The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe: ‘These dead shall not have died in vain’

I’ve been blessed with a life that has carried me around the world to see things I never imagined. The most moving journey I made was to Normandy, France, on the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Walking through the rows of white crosses lining the cliffs as June’s last light sank into the English Channel, I talked with an 80-year-old veteran who returned to remember.

“How did you scale those cliffs?” I asked as we stood above Omaha Beach.

He quietly laughed.

“I was 19 years old. I didn’t really think of anything. They told us to do it, so we did.”

Later that morning, we came across a young French girl and her little sister walking down a street that bordered the cemetery. With their parents standing just behind them, the girl stepped forward — flowers in hand — and offered them to the old hero. “My sister and I want to thank you for our lives,” she said softly. “My parents told us how it was Americans like you who saved us. Thank you.”

With his hands shaking and tears streaming down his face, the old vet hugged the two young girls and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you.” Everyone else in that small circle on that small street in Normandy was also wiping away their own tears, as the quiet sound of American flags fluttering from every available street light and flag pole filled the air on that somber day.

An op-ed by Jonathan Darman in this morning’s New York Times reflects on the essential task of World War II cemeteries — “shrinking the distance across an ocean through the memory of shared sacrifice” — and features more Europeans like those two French girls saying, “Thank you, USA!” It is a must-read on this Veterans Day.

The Wall Street Journal’s editor at large takes on Republicans for failing to address the affordability crisis while obsessing over whether or not a white supremacist who’s praised Hitler should be platformed.

And more good news for Democrats overnight as a Utah judge threw out Republican redistricting plans and, in the process, potentially added another Democratic seat for next year’s election. That could be the sixth Democratic pickup in a week.

We take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

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