Though I consider myself rather patriotic—especially to the West of Socrates and Augustine and to the America of Washington and Jefferson—I have often found public liturgies, such as Memorial Day, distasteful. There’s too much contrivance in them, and they always feel too “new and improved” and yet sterile even in their flashiness.

At an aesthetic level, who wouldn’t choose to wear black and pour a bottle of tequila on a grave on All Soul’s Day under a grim November sky rather than be mesmerized by the gaudy reds and blues displayed around blossoming spring flowers and under a glittering May sun?

Mea culpa, but death in this world is not a pretty thing, though many die well. Death should be somber, contemplative, and prayerful, not jingoistically and superficially triumphant. Our victory in death comes from He who died on a Hill of Skulls, not from the soldier of a nation-state.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/real-memorials-patriotism-jingoism-bradley-birzer-timeless.html