4th of July 2022

[Context: I was asked to speak at the 4th of July flag-raising for the Ogden UT Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ. I thought it was appropriate to share it here.]

Good morning. Thank you, Starla [Stanley] for that powerful talk. I knew you’d be a hard act to follow.

Unlike Starla, I did not serve in the military and had no experience with the military. My dad was a pilot in WWII, but I did not learn this until I was 14. I was visiting the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. with some relatives, and we watched a video, taken from the pilot's point of view, of a take-off and landing on an aircraft carried. It was terrifying! I was going on about it, when my uncle said, "Well, that's what your dad did!"

My dad, Frank E. Newman, with Seth in front of Dad's plane, the F4F Hellcat, May 2017

So my experience began, as was mentioned, 11 years ago. Eleven years ago, July 1 to be exact, my son Seth, who was just 19 at the time, was serving in the Army in Afghanistan. He was blown nearly in half when he stepped on an improvised explosive device. He lost his left leg and suffered internal injuries that he will live with for the rest of his life. He spent two years at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and I spent almost the first year there with him as he endured numerous surgeries and extensive rehabilitation. As devastating as my son’s injuries were, the same day he was injured, one of his squad members was killed and another lost both legs and an arm. The 10 months I was at Walter Reed with him, I saw dozens of men and a few women injured in innumerable and often unfathomable ways. And while I saw inspiring examples of grit and determination, I also saw heart-wrenching examples of despair and defeat. 

Many of you here served my family in too many ways to recount. Some of you organized and/or participated in projects that helped other families and the men and women in my son’s division because of your desire to do something because of what you saw our family go through. You were inspiring.

Most of you know that our military was in Afghanistan for a long time. We accomplished many good things, but we didn’t accomplish everything we hoped to. Right or wrong, we pulled out last year. After Seth was injured, I had many prayers, and many of those prayers were answered in the ways I hoped. Many weren’t. When I saw that certain injuries were not going to resolve themselves as we had hoped and prayed they would, my prayers changed from asking for healing to asking that his injuries not be in vain. So, many may think that because we left Afghanistan without achieving all our goals and even seeing the things we had achieved disappear, that his injuries and those sacrifices of all who served may have been in vain.

Well, they weren’t. I want to explain why they weren’t and then to address what we can each do to ensure that his sacrifice and the sacrifices of thousands of others will never be thought to be in vain.

Their sacrifices and actions were not in vain because our sacrifices and actions matter even when they seem wasted. Whether we are doing something as momentous as a military action or as seemingly inconsequential as our day-to-day routine, our choices and actions matter. If we observe our duties and responsibilities with integrity, with full purpose of heart, then whatever else happens because of others’ choices becomes less important. If we know we have done our jobs, our duties, with intention, we can take pride in our achievements, even if they are only personal and individual rather than grand and global. When we act in whatever role we have undertaken with courage, honesty, and integrity, the gain is to our good, even if it goes unrecognized to anyone but ourselves and our Maker.

So how do we who have not chosen to put ourselves in harm’s way make sure that their sacrifices are not in vain? We must each be a patriot in our own realm of influence, in our own sphere of acquaintances.

What does it mean to be a patriot? That is a word used for good, but also as a cover for bad.

To be a patriot, we have to accept a responsibility for every freedom. In this election time, I have seen many posters for different candidates. One such poster simply said, “Freedom first!!!” Hmm. This was rather unconvincing for at least two reasons: first that it was so broad and vague that it is practically meaningless, but second because it suggests an idea that I reject. I don’t accept that we advocate for “freedom first.” Every freedom that we enjoy is based on some responsibility taken. The simplest example I can provide is our “freedom” to drive. Whenever I drive on our paved city streets, I stop for streetlights, yield for pedestrians, follow the speed limit, and have a current DL with me. Do these things hinder my freedom? No, they are the very things that make this freedom possible. What if everyone decided stop lights were an encroachment on their freedom? Then our streets would descend into chaos, and we would no longer enjoy the freedom to jump in our car and get where we want to go when we want to go..

The second thing that gives me this freedom to drive is many decades of work by public officials, some elected and some employed by those elected. This spring and summer, we have had the streets in our neighborhoods torn up. It’s made for very entertaining walking, biking and driving as every day it seems I have to find a new route to avoid the construction. Think about it–paved roads and clean, running water are something we take for granted, as a given to our everyday lives. But it wasn’t even a century ago that such things were not a given, were not things our great-grandparents and even grandparents could expect. Our city, state and local governments provide services that, in the scope of world history, are very new. Sometimes, because we have had them our entire lives–clean water, safe roads, public K-12 education–I could go on and on, we can forget how hard-won and, again, how new these are.

So we must realize that every freedom bears a responsibility, and every freedom should invoke gratitude and a recognition of how and when that freedom came to be. It is right that we express gratitude on days such as this to the brave men and women who put their lives on the line to preserve our freedoms, but it also behooves us to express our gratitude to the elected and unelected public servants. To be a patriot requires such considerations and expressions of gratitude.

We are currently in an election cycle where we are seeing mean and ugly things being said about candidates. If we are patriots, we must fight this ugliness and demand our candidates, especially those with whom we agree, do not engage in such tactics. We must remember that parties exist to serve people; people don’t exist to serve parties. We cannot expect OUR candidate to do everything we want or share our position on every issue. We have to choose someone who will act in the best interest of the most people.

If we are patriots, we will VOTE. And if we are patriots, we will educate ourselves about the candidates we vote for. In educating ourselves, we must be discerning in the voices and sources to which we turn for such information. If the voices to whom we listen demonize one person, one party, or one position, we must choose another source. No one person can be all things to all people. If we find ourselves in an “echo chamber” where we are only hearing the voices of those who agree with us, we must find ways to hear the voices and views of those who disagree with us.

Why must we hear the views of those who disagree with us? Because that is the whole point of this endeavor called democracy–that people who are different can live together peaceably. Last week, I was privileged to attend a show by Iranian comic Negin Farsad. She told a story of arriving at a comedy club in Centralia, Washington, where she was met with people picketing her show. According to their signs, they were concerned that she was trying to convert Americans to Islam. Instead of being angry, she spoke with the protestors. It began to rain, so she invited them in to see her show. When some balked, she invited them to just come into the building to get out of the rain. Rather than being upset and offended, she relished the idea that people could legally protest her show. This is a freedom her family still in Iran do not enjoy. After the show, my husband, Bob, and a friend and I decided to walk around downtown SLC. We got caught up in a large protest. While their cause was not my cause and their chants were sometimes crass, they made very sure to obey the law–being careful that they didn’t block traffic or endanger others. I thought of Ms. Farsad’s reaction to the very personal protest against her, and felt gratitude that all of us, with our wildly varying beliefs and opinions, can live together in peace, can protest without fear of imprisonment, and can, if we’re willing, work together to find common ground and workable solutions that allow us to continue on in this amazing country of ours.

In preparing for this speech, I read a brief history of the U.S. Constitution. As you know, there are many book-length recountings of this tumultuous period of history. I was reminded how messy a process it was. There were mobbings, kidnappings, beatings, salacious rumors spread, “scurrilous” stories shared in the social media of that time–pamphlets, newsletters, brochures, etc., and conventioners burned in effigy, In fact, a draft of the Constitution was burned in effigy. The process took almost a year and, before it was complete, countless compromises were made. 

I mention this because members of the Church of Jesus Christ revere the Constitution and speak of it as divinely inspired. While I am sure that this is the case, we must understand that it did not float down from heaven like the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments. It was created in a very messy, human process. To me, this makes it even more valuable when I realize how hard won it was and what a miracle it is that it came about at all. I’d like to veer into a tangent on what divine inspiration is and how it comes about, but suffice it to say, these founders were well-read and knowledgeable, having studied politics, economics, history, and philosophy. They were working on a foundation laid over the centuries by thinkers from Montesquieu to Milton. If they were indeed inspired, it was because they had done the work to be so.

We often link being a patriot to being courageous and brave. This is absolutely true, but we must recognize that courage and bravery are not simply for the battlefield. It often takes the most courage to stand up to people who are not our enemies who, indeed, are–or should be–our friends. Last week’s edition of  the Deseret News–and several other news outlets– shared the story of Rusty Bowers, Arizona’s House speaker. He was asked by his own party and people who were or should have been his friends to go against the Constitution to overturn Arizona’s election results. He refused. He said, “I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to.”

This brings me to my final point. If we are to be true patriots, we must recognize that democracy takes work, that it takes compromise, and that it is messy. We must be bridge-builders rather than bomb throwers, and we must live up to the Christian ideal of loving others as ourselves. As Pres. Russell M. Nelson said, “We don’t have to be alike or look alike to have love for each other. We don’t even have to agree with each other to love each other.” 

As our name–the UNITED States of America–reminds us, we must be united. In the words of Christian author Priscilla Shirer, “Unity does not mean sameness. It means oneness of purpose.” We must put being an American ahead of being a member of any party, or we will not have the ability to solve our problems in healthy, productive ways.

It is my prayer that my son’s sacrifice and those of so many over the centuries will not be in vain because of the choices each one of us makes each and every day to be a true patriot and keep our country a dynamic democracy.