If the last few generations of Americans understood the origin and meaning of Memorial Day, we might have avoided the trauma of division and corruption that now threatens the United States as never before. 

Memorial Day was founded on the biblical ideals of forgiveness and reconciliation shortly after America’s most divisive and bloody conflict, the Civil War, which extended from 1861 to 1865. That conflict cost at least 620,000 men, more casualties than all of America’s other wars combined — the two World …