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Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist, went on a tear two days ago about dropping Veteran's Day for a "national service day."I don't have a problem with the concept of a national service day, but I see little reason to eliminate Veteran's Day.
Trunk highlights the negatives of having soldiers who have fought in wars as a reason to reject the idea of a day for recognizing veterans.
The only thing she says that makes SOME sense:
Because what we’re doing now—celebrating military service over everything else—is teaching people that one is more valuable than the other.
And here is why she is kind of wrong. Veterans, drafted or volunteer, ARE expected to do more in service of their country. She can question why and what the impact to veterans' lives and their families are, but the reality is: soldiers give up their rights in service to protect others. Care to argue the point? Ask a gay soldier.
Finally, Trunk falls back to Obama's call from two years ago but he was specifically looking atMLK day. Why not Memorial Day? (She may not know that one was for veterans too- nobody else seems to remember either.)
Or why not Washington's birthday or Columbus day? The better question might just be, do we have too many federal holidays?
Adding one more for something nebulous but noble such as national service makes about as much sense as taking a day off of work for... Labor day.
Related articles- Brazen Careerist Introduces Network Roulette (prweb.com)
- Arianna Huffington: Giving Back to America's Soldiers: Let's Make Veterans Day a National Day of Service (huffingtonpost.com)
- Veterans Day underscores the need to provide quality care for our veterans (Rep. Phil Roe) (thehill.com)
- I contribute pieces over at Brazen Careerist pretty regularly,... (theantisocialmedia.com)
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