A Voice from the Tomb
with Comments Closed
By Wayne D. Leeper
A week in our nation’s capitol can have a profound effect on a person. It is impossible not to be awed by the splendor of that beautiful city. As one walks among the monuments to our great founders and leaders one cannot help but have a sense of pride in all that this has meant to the freedom of the Western world.
From the Lincoln Memorial inscribed with the Gettysburg Address one can look across the mall and see the towering spire of the Washington Monument. From the Washington Monument can be viewed both the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. The city on the Potomac contains our magnificent Capitol Building with its impressive dome, the Supreme Court Building, the heart of American justice, and the White House, home of our President; each symbolizing one of the three divisions of our national government. Just across the Potomac stands the Pentagon, the seat and symbol of America’s military might.
On all the monuments and memorials are inscriptions which touch us at the very core of our existence. One cannot help but feel great pride as, standing before these tributes to greatness, a person is able to read the many quotations and inscriptions engraved in the granite from which they are made. And in each of these places one can hear a myriad of voices pointing to and discussing the various tributes that we have erected to commemorate our heroic past. Among all of these, however, there is only one that is more than just a mass of cold stone.
Across the Potomac, high on a hill overlooking the city stands a monument surrounded by silence. The only sound heard by the two or three hundred visitors there at any given time is the sound of footsteps. The guard takes twenty-one steps then turns to face the tomb for 21 seconds; then turns to face back down the mat; changes his weapon to the outside shoulder, then twenty-one steps back down the mat.
Here Rests
In Honored Glory
An American Soldier
Known But To God
No one speaks as they stand on this hallowed ground. But upon leaving it no one ever forgets the voice of silence that comes forth from deep within the heart of the monument. The voice that comes so distinctly from the tomb ask a simple question that should give each of us pause to stop and ponder the present state of our nation’s morality. His unspoken question strikes at the very heart of our national existence:
“Are we, as a nation, still deserving of
the price I paid for our freedom?”
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Did he die leaving his own children fatherless that the women of America might have the right to kill forty-three million of their own unborn babies?
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Did he die that children in the schools of America might be denied the right to recognize the God to whom he addressed his dying prayer?
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Did he die that the name of God might be removed from the pledge to the flag for which he gave his live?
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Did he die that the nation he served with honor might discard as it’s national motto, “In God we Trust?
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Did he die that drugs might me made legally available and sexual promiscuity might become the accepted norm for the youth of America for whom he fought?
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Did he die that the joys of fatherhood he would never know cease to be desired by men who would father then desert their own children?
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Did he die that activist judges might discard the basic principals of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence which he fought to defend?
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Did he die on foreign fields that every form of sexual perversion known to man might be practiced openly, glorified, and protected by the government that had sent him forth to defend our national heritage and our national honor?
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Did he die that the “Ten Commandments” which had molded his life might be banned from all public places?
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Did he die never to see his wife or sweetheart again in order that marriage might be redefined to include any and every form of sexual perversion? Did he die that the school children of America might be gunned down in school by sick minds molded by the glorified violence put forth by video games and by Hollywood?
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Did he die that those who, in the name of “political debate,” oppose everything he fought and died for might vocally claim for themselves the same mantle of patriotism which he wears in silence?
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Did he die that those who “blame America first” should have the right to endanger the lives of his comrades by words and deeds that encourage, aide, and comfort the enemy that took his life?
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Did he die that politicians, might serve a few months, then come home to exploit their “Heroic Military Service” and a few medals as proof of their patriotism and to gain political advantage in their quest for power in the nation for which he had given his all?