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We owe a great deal to the Greatest Generation; Michelle Mindek; Beaver County Times; July 9, 2015.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“We the people of this great nation should honor all the great men and women who served in World War II. They did it because it was their calling to defend and protect us. Our lives are better because of them.
“The many things we take for granted are because of them. The Marines, Merchant Marines, Army Air Force, Navy. We owe so much to the Greatest Generation of all.”
[RWC] “The Greatest Generation” was coined by Tom Brokaw and it was the title of one of his books. Newsflash! Had Mr. Brokaw’s been about the generation that fought in the Spanish-American War, that would have been “The Greatest Generation.”
I mean no offense, but what about the generation that won our independence and formed our country? They took on the world’s most powerful “superpower” at the time and won.
What about the Civil War generation? The currently accepted number of Civil War fatalities is about 620,000 soldiers (~365,000 Union deaths), with a new estimate as high as 750,000. Even the accepted figure represents the largest number of American deaths in a war by far (WWII is second at ~407,000), and nearly one-half of the total (~1.3 million). The deaths (~51,000) at the Battle of Gettysburg (only three days long) alone nearly equals the American deaths during the entire Vietnam War (~58,000), and are nearly one-half the total of American WWI fatalities (~117,000). Factor in the population at the time of these wars, and the death rate of the Civil War (~2%) was about 6.5 times the rate of WWII (~0.3%).
“Thank you for forging the freedom we enjoy today.”
[RWC] The GG’s Democrats also gave us abortion for convenience, Socialist Security, employer-based medical insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and a whole raft of Great Society programs still burdening us.
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