Omaha Beach. Iwo Jima. Gettysburg. Arlington. These are hallowed names, and the hallowed grounds, we remember on Memorial Day: 131 military cemeteries in 39 states, besides the 24 overseas cemeteries where some 125,000 Americans are interred - in addition to the almost 100,000 inscribed in the Tablets of the Missing.

Those long rows of white crosses are not only reminders of the ultimate sacrifice our veterans made.  They are the living seedbeds of our American future.   

The United States was created to prove to the world that liberty is an imperishable blessing. It fought one great war, the Civil War, to secure that blessing for all Americans-a war in which more than 350,000 gave their lives.  

In the last one hundred years another 600,000 Americans died in order to pass that liberty on to others, from Belleau Wood in World War One to the streets of Kabul. They died, and others served, so that Filipinos, Frenchmen, Koreans, Vietnamese, Afghans, and Iraqis could live free from tyranny, and experience the freedom we hold as a birthright.