Where are their holidays? Other people also protect our freedoms, right?

Now that it's after Memorial Day and the worst of the chatter is over, I'm going to say, as I do every year, that I find it a little silly that people praise soldiers more than any other group for keeping us free.

Here are some other people, right off the top of my head, that I can think of who are at least as responsible for keeping us free as soldiers.

Police.  This should be evident.  Hard to be free without good social order.

Teachers.  Again, evident.  Teachers are one of the groups of people who are responsible for teaching our children the blessings and responsibilities of liberty.  Soldiers are not in our classrooms, day in and day out, for the inglorious and poorly paid primary education positions that are vital for the continuation of a free society.

Protesters.  Every expansion of liberty in the United States came about because someone decided to make an issue of it.  The struggle against slavery, universal emancipation, worker's rights, racial and gender equality.  You name it, it's protestors who did it.  Fredrick Douglass, Susan Anthony, Martin Luther King, Jr., these people faced tremendous difficulties to create and expand the reach of freedom.

Lawyers.  Many of the liberties we hold dear were not won on the battlefield, but in the courtroom.  This goes back to the writing of the Constitution, itself, largely the world of James Madison, who was a lawyer.

Writers.  I'm going to throw a bone to myself, I guess.  But writers have inspired people all over the world to seek freedom and whenever you look at a group of people fighting oppression, there are a bunch of writers who are all up in it, creating the moral and intellectual arguments for defiance of tyranny.  This goes from Thomas Paine, through guys like Alexander Solzhenitsyn right up to Aung San Suu Kyi.

Others could be added to this list, all of whom are at least as important as soldiers for creating and maintaining freedom, many of whom have and continue to face tremendous persecution, violence and death in their struggles for freedom, all over the world - but many others who toil in difficult circumstances in ignomy, without any glory at all.

Where are their holidays?