Why do we still commemorate D-Day?

It’s not a rhetorical question. The event is more distant to us than Custer’s Last Stand was to the men who stormed the Normandy shore. Those men are nearly all gone. The tumultuous events that defined them, and which they defined in turn, are closed chapters in history books that are no longer widely read.

Nor do we believe any longer in the ideals for which they fought.

Oh, we sound as if we do. For once, Donald Trump hit the right notes in his speech at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, near Omaha Beach. He paid a fitting tribute to the veterans, to the fallen in their graves, and to the institutions that the fallen and the living together made possible.

“To all of our friends and partners,” he said, “our cherished alliance was forged in the heat of battle, tested in the trials of war and proven in the blessings of peace. Our bond is unbreakable.”

But Trump was only mouthing words. He repeatedly contemplated withdrawing the U.S. from NATO just last year. He considers our European partners to be freeloaders on defense (which they are) and rip-off artists on trade (which they are not). His America Firstism is the direct ideological descendant of those who would have let Britain fall to Hitler to keep America out of the war.