Politics & Power Quote by Allen Boyd

Patriotism is doing two jobs at once here: sanctifying military service while laundering the messy politics of war into a clean moral ledger. Boyd frames freedom as something continuously purchased, not debated - a commodity secured by "America's fighting men and women" and redeemed through sacrifice. That move is deliberate. It short-circuits questions about which wars, whose freedom, and at what cost, replacing policy with piety.

The diction is ceremonial: "great nation", "debt of gratitude", "ultimate price". Those are the pre-approved phrases of Memorial Day speeches and campaign stops, built to sound nonpartisan even when they function as ideology. By calling service a sacrifice "to ensure" America stays free, the line quietly asserts necessity and inevitability. If freedom depends on battlefield sacrifice, dissent can be recast as ingratitude, and scrutiny can feel like betrayal.

Notice the moral accounting: the dead "paid", the living are "blessed". That religious register ("blessed") smuggles providence into statecraft, implying a cosmic endorsement of survival and, by extension, the mission itself. Even "unscathed" is doing narrative work. It acknowledges trauma only insofar as it can be absent, sidestepping the reality that many return with injuries, PTSD, or moral injury. The public is asked to feel grateful, not responsible.

Contextually, this is classic politician-speak aimed at a broad audience: honor the troops, unify the room, avoid the war. The intent isn't to argue; it's to bind. The subtext is clear: support for soldiers becomes a proxy for support of the national project - whatever its current deployment happens to be.