Editor's note: This editorial, with variations, has been published on previous Memorial Days in this newspaper.
There was a time in this country when the mention of Memorial Day evoked something more than the iconic images of military cemeteries and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
The solemn holiday also returned to mind a particular face. In the wake of both world wars, then the wars in Korea and Vietnam, just about every family could recall a brother or father, cousin or friend who had gone off to fight and had not returned. The losses of battle honored on Memorial Day were intimate, not merely institutional.
The shift from a national draft to an all-volunteer military changed that. Military service became a specialized vocation, not a broad civic obligation. Most of us no longer know what it's like to look at an empty chair at the dining room table and sense the absence of a loved one who died in some faraway place while wearing America's uniform.
That reality brings real challenges for the country. If few of us know, at some deeply spiritual or emotional level, what the price of military service can be, we may lack the wisdom to understand when it's worthwhile to put warriors in harm's way.
That lack of gravity seems to inform our politics these days. There's a sense of political contests as only a game, and not, as they ultimately can be, a matter of life and death. We must do better.
For the better part of two years, politics intruded in "war," because the nation, and the world, invoked martial metaphors plentifully to deal with the threat of a global coronavirus pandemic.
A literal war, the Russian aggression against Ukraine, has imposed challenges for the United States as well as the patriots of that embattled country. America's ability to supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition hasn't been without some glitches, and it is still a work in progress, as once again Americans try to ramp up production to deter another big threat to world peace.
To borrow another phrase from our nation's martial history, the home front is where many of our battles have been waged lately.
It's good on Memorial Day to remember that the home front was a real battleground during previous conflicts, too. The National World War II Museum in New Orleans has among its riveting permanent exhibitions "The Arsenal of Democracy," the description of the home front in the war. The disruptions we face today are hardly as tough as many Americans faced before.
For this Memorial Day, the day-to-day realities of war have been brought to us at home through the suffering of the people of Ukraine. While America is not a belligerent in the current conflict, we know what side we're on, and our armed forces helped train Ukrainians now in action in their country's defense.
In countries around the world, America's armed forces and diplomats have remained at their stations, even as the coronavirus deaths multiplied, and now in a year of heightened world tension.
That should remain on our minds long after Memorial Day has passed.