QUOTE : All of us in combat were inextricably dependent on each other for our very lives. We were not only fighting for our country, we were fighting for each other.<br />• I know that part of what I was fighting for was the freedom we all cherish so dearly, including freedom of speech, but this is different. Having the right to free speech does not mean you have a right to your own facts or your own truth. Having free speech is not a free pass to spew hatred or to abandon civil discourse. <br />• The commitment and sacrifice of military members extends beyond combat. The sacrifices are real and exist twenty-four/seven regardless if we are in peacetime or war. <br />• In some way, we are like Plato’s prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn our heads. We only see shadows on the cave wall. We are oblivious to the larger, more colorful and more desirable world outside of the cave. <br />• I think where religion may go astray is when leaders and followers of a specific religious doctrine or tradition mistake the vehicle of religion for truth itself.