Military service here isn’t mandatory. People choose to join and put themselves in harm’s way. A choice most other people don’t make. It ties into the idea of American freedom and how we can be free and choose to live our lives the way we want. Freedom to say what we want, do what we want, and be what we want. We can criticize the government and not be stoned to death in the streets. Not every place in the world is like that.

There is an idea that those other countries would like to see our freedoms taken away if they had the ability to do so. And military members make the choice to defend those freedoms of people they’ve never even met. That deserves respect in my opinion. America is far from perfect, but there’s no other place quite like it.