In 21st-century America, have we betrayed those who sacrificed their lives for freedom?

This Memorial Day weekend might be a good time not only to be grateful for those who have sacrificed their lives to perpetuate our freedom, but to start thinking hard about what that freedom means in 21st-century America.

And maybe even what it really means to be an American.

It's a time to review and reflect, in fact, on exactly what it was these men and women offered themselves for.

Freedoms are sacrosanct to most of us, and they should be. But so is the rule of law. Because without it, somebody's freedoms will always be sabotaged.

Obviously that means freedom will have its limits. Freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion and assembly were the first to be enshrined in the Constitution's Bill of Rights. And yet there are laws limiting all of them: defamation and libel laws, laws that forbid dangerous practices even in a faith system, particularly regarding children; laws to deal with assemblies that get out of hand.

With freedom comes responsibility. If you're not responsible with your privileges, you risk losing them. You don't hand the car keys over to your teenager without a few rules. You don't expect your employer to turn a blind eye to bad behavior in the workplace. This is common sense.

But when people in public positions openly flout the law and others defend them, it's a blotch on our nation and on the institutions that define us as the United States. It's an affront to those who died defending our way of life, and it's downright un-American.

And when it becomes more important to elected officials to retain their political party's power than to act in the best interests of the community, the state or the nation, it's an affront to those who died defending our way of life and it's downright un-American.

If you watch government on various levels for a while, you'll see enough of both major parties to know, if you're honest, that neither of them is always right. Neither is always wrong. And neither has a corner on the corruption market.

Let me repeat that: Neither has a corner on the corruption market.

Every year of the seven I spent covering the Maryland General Assembly, I'd watch the dominant party in our state force its will on the other party in Annapolis. Then I'd come home where the opposite party dominates. And always marvel at the stagnation that resulted from both parties digging in their heels in Washington.

I'm not convinced that's what our founders had in mind.

But many of us seem to be OK with that. We keep defending and voting for people who don't have spines enough to stand for what's right if it means breaking with the party line, who spin every failure as the fault of the opposing party alone and treat any rare victory as a personal prize.

And who take a "divide and conquer" approach to power rather than trying to unite the nation for the common good.

Is that what freedom means in the 21st century? Is that what it means to be an American in 2023?

Is that what the people we honor this weekend gave their lives for?

God forbid.

There's a better way to honor our war dead. And that is to take more responsibility for the way we use and defend the freedoms they died to protect, more responsibility for the reasons we cast our votes and more responsibility for reminding those we choose to represent us that they represent us rather than a political party.

And to take more responsibility for remembering what it ought to mean to be an American and for doing our part to build what President Lincoln envisioned as "a more perfect union."

I've thought a lot over the past couple of years about the presidential election of 2000, when the outcome hinged on about 500 votes in Florida. For weeks the nation was kept in suspense as recounts and lawsuits ensued.

But on Dec. 13, after the Supreme Court ruled against a recount involving 70,000 previously rejected votes, one of the candidates ended the tension and conceded.

He had probably the strongest case ever for contesting an election. But in one of his last official acts as vice president of the United States, Al Gore stood before a joint session of Congress and presided over the certification of his own defeat.

Gore said during an interview in January 2021 that the choice between keeping up the fight and doing what was in the best interest of the country had been "a no-brainer."

You don't have to like Gore's politics to know that was the right attitude, as personally painful as it likely was.

For all of us this Memorial Day — and every day — doing what's best for our community, our state and our country should be a no-brainer. As President Kennedy said during a visit to Maryland, "let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past — let us accept our own responsibility for the future."

That was the choice made by the people we honor this weekend, after all. We owe it to them to make that choice, too.

Or as Lincoln insisted in Gettysburg, we must "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Tamela Baker is a Herald-Mail feature writer.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: We owe it to those we honor a more responsible with our freedoms