
A mandatory or encouraged year of community, public, or national service is now under serious consideration by both parties in this year’s election, thanks in good part to the prodding of retired Army general Stan McChrystal’s coalition of organizations under the Service Year Alliance. Such a commitment to service, he exhorted in The Atlantic ,”teaches young Americans the habits of citizenship, and the power of working in teams to build trust is one of the most powerful ways this generation can help restore political and civic responsibility—and in the process help to heal a wounded nation.”
But the benefits go well beyond this. Service to others helps a person by helping others, providing a sense of personal and collective identity not found in smart phones or social media - real, human connectivity in an alienated, narcissistic, and atomized society. Identity being values in action, it helps develop the internal moral GPS needed to navigate a complex, dynamically interconnected, and information congested world, discerning fact from fiction. All these make for a stronger, less manipulated, and more responsible citizenry only from which, as Jefferson envisioned, more accountable government comes.
It would also go far to make the country less vulnerable to mass media manipulation and the politics of fear and ignorance played out daily in the obsessive reality show of terrorism, distrust of police and other forms of government, and a culture of entitlement and impunity manifesting in everything from bad Olympian behavior abroad to proliferating acts of street violence at home. This does more than tarnish the national brand: America, after all, cannot long remain the land of the free if it is no longer the home of the brave.
A national narrative of service fosters a collaborative mindset, establishing real common ground for much-needed civil dialogue on matters inexplicable in 140 characters. A greater sense of empathy also goes far to close engagement gaps abroad for a neo-isolationist superpower that issues like climate change are compelling to get in the same global sandbox and play nice with others.
Besides revitalizing citizenship along the lines of thinking globally and acting locally, a more universal sense of service and sacrifice remedies an unwholesome civil-military relationship. Rather than slogans and bumper stickers, if civilians truly wish to honor veterans, police, firefighters, first responders and others in uniform who put their lives on the line on their behalf, then they should strive to make this a country worth the sacrifice of those they emulate much less than they admire. They need not go far, for there are myriad ways to become citizens as responsible to neighbors as to nation - patriotism being something you do and not just say.
But those giving back owe something to those paying it forward. “Our mission,” I tell other veterans sharing a privileged place of veneration, “is not complete until we’ve explained to our youth what service and sacrifice has meant to us. What they do with our hard-earned wisdom is up to them, but this much at least we owe them.” Such a dialogue fosters the passing of the baton of leadership to another generation in search of its own answer to what it means to be an American in today’s world.
On a more practical side, as the National Service Ride project points out in its school presentations, service learning is where real education begins. Beyond enfranchising disconnected youth, it’s the easiest way to obtain vital 21st century economic qualifications, among them team-playing, team-building, and team-leading along with interpersonal and problem-solving skills. It helps build the networks from which the majority of vocations are now found. Businesses now looking at labor more as an investment than a cost are seeking people of character, integrity, commitment, dedication, maturity, and reliability that only self-less service can engender. The implications of a better qualified work force for prosperity in general and a revitalized middle class in particular are enormous.
While more hands, hearts, and minds are needed for public and national service, most Americans can best serve their country by serving their community. It is, after all, it communities - not its capital - that makes the United States the exceptional country it is. Besides, as many organizations like the Alliance for Peacebuilding, TRENDS Global, and the UN Association well know, the dynamics of building peace and security as well as civil society and social resilience are the same over here as they are over there - whether with community policing, gender equality, race and religious relations, and so on.
The blessings of liberty ultimately come through inclusiveness and a sense of community fostered from and not despite diversity. This country’s founders were well aware of this, going out of their way to make sure America works better from below than above. Its long-standing penchant for charity, volunteerism, and bottom-up change puts the United States in an ideal position to remain a world leader - morally and not just physically. And like charity, citizenship begins on the block. In today’s world, you can go global by first going local.
Washington is not going to fix America; America is going to fix America. People here have more power to change their county than they may otherwise believe. The sooner enough of them act upon the common sense notion that they do better for themselves when they do better for each other, the country will again move forward in meaningful way. And they will find the “Unum“ in E pluribus Unum.
This post was originally published in The Huffington Post on the 23rd of August 2016: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christo...
Travels with Harley: Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity
Follow Christopher Holshek on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chrisholshek
June 7, 2016
A Country Worth Their Sacrifice
Latest Huffington Post entry: "A Country Worth Their Sacrifice" makes the point that:
"If Americans truly wish to honor veterans and so many others in public service, in and out of uniform, who have given the last full measure of devotion, then they should strive to make this a country worth their sacrifice. The best way to honor them is to be citizens as responsible to our neighbors as to our nation, because they are one and the same. Only united can we stand."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christo...
All the best,
Chris
"If Americans truly wish to honor veterans and so many others in public service, in and out of uniform, who have given the last full measure of devotion, then they should strive to make this a country worth their sacrifice. The best way to honor them is to be citizens as responsible to our neighbors as to our nation, because they are one and the same. Only united can we stand."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christo...
All the best,
Chris
Identity and the Future of America
If you want a really good idea of the gist of Travels with Harley, read this Huffington Post blog:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christo...
All the best,
Chris
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christo...
All the best,
Chris
April 27, 2016
Seeing America and Ourselves From the Outside In
Check out this book review of Travels with Harley in The Huffington Post!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margare...
Chris
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/margare...
Chris
