[Nusselt]

Well, this will almost certainly be my last posting in the thread (assuming nothing else 'new' is added), i don't like arguments where quotes are quoted and re-quoted and shuffled till all meaning is lost, it just reduces to a flame war. You have a core argument, you make it with definitive points, you move on.

I don't understand the need to commemorate non-intuitive or non-obvious anniversaries.

I don't believe in generational debt and i don't believe anyone in WWII died for me, but rather for themselves their families.

I don't believe in remembering seemingly arbitrary moments or battles in history.

I don't think history should be about commemorating in the sense of having a minutes silence, that to me anyway achieves little. Holding a minutes silence for the victims of the holocaust is a lot less important to me than understanding the events and the reasons for those events that led to it*. Remembering a particular battle in the american war of independence or of 1812 is less important than understanding the reasons that a unilateral declaration of indepence was made in the first place. Remembering that men killed each other is less important than why they did, and not just in loose terms of 'freedom' but the complex tapestry that existed at the time. Quite a few wars have been fought 'for freedom' without it meaning much.

Now some may well say 'have both!', but if events are to be remembered, officially with a moments silence id prefer it to be the mistakes that were made in our past, in our name, for us so we could benefit today.

I didn't mean to be uncharitable and priggish, this is the internet and specifically GD, it was simply a discussion. If i came across as such, i am sorry. I equally don't see the point in being emotional about it all. Ill have my own moments silence remembering the battle of stoney creek or something.

* the holocaust had nothing to do with d-day or our freedom