Biden makes the case to fight extremists by invoking war waged on D-Day

POINTE DU HOC, France — Invoking the soldiers who braved Nazi fire on D-Day, President Joe Biden called upon Americans to put country first and not cast aside the democratic traditions that an earlier generation died to protect.

Biden spoke one day after the 80th anniversary of D-Day, standing atop the sheer 100-foot cliff that Army Rangers scaled to destroy artillery and push back German forces that had overrun Europe in the Second World War.

He drew a parallel between the sacrifices made to defeat Hitler’s forces and the struggle to overcome what he called the “hateful ideologies today,” an apparent reference to extremist movements at home and abroad.

Soldiers who strung rope ladders to climb the cliff in the face of enemy machine guns would have wanted Americans to show the selflessness needed today to preserve democratic freedoms, he said.

“American democracy asks the hardest of things: to believe that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves,” Biden said, standing atop a German bunker used to fire at troops who'd landed on Omaha Beach. “Democracy begins with each of us. It begins when one person decides there’s something more important than themselves. When they decide that their country matters more than they do. That’s what the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc decided.”

Despite Hitler’s defeat and America’s victory in the Cold War that followed, the battle for a free and independent Europe persists, Biden said. He pointed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, a democratic state and Western ally.

“Does anyone doubt that they [the soldiers who captured Pointe du Hoc] would want America to stand against Putin’s aggression here in Europe today?” he said, looking out at an audience that