In England quite a lot of people believe we should have another public holiday in the year, particularly as we have none between the last Monday of August and Christmas. One of the problems is that no-one has any idea what to name it after. The only two serious possibilities – apart from national patron saint days, which are in the wrong time of the year – are “Britishness Day” and “Veterans’ Day”. Despite being the frontrunners both are anathema to British culture, which views flag-waving and military-worship with suspicion. (You can come up with various reasons for this, from post-Empire angst to being brought up watching films of swastika-waving Nazis and being told “That is bad, we fought so we didn’t have to do that”.)

The fact that we can’t think of any universally appealing excuses for a public holiday suggests there aren’t very many available, once you’ve used up the religious festivals that don’t offend non-believers, days of historical significance, etc. So perhaps the thought process is not “We need to honour soldiers, let’s have a holiday” but “We need a holiday, let’s… uh… honour soldiers”. The question “so why soldiers” remains but is less significant.

I guess they miss the reciprocation aspect. You don’t owe them anything. As for Eli’s comment on why we don’t honour fallen police officers with a day…

Ok, that’s a more problematic one

Perhaps because their collective deaths are not associated with a single event. Thus the NYFD who died on 9/11 might not have a remembrance day, but they are closer to it than the many more fire fighters who have died in smaller events over the years.

We can honor lots of folks on such a holiday. Take one case I’ve got right now. Poor guy was driving down the interstate when a wheel, no tire, from a compact came bouncing up and over the Jersey barrier and through his windshield. He never saw it. Sheared off the top of his head just above his nose. He didn’t even drop his coffee.

It makes you think.

Maybe, somewhere in one of the Many Thanatoses, he got there a second before or a second later and so he made it home to his family; and they’re not now trying to blame a car company for failing to warn the owners of its cars not to tie spare wheels up under it with nylon string 1/16th in. thick, and leave it there for 2 months. But then how would I make a living?

What a weird sad world.

Furthermore, someone who volunteers to become a soldier presumably understands the terms of the arrangement, including the fact that they will be subject to harsh punishments for failing to obey orders, etc.

We are used to focusing on a person’s freely chosen actions in according merit; however, there’s a neat argument that it’s unfair to accord the same honor/reward for an action that’s freely chosen as opposed to one that’s undertaken by mandatory duty. The person who had a duty to act, and did so, was subject to greater punishment (being court-martialed, jailed in a military prison for desertion, etc.) if he refused than someone who didn’t have the duty to act. Shouldn’t the greater punishment the duty subjected the person to also come with a proportionally greater reward/honor if the duty is performed? In other words, why should civilians in dangerous jobs have all the same honor and reward as military folks, when they are subject to much less severe punishments if they refuse to act?

(I came into contact with this argument in a paper on the duty to study Torah by David Benatar – “Obligation, Motivation, and Reward: An Analysis of a Talmudic Principle,” 2002 in Journal of Law and Religion.)

Policing is considered a job — and not necessarily always a particularly noble one (cf. tax collectors). By contrast, the military is for some reason not considered a mere occupation. (Note, for example, the bad connotation of the word “mercenary”.)

That’s why you get people arguing about the Iraq war as if we still had a draft. The Iraq war may be bad policy, but arguing against it on the grounds that it “puts our soldiers in harm’s way” strikes me as inappropriate, since it is literally the job of “our soldiers” is to be in harm’s way. Nowadays, with conscription a thing of the past, there is every reason to regard the military as closely analogous to other risky occupations like police or firefighting.