I want to send my deep regrets for not making this event and my heartfelt gratitude for the honor you are bestowing on America’s finest, those who “gave the last full measure.” Among them is my beloved son who no longer sweats, kills, and toils with a savage enemy; my Eddie is resting with His Jesus praise God. I remember Eddie sitting at my breakfast table as he was heading to Iraq for his first tour and my asking him, “Are you sure about this son?”

He looked at me somewhat puzzled and disappointed as if to say, “Not you too Dad.” But he got quiet and then said, “Dad this is what I joined for; this is my generation’s fight.”

This is my generation’s fight. I will never forget that for as long as I live. I was seeing my boy in a new light; he was no longer the dorky kid who lived to play video games. He was joining the American elite; those willing to give up all that is precious to him so that we could keep all that is precious to us.

During Eddie’s second tour in Iraq I received an email from him in late January. It was so poignant that I knew I had to have it published, so I sent it to my good friend Frank Salvato of the New Media Journal. On February 1, 2007 “Hope Rides Alone” was published and the rest, as they say, is history. If you have not yet read it Frank will be republishing it this weekend at www.newmediajournal.us .

Hope became not only a national phenomenon but also an international one with my receiving emails from Canada, Australia, and Holland. Eddie’s elegant yet simple words struck a chord with middle America, Vietnam, Korean, and WWII vets, grandparents, parents, professionals, laborers, college students, and even President Bush. My sister Mary wanted to encourage the President with her nephew’s words and he responded with a personal note of thanks handsigned by him and a presidential coin.

What was it about “Hope Rides Alone” that so speaks to all Americans? Here is just an example:

You will have to visit the New Media Journal’s website this weekend or go to my blog www.saltandlightblog.com and I will have a link to the New Media Journal website; with all that the Obama administration is doing to badmouth the war effort in Afghanistan Frank decided it was time to republish Eddie’s article.

My friends, as so many Americans wrote Eddie to assure him, hope does not ride alone! Not as long as liberty-loving Americans who are grateful for the freedom bought by the split blood of heroes such as we honor today, are willing to stand up and say, “No more!” No more will we stand for the leftists in and out of government saying we are losing wars that we are clearly winning; all the while our brave warriors are on the frontlines.

Imagine the response of today’s Fifth Column if it was the morning of June 7, 1944 and the body count from Omaha Beach was being told? Would Harry Reid have said the war is lost? Would Nancy Pelosi say the President is a miserable failure? Would Hillary Clinton tell General Eisenhower that she is “suspending disbelief” if he told her that victory was in sight?

My fellow Americans we are at a crossroads in American history never before experienced by modern Americans. We have for so long taken for granted our freedoms that we are now allowing our freedoms to be taken by the very people who are sworn to protect and defend them. What could possibly cause us to such carelessness? Two hundred thirty years and thirty days ago, February 12, 1779, Samuel Adams wrote the following words to James Warren:

While many Americans believe that we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles, they are only half-right. We are an apostate nation founded on Christian principles that has turned its back on those guiding principles. I am often asked on talk radio what I think is the greatest challenge facing America today and I always respond: moral relativism.

If we reject absolute truth, what I describe as a morality ruler, then we end up where we are today; a nation where anything goes and tolerance applies to all except those who introduced the concept of tolerance…Christians.

God-fearing Americans do not seek a theocracy or a king but we do seek and expect virtuous and righteous leaders. John Adams warned about a godless people gaining control over our Constitution:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

We can no longer afford to allow our workaday worlds to keep us distracted while an enemy within seeks to and is already beginning to unravel the very cords that bind our nation together. We must do as my son finished in Hope Rides Alone:

Let’s stop all the political nonsense, let’s stop all the bickering, let’s stop all the bad news and let’s stand and fight!

Isn’t that what America is about anyway?

Let us stand and fight!