LBJ famously said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America.”

Who have the Democrats and President Obama lost?

Howard Stern

and Mad Magazine. The latter was via Instapundit.

The source of the second observation is interesting, because Cronkite was characterized as “… the most trusted man in America.” Despite a Time magazine poll showing that Jon Stewart the most trusted man in America, I’d argue that, in fact, Instapundit – Glenn Reynolds – is now the most trusted man in America.

Why do I say this?

Have you ever checked his Sitemeter stats? Currently Instapundit averages over 420,000 visits a day. (I realize that many of those are repeat visitors.) Then you look at the time spent on the site and now it rounds down to 0.00 seconds per visit. Most people visit Instapundit to tell them where to go and they go there right away. Instapundit’s readers trust him.

He knows what an awful lot of people find interesting. And they keep coming back, according to Sitemeter, in ever greater numbers.

What is Instapundit’s secret? I don’t know for sure.

While he clearly has deeply held views he doesn’t hit people over the head with them. Even his more pointed comments are usually found between two slices of wry.

Clearly part of his appeal is instinctive; he’s plugged into the pop and political culture of the time.

He also does it with often ironic  key words and phrases (e.g. “Heh,” “Faster Please,” “They told me that if I voted for McCain …,” “We’re in the best of hands”)

For the most part too, he takes Polonius’s advice to heart that “…brevity is the soul of wit.”

Of course our culture isn’t as homogenous as it was 40 years ago, so I can’t believe that Prof. Reynolds could ever wield the sort of influence that Cronkite did. He still is a bellwether of public sentiment.

Nowadays any0ne can be a pundit. (For heavens sake I’m a pundit!)  But no one does it as well or instantly as Glenn Reynolds.

In the Olympics it is hard enough to compete knowing that the weight of you nation is on your shoulders. But for Joannie Rochette of Canada she bore an unimaginable burden. The six time Canadian national champion figure skater was preparing for the upcoming events with her mother by her side, as always. But on Sunday, shortly after arriving in Vancouver to watch her daughter compete, 55 year old Therese Rochette died suddenly of a massive heart attack.

This is not the first time that tragedy has struck before an athlete took to the world stage in fulfillment of a lifetime’s worth of training with parents, family, friends and countrymen by their side. One recalls the plight of American speed skater Dan Jansen in the 1988 Calgary Olympics whose sister Jane lost her battle with Leukemia on the morning of one of the biggest races in his career. Jansen skated in his scheduled events as his sister had wished from her hospital bed and fell down twice; knocking him out of the gold. Six years later Jansen won gold as he had promised his sister Jane before she died. Jansen proceeded to take a victory lap with his 2 year old daughter in his arms. Her name, Jane.

Joannie Rochette might be too young to remember Jansen’s ordeal but she has the heart of an Olympian. Fighting back tears as the crowd cheered her on Joannie skated her heart out and scored a personal best in the short program. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

Too often we concentrate on the negative influences in a world filled with weasels.

Whether or not Joannie leaves Vancouver with an Olympic medal she is the best of the best. A true champion. Her’s is a story of character, style and courage; all traits that can be passed on to all that know her story and can learn from her example.

Joannie Rochette and Dan Jansen remind us that role models are everywhere, some living in obscurity and others right under our eyes. It is through their example that we can realize the hope of human perseverance.

Go Joannie! You are in our heats and minds in your time of need. You competed for your country at a time when you needed them more than they needed you. To your nation and others you are a true hero. One whose character exemplifies the very essence of a true champion. We celebrate your greatness and honor your courage. The world needs more people like you. You did your mother proud.

Sixty Five years ago today the allied armies invaded the cliffs of Normandy in an effort to fight back the German forces that had enslaved nations and rescue Europe from the shadow of tyranny. These men knew the stakes and fought for liberty without reservation, to the death if necessary. Their sacrifice secured our freedom. We are in awe of such greatness and thankful that the greatest generation of Americans stood tall against our enemies and defeated them where they stood.

Another great American honored those WWII heroes 25 years ago. President Ronald Regan remembered their sacrifice on June 6, 1984 from Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France.

President Reagan’s Speech on June 6, 1984, Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them here. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life and left the vivid air singed with your honor.”

I think I know what you may be thinking right now — thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well, everyone was. You remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him — Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry, I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come form the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore; The Royal Winniped Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet,” and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance — a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

We’re bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all

American Catholic reminds us of the terrible loss of life in the invasion that began 65 years ago today.

2,499 Americans and 1,915 from Great Britain, Canada and the other Allied Powers paid the ultimate price for the victory gained that day. They deserve to be remembered for helping to remove a terrible evil from the world.