I need to stop reading letters to the editor.

Lately, they only serve to make me mad and fuel my blog rants.

Like today, for instance.

Tell me how this is somehow offensive and unsupportable: that soldiers, all of whom VOLUNTEERED, have fought in all the wars of this century to preserve the freedom and prosperity of their homeland. Tell me how it is bad, for one flipping day of the entire year, to remember the people who died so YOU have a home and a family and a free country. You'd think this would be impossible to refute, wouldn't you?

But still there are people who sit at home in their warm houses and whine about how we shouldn't be 'glorifying the acts of war'. Okay, I know war isn't fun, I know it's deadly, I would be horrified should there be, say, a WW3, but the important part is that people, when the time came, did it anyway! And they did it not because they found shooting fellow humans fun, they did it because it was the RIGHT THING TO DO! And because they did, we have what we do and we enjoy the privileges we do!

Next time a threat comes around, you people who write these idiotic letters, you can just lie down like a doormat and let the invading forces walk all over you. Tell me how that goes. Maybe you'll be slightly more supportive of war afterwards.

Rant over. Please be advised that I oppose pacifism with every bone in my body.

Lest we forget

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

Tomorrow, Remembrance Day, we honor all the Canadian soldiers who have ever died to preserve our freedom, our prosperity, and our lives.

War is not ideal. Peace, on the other hand, is. Sometimes, you need to fight a war to gain peace. And that's why I am not a pacifist. War is tragic and devastating - but sometimes war is necessary. For freedom, prosperity, and life. To want peace is not to lie down and let the world trample on you, because that way you're avoiding conflict. To want peace is to be willing to fight for it, because there are people who want to take it away.

Tomorrow, say a prayer of thanks for the men and women who died to make our country what it is today - free - and for the men and women who are even now fighting to give that same freedom to others.

I will be.