Two hundred fifty years ago this summer, our Founding Fathers created a new nation, as President Abraham Lincoln put it, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” This Memorial Day, we should remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and made its unlikely existence possible.America’s success wasn’t preordained. It was hard-fought by the patriots at Lexington and Concord, and no less by the 13 U.S. service members who recently died in the war to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.Surveying the course of American history, President Ronald Reagan observed that “freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.” The privileges that Americans and millions of freedom-loving people throughout the world enjoy come at a cost, sometimes a steep one.
During the Revolution, an estimated 25,000 Americans died. More than 600,000, roughly 2% of the population, fell during the Civil War. The two World Wars together claimed more than half a million American lives.
“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid,” President Harry Truman said in April 1945, after America and its allies defeated Adolf Hitler and his fascists. “They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifice.”
