I will start adding speeches along with poetry every few weeks. This one is an excerpt from President Obama at the 65th Anniversary of the Normandy Landings a few days ago on June 6th, 2009 at the Normandy American Cometary and Memorial overlooking Omaha beach.
Youtube source.
We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It is a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government.
In such a world, it is rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.
The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good.
But all know that this war was essential. For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity.
Nazi ideology sought to subjugate, humiliate, and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior.
It was evil.
