This was posted at Real Clear Politics today.
It is Ronald Reagan;s speech from 1984, on the 40th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy.
Must read.
Oustanding, just outstanding.
If you ever feel down-read some Reagan or Churchill speeches and the feeling will pass.
"Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You
were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more
than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked
everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside
the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these
cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look
at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was
loyalty and love."
"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."
