Seventy-nine years ago today the United States was “deliberately and treacherously attacked” by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Over 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,700 wounded in the raid on Pearl Harbor that landed us squarely in World War Two, already raging for years in Europe and Asia. We thought we could remain aloof; that the global forces that precipitated the war – forces in plain view for years – would pass us by; that we were somehow exempt from the human attributes of avarice, ignorance, hatred, envy and lust for power that powered demagoguery and its politics elsewhere. But on December 7, 1941, the world came calling to remind us that we were very much part of the ebb and flow of human events, no matter how fervently we wished we were not. Four years of sacrifice and slaughter followed, and when it was over the greater conflict with totalitarianism and its war on the human spirit had only just begun.
Today, as we recognize and honor all those who fought that good fight from December of 1941 onward, we should also recognize that we are once again embroiled in the defense of liberty and human freedom. The stakes are as great as at any time before and the outcome is in greater doubt because we are divided as at no time in the past century. For decades, we have been encouraged to forget that human nature is immutable and that, if left unchallenged, viciousness and greed, envy and hatred will spread until the body politic is rotten with it. Faced again with external enemies we do not wish to recognize as such and with internal forces that no longer acknowledge our nation for the beacon of freedom it has always been, we are in peril indeed.
In considering our past and its victories over human depravity, may our sight be restored; may we see not only the opponents abroad but also their allies within. And may we oppose them vigorously until, as our forebears, we overcome them all in the name of liberty.
Remember Pearl Harbor.
