ON THIS DAY – AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  Two days ago we reminded readers that June 4th was the anniversary of the liberation of Rome in 1944.   Today, of course, is the anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of France in that same year.

D-Day was the most famous day of World War II, with the possible exception of December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  I'll be curious to see how much attention is paid to the D-Day anniversary today.  Do our young people know anything about that day, about what their grandparents achieved?  Do they know how important it was? 

There have been a number of D-Day ceremonies held in France since the end of the war.  But the most memorable was the one addressed by Ronald Reagan on the 40th anniversary of the invasion, in 1984.  As usual, Reagan captured the occasion and showed that great presidential addresses have substance, not just style.  He was speaking to American Rangers, veterans of D-Day.  A few of his words:

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

That's the Reagan touch, which is why he was exactly the right man to make that speech.  And he had some advice:

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

COMMENT:  Ronald Reagan was ridiculed as "an amiable dunce," but in fact was a smart, informed and historically sensitive statesman.  He understood the lessons of D-Day, and he knew that they were eternal, not temporary.

I fear that we're forgetting those lessons today.  Even in the Republican Party there is an isolationist temptation.  It must be resisted, but only presidential leadership can give shape to that resistance.  If we fade into isolationism again, or even partial isolationism, we will pay a bitter price, and another president will be delivering another memorial address on a foreign beach.

June 6, 2011