Our Posterity (coincidentally on Memorial Day)

“Posterity” is just an old-fashioned way of saying “succeeding or future generations, collectively.”

It is our responsibility to ensure that future generations of Americans enjoy the blessings of liberty as we have. Our ancestors gave their lives in past wars to ensure that our generation would continue to enjoy the freedoms that their ancestors died for.

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, these are just battle deaths—many more were “non-mortal woundings” and “deaths from other causes” (such as prisoners of war):

American Revolution (1775-1783): 4,435
War of 1812 (1812-1815): 2,260
Mexican War (1846-1848): 1,733
Civil War (1861-1865): Union 140,414/Confederate 74,524
Spanish-American War (1898-1902): 385
World War I (1917-1918): 53,402
World War II (1941-1945): 291,557
Korean War (1950-1953): 33,741
Vietnam War (1964-1975): 47,424
Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-1991): 147
Global War on Terror (2001-present): 4,962

“The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children.” (II Corinthians 12:14) How can our elected officials even think of saddling our posterity with a debt so huge it can never be repaid? Instead of enslaving our descendants, we must do all in our power to ensure that liberty—bought with the blood of 654,984 Americans--continues.

“We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it.” –Thomas Sowell