War

Let’s stop pretending. The ideals inked into the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, resistance to tyranny—aren’t being defended in Washington, D.C. They’re being fought for in the cratered earth of Ukraine. It’s not Americans dying for freedom anymore. It’s Ukrainians. For many Americans, “freedom” is just a slogan, a catchy phrase, a reason to light fireworks once a year. In Ukraine, freedom means deciding whether to carry a rifle or carry your family’s coffin. It means a mother staying behind to care for the wounded, a teenager flying a drone over enemy armor with little more than courage and duct tape, and going to sleep every night to the sound of shelling, knowing you might not wake up—and doing it anyway. ...

America likes to pretend it’s draped in courage. That its flag stands for grit and resolve. But that’s just a story. A myth weaved by those who mistake volume for virtue. When you look at the ledger of real history—unfiltered, unsanitized, and unhinged from fourth-grade fairytales—you find a different story. These colors do run. The War We Couldn’t Dodge World War II wasn’t America’s moment of moral clarity. It was a war we were dragged into—kicking, screaming, and isolationist to the bitter end. Not out of a love for justice. Not out of some shining democratic beacon. But because Pearl Harbor forced our hand. ...