On America’s 250th day, Californians should remember our finest hour

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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If ever there was a time for the citizens of the United States of America to reflect and appreciate how their nation has influenced the evolution of humanity, it is now on its 250th anniversary.

Yes, the U.S. is now plagued by political polarization and cultural anger over a number of specific issues, but that’s been the case before, and we Americans have somehow survived—even after an extremely bloody civil war.

We continue to be the world’s most powerful economic and cultural influencer, thanks in large part to our highly diverse population, born of our historic willingness to absorb immigrants and refugees.

I, for example, can trace one strand of my ancestry back to a man named George Glenn, one of the hundreds of thousands of Scots-Irish who migrated from Ulster in the 18th century and settled in the Appalachians. How the Glenn family evolved from poverty and oppression in Ulster to success in America shows how the future nation gained enough population and economic power to break away from Great Britain and declare its independence on July 4, 1776.

I’m proud of it, and all descendants of immigrants should be, whether they came before 1776 or last week. But we should be ashamed that immigration has become a political football used by politicians of both parties.

All told, there is one event that encapsulates the United States’ unique place in human history: World War II, when we saved the world during one of its darkest periods.

I am a WWII buff who is repeatedly reminded of how close the Axis powers or Germany, Japan and Italy came to the potential end of civilization through military conquest. At the time, Americans may have been sympathetic to the plight of Axis-conquered nations and territories, but—seemingly protected behind broad oceanic barriers—were reluctant to intervene militarily.

That changed when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked our Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We declared war on Japan, Germany declared war on us, and the die was cast for the most massive and destructive conflict humanity has ever experienced.

There are many reasons why the US and its allies prevailed in 1945, but at the heart of every aspect is that our nation embraced a moral imperative to rid humanity of those who sought to dominate or enslave everyone else. The United States became, in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the “arsenal of democracy,” producing vast numbers of aircraft, military, and merchant ships to transport them to the battlefront.

We have literally kept Britain, the nation from which we sprang in 1776, from starvation. We supplied the troops and weapons to prevent Nazi Germany from forcing the British to surrender and later to drive the Germans out of France, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Italy and North Africa.

At the same time, we almost single-handedly faced the Japanese Empire, which had conquered much of Southeast Asia and was threatening Australia and India.

It was costly not only in money but also in lives. More than 400,000 American soldiers, sailors and airmen were killed and more than 600,000 were wounded. But it had to be done and we did it.

The war was transformative in many ways. For example, it forced European nations to give up their colonial empires. This allowed the Soviet Union, our wartime ally, to build its own ring of dominated states. With Western Europe reformed, we kept the Soviets in check.

The war had a huge impact on California, transforming its economy into industrial production and later technology, causing a population boom that lasted for 80 years.

We must never forget that the US saved the world when it needed saving. It was our finest hour.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.