Today is Veterans Day in the United States.  It is with great gratitude and honor that we recognize the service of all of our veterans throughout our nation’s history.

 

This day was selected since it was the day that was chosen to end the First World War.  The Versailles Treaty that would end the war designated that hostilities would cease on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month.

 

So, the Great War ended.

 

 Unfortunately, it was not the war to end all wars.  As the celebrated historians Will and Ariel Durant have told us in “The Lessons of History,” in the last 3, 449 years of history, war has been a constant of history.

 

Only 268 years of human history have been without war.  Surprisingly, war has not been diminished by civilization or democracy.  War is a constant of history, and peace is an unstable equilibrium that can only be preserved by acknowledged supremacy or by equal power.

 

War is the ultimate form of competition and natural selection for the human species.  Heracleitus said that war is the father of all things and the powerful source of ideas, inventions, institutions, and states.  In the present inadequacy of international law, a nation must be ready at any moment to defend itself and allowed to use any means it considers necessary to do so.

 

With the given dynamics of human instinct and statecraft, it will always be necessary to have strong and competent armed forces.  Veterans know better than anyone else the price of freedom.  We can offer them no better tribute than to protect what they have gained for us.  That is our duty.  They have never let America down, and we should not let them down.

 

Thank you to all of America’s veterans from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and from Susquehanna Valley Center for Public Policy.  We salute you!