On Memorial Day Religious Right Radio Host Calls ‘Every Government Job a Drain on the Economy’

Instead of honoring our nation’s fallen, Bryan Fischer says all government jobs, which includes our military forces as well, are “a drain” on America.

Bryan Fischer, once the “Issue Analyst” for the American Family Association, now just their AFA radio host, just posted this horrifically insensitive tweet, saying “US govt employs almost as many as Fortune 500 companies COMBINED. EVERY govt job a drain on economy.”

 

I don’t want to politicize our nation’s fallen, ever, certainly, especially, not today. I will honor them instead by saying I believe our government is all of us. It is “We the People.” And those who chose to serve their country, their fellow citizens, and give their lives to do so deserve better than being called a drain on the economy. That includes the families they’ve left behind, who receive the gratitude of the nation, but far too little in government benefits.

President Barack Obama today asked Americans to “serve others, and contribute to the causes they believed in.”

In his speech at Arlington National Cemetery this morning, President Obama, our Commander in Chief, today also said, “every day, there are American families who pray for the sound of a familiar voice when the phone rings.  For the sound of a loved one’s letter or email arriving.  More than one million times in our history, it didn’t come.  And instead, a car pulled up to the house.  And there was a knock on the front door.  And the sounds of Taps floated through a cemetery’s trees.”

For us, the living — those of us who still have a voice — it is our responsibility, our obligation, to fill that silence with our love and our support and our gratitude — and not just with our words, but with our actions.  For truly remembering, and truly honoring these fallen Americans means being there for their parents, and their spouses, and their children — like the boys and girls here today, wearing red shirts and bearing photos of the fallen.  Your moms and dads would be so proud of you.  And we are, too. 

Truly remembering means that after our fallen heroes gave everything to get their battle buddies home, we have to make sure our veterans get everything that they have earned, from good health care to a good job.  And we have to do better; our work is never done.  We have to be there not only when we need them, but when they need us.  

Thirty days before he would be laid to rest a short walk from here, President Kennedy told us that a nation reveals itself not only by the people it produces, but by those it remembers.  Not everyone will serve.  Not everyone will visit this national sanctuary.  But we remember our best in every corner of our country from which they came.  We remember them by teaching our children at schools with fallen heroes’ names, like Dorie Miller Elementary in San Antonio.  Or being good neighbors in communities named after great generals, like McPherson, Kansas.  Or when we walk down 1st Sgt. Bobby Mendez Way in Brooklyn, or drive across the Hoover Dam on a bridge that bears Pat Tillman’s name.

Let’s honor our nation’s fallen by respecting them, and the nation they fought and died for. 

 

Image by eddiecoyote via Flickr and a CC license