D-Day
June 6, 2006 by Laura | Trackback URI
Kris at Dummocrats has a post titled “Fathers, Daughters & D-Day.” She comments on the two men who helped her
understand the enormity of what the men who landed on the beaches or parachuted behind enemy lines accomplished that day.
It’s refreshing to think of a time when people didn’t believe that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. That phrase was originated by Howard Zinn, and not Thomas Jefferson. In fact, Jefferson said this about dissent:
“I fear [political difference] is inseparable from the different constitutions of the human mind and that degree of freedom which permits unrestrained expression. Political dissention is doubtless a less evil than the lethargy of despotism, but still it is a great evil, and it would be as worthy the efforts of the patriot as of the philosopher, to exclude its influence, if possible, from social life. The good are rare enough at best. There is no reason to subdivide them by artificial lines. But whether we shall ever be able so far to perfect the principles of society, as that political opinions shall, in its intercourse, be as inoffensive as those of philosophy, mechanics, or any other, may be well doubted.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Pinckney, 1797. ME 9:389
The “Greatest Generation” sacrificed much to provide freedom for Americans and millions of people in other countries. They recognized that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and they did what it took to win. And some who were not part of that generation, like Kris’s dad, still had the wisdom to recognize and appreciate those sacrifices. They raised their kids to “grow up seeing America the way that he saw it and that Reagan saw it: as that shining city on a hill.” I can’t think of a better inheritance.
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