"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Monday, June 6, 2011

D-Day

Today, of course, is the sixty-seventh anniversary of the greatest amphibious invasion in history, the invasion of France on the Normandy beaches by men of the American and British Armies on June 6, 1944.   It is hard to even imagine what it must have taken for young men -- and they were so young, most of them -- to leap from those boats into the water and wade ashore under withering fire from German guns.   Training?  Sure.   But also courage, patriotism, fear of letting their units and platoon buddies down, faith in God.   As the World War II generation slowly fades (a 20 year old who survived Omaha Beach and the rest of the war would now be 87), it's more necessary than ever to take time to remember, and to thank them.

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