Is There a Better Way to Observe Veterans Day?

Differences in how military holidays are observed can’t be reduced to a numbers game, though. In the United States, at least, they may also stem from a strain of American thinking that highlights historical triumphs and skips over what those triumphs have cost. Lindsey Tepe of the New America Foundation, for instance, has written about the ways in which public education has become a battleground between those who view American history as “a sweeping tale filled with … grand heroes, epic battles, and the continuing struggle for the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and those who recognize that “American history is also full of inconvenient truths … and the injustices perpetrated throughout the course of building this nation.”