Our Debt To The Greatest Generation

No.214: June 7, 2024

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Dear Friends,

This week’s Square Inch Newsletter arrives a day late to celebrate and reflect on in a timely fashion the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord, otherwise known as the D-Day invasion that marked the beginning of the end of World War II (nobody knew that at the time, of course). I do not know what I can add to the many knowledgeable accounts and tributes available, except to simply voice in concert my admiration and gratitude to those young men who, on June 6th, 1944 exhibited possibly the greatest acts of bravery and courage in recorded history.

There was no easy way to embark on a land invasion of the European continent, particularly against a well-fortified and determined foe. At the end of the day, there was only one way: hit the beaches of Normandy and claw inland inch by perilous inch under withering fire and sustaining unspeakable casualties. They did it. It was miraculous. It was Providential. And because of it, we rid the world of a manifestation of one of history’s most virulent and destructive ideologies.

Every year on the D-Day Anniversary, the French caretakers of the American cemetery take sand from Normandy’s beaches to emboss the names of all 9,388 headstones. I cannot think of a more beautiful ritual of gratitude.

And it is always worth returning to President Reagan’s remarks on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day. He sure knew how to deliver a speech, and it helped that he really felt it. That gratitude. That awe. That patriotism. That love of freedom.

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It is incumbent upon us to remember that we vanquished but one manifestation of evil, and it lingers still. “Never Again” is an aspiration, not an ontological fact. On October 7th, 2023 we saw this old enemy reemerge, as the soldiers of Hamas attacked the peaceful villages of Israel, raping, slaughtering, and mutilating 1,300 innocents. They did this gleefully. They filmed it themselves with GoPro cameras. One young man called his parents from the telephone of a Jewish family he had just murdered, boasting that he had heroically killed “ten Jews with my own hands!” He pleads with them to open his WhatsApp account to see the pictures of his deeds. If you have the stomach, you can listen to the phone call. They took hostages that Hamas refuses to return, and we find out on a regular basis that that is because the hostages are dead.

And all across university campuses in America students chant the Hamas slogan, “From the River to the Sea.” They do not know what river they are talking about, of course, because they attend elite universities. The reference is to the Jordan, and the slogan means the genocide and eradication of every Jew from their ancient homeland. Killing Jews is not the only thing the Nazis were up to, but it was certainly high on the priority list. And now the self-styled “anti-fascists” and “anti-Nazis” are openly supportive of a movement that seeks the genocide of Jews.

Peter Robinson recently hosted an interview with British journalist Douglas Murray. Murray is the sort of public intellectual of whom I am sometimes skeptical—Eton and Oxbridge educated, which often means “long on beautiful rhetoric full of witty quips, short on sound philosophy.” Think Christopher Hitchens. Murray is an outstanding rhetorician, but he also has pretty valuable things to say. My sense is that he is, a la Richard Dawkins, a “cultural Christian,” content to live in Christendom’s house while denying the truth of its foundations. Insofar as he wants to defend western civilization, he’s a fellow with whom we can and ought to make common cause where appropriate. The whole interview is worth watching, but here is a money quote. Referring to these student protestors, he says: