Today is July 4, 2026. I’m well aware of what this day is all about. Like every other American of every other generation, I was introduced to the history and the mythology at an early age. And I’m well aware that this particular July 4 – the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the Pennsylvania State House in 1776 – is a significant milestone.
I’m old enough to remember the year-long bicentennial celebration of 1976. I was twelve, and in hindsight, “celebration” might not have been the most accurate word. By mid-year, it was more like a frenzy. The stars and stripes and various other patriotic images – especially those of the founding fathers and colonial America – were ubiquitous. Everything everywhere, from sea to shining sea, had a bicentennial hook. I had bicentennial curtains hanging in my bedroom. Hell, even Superman and Captain America – each by some trick of time travel – found themselves fighting redcoats and other Revolutionary War adversaries in the pages of my comic book collection.
The whole thing got a little bit absurd, even for a twelve-year-old, by the time it was all over. But it was a harmless bit of excess in what now seems like an innocent time. If we were absurd, we were united in our absurdity.
But 1976 was a long time ago, and America is a much different place now.
My sense of patriotism in connection with a specific date on the calendar and in our history has shifted in the last decade or two. These days, the date that consistently reminds me what America is supposed to be about is June 6, 1944.
A quick history lesson (although we all should know this story already): By the spring of 1944 – more than four years after the start of World War II and more than two years after the U.S. had entered the conflict – the Nazi regime in Germany was holding the entire continent of Europe in a totalitarian grip.
But General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander – along with high-ranking military personnel from Great Britain and dozens of other advisors and strategists – had already been working for several months on an elaborate and ambitious plan to liberate France and eventually all of western Europe.
Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 6, Allied forces began an extensive naval and aerial bombardment of Normandy, the coastal region of northwestern France heavily fortified by the Nazis. Along with the bombardment came an airborne inland assault by 24,000 Allied troops. A few hours later, sometime around 6:00 am local time, a fleet of amphibious craft began dumping wave after wave of troops – an estimated 60,000 in all – at five beachheads along a fifty-mile stretch of the coast.
The entire operation – designated as D-Day by military personnel at the time and by historians in the decades since – was the largest seaborne invasion in history.
The weather conditions were far from favorable, and the fighting was bloody – especially along the beaches but further inland as well. The Allied casualties were estimated at more than 10,000, with more than 4,000 confirmed dead. Many of the soldiers jumping off the boats were killed before their boots even touched dry land.
But just twenty-four hours after the initial assault, the trajectory of the war had changed. German forces along the coast had been significantly weakened, and Allied troops had gained a foothold – however tenuous – on the European continent. There was much more fighting to be done, but D-Day was the beginning of the end.
In a message delivered on the eve of the invasion, Eisenhower assured the Allied troops that “the eyes of the world are upon you.” It was no exaggeration. Over the next eleven months after D-Day, the free world watched as an estimated four million troops fought their way through France, Italy and Germany, and eventually converged with Soviet forces in a final battle in Berlin. The Nazis issued a formal surrender on May 8, 1945, and the war in Europe came to an end.
We brought down what many historians consider to be the most malevolent regime in the history of humankind. We recognized a direct and immediate threat to freedom and we confronted it head-on, and in so doing, we liberated an entire continent from the yoke of tyranny. In the final months of the war and for years afterward, the world looked to us as a beacon of hope.
I would argue that D-Day and the subsequent Allied victory in Europe were America’s finest hour.
I don’t want to minimize for one second the courage and the audacity of a small group of representatives from thirteen colonies declaring their independence from an oppressive and exploitive monarchy in July of 1776. But the real test takes place when the boots hit the ground, and that test is even greater when the fight is not necessarily for one’s own freedom but for the freedom of others. Those are the moments when individuals and nations show the world exactly who and what they are.
Decorated war correspondent and media commentator Andy Rooney (1919-2011) arrived at Normandy four days after the invasion to witness the “row on row of dead American soldiers” still lined up along the beach. Many years later, he framed the significance of D-Day in simple but profound terms:
“It was a day unlike any other,” he said. “It was one of the most monumentally unselfish things one group of people ever did for another.”
More than eighty years after D-Day, the eyes of the world are still upon us. They always have been, ever since that first American Fourth of July two-and-a-half centuries ago. But don’t ask me what those eyes are seeing these days. I wonder if the view is getting a little uncertain and even troubling.
In the end, even in times of peace, every generation has its own battles to fight and its own monsters to overcome. On this fourth day of July in 2026, I remember and revere not only the handful of men who signed their names to a brilliantly written document that declared freedom for themselves and their countrymen, but also the tens of thousands more who died in shallow water and sand to secure freedom for the rest of the world.
I hope we can still appreciate the enormity of their sacrifices. I hope we still have the wisdom to recognize tyranny and the courage to confront those who perpetuate it, either on some distant continent or in our own back yard.
I hope the beacon has not gone dark.
Happy Fourth.