THE DAY – AT 9:28 A.M. ET:  Urgent Agenda readers need no reminder of the meaning of Memorial Day.  Sadly, for much of the nation, the "Memorial Day Weekend" has become one more commercial event.  The president, perhaps unsurprisingly, is even skipping the traditional wreath laying at Arlington.

But don't despair.  There is, in our country, an unending line of patriotic citizens who do remember, and do pass the remembrance on to their children.  Some among the self-appointed elites will laugh at them, call them hicks or worse, and regard them as "the flyover people."

We know who they really are.  They are the people who keep this nation going, who are the first at recruiting stations in time of war, and who comprehend what "duty, honor, country" is all about.

James Michener once asked why we are lucky enough to have the men and women in our armed forces, whose sacrifice we remember this day.  We aren't lucky.  The core of our patriotism was built through the generations, not by arms alone, but by ideas – ideas that are as valid and needed today as they were in 1776, or on September 11, 2001.

Those ideas will endure long after this weekend's barbecue pits grow cold.

May 31,  2001