D-Day anniversary - Lest we forget

TODAY marks the 73rd anniversary of D-Day, a seminal event in modern European and world history.

Though not a significant anniversary in a ceremonial sense — coincidentally, it occurs on a Tuesday, as did the invasion — maybe we should take a moment to consider how our world has changed since then and if those changes have been for the better or otherwise.

Maybe we should, especially as the generation that sacrificed so much that we might live in a civilised, peaceful world slips away, ask ourselves if we have made best use of their selfless achievements.

Maybe we should, in an ever-more divided, isolationist, and volatile world, ask ourselves if we would be as committed to defending Western civilisation as was that generation. Those who suggest that the European project has run its course should ask themselves if the peace we’ve all enjoyed since 1945 could have been achieved any other way. That we have not had to even ask, much less answer, those increasingly difficult questions for decades is answer enough.