Remembering the price of freedom

There are a lot of good Memorial Day posts and this one quotes Reagan’s 1986 “Price of Freedom” speech, and has a sad photographic reminder that not everyone “celebrates” Memorial Day.
It’s a day simply to remember those who gave their lives for this country.
Traditionally, American presidents go to Arlington Cemetery for the Arlington Memorial Day wreath laying ceremony. Not so this year with President Obama, who decided not to attend — a decision which upset many veterans. A CBS piece is defensively titled “Obama Not the 1st President to Miss Memorial Day at Arlington,” and stresses that while he wasn’t going to Arlington, he would attend a Memorial Day Ceremony at a national cemetery in Illinois. Except he didn’t attend that one either. Bad weather caused him to cancel. Instead (so goes the story), he “will meet instead privately with military families.” So I guess we should be glad he at least allegedly found time to allegedly observe something — even though it seems like it’s pulling teeth for him to do anything.
Via Glenn Reynolds, Roger Kimball offers a decidedly bleak view:

On this Memorial Day, when we pause to commemorate the sacrifices of the brave men and women who served in the American military to help keep us free and strong, it is worth thinking as well about those whose visceral reaction to the United States is arrogant and impatient loathing. It is not an edifying, though it may be an empowering, thought.

I think Kimball is right. This president gives every indication that he’s simply uncomfortable with any sort of patriotic event or military display, and would like to avoid them to the maximum extent possible, or get away as soon as possible.
Yet, he’s supposed to be the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, right? Is he uncomfortable with that too?
Or is it inappropriate to pose sarcastic rhetorical questions about the president on Memorial Day?
In all honesty, don’t know what’s appropriate anymore.
But this morning I went to the Yankee Air Museum’s Memorial Day Commemoration & Pancake Breakfast Fly-in Drive-in at the Willow Run airfield in Ypsilanti, where I saw aerial displays and speakers in keeping with the occasion. Far from displaying a visceral reaction to the United States of arrogant and impatient loathing, they reminded the crowd that freedom is not free, and remembered the ultimate sacrifice that others had made.
I took a few pictures.