D-Day Reminds Us Who the Real Public Servants Are
Another D-Day come and gone, and another reminder that veterans deserve the benefits that politicians give themselves.
J.B. Shurk | June 7, 2026 www.americanthinker.com
Another D-Day anniversary has come and passed, yet the significance of the date lingers with me. In some ways, the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, receives greater commemoration than so many similarly heroic feats. Americans had been fighting in the Pacific Theater for more than two years before arriving in France, and both the Battle of Midway and the Battle of Guadalcanal in the summer of ’42 saw some of the bloodiest combat and self-sacrifice of the entire war.
Still, D-Day suitably binds those of us alive today to the brave generations who came before us. As the largest seaborne invasion in history and the lynchpin to the hard work of overwhelming and ultimately defeating Nazi Germany, thoughts of our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers storming exploding beaches covered in barbed wire while taking heavy fire from all directions remain indelible reminders that the men who fought for our freedom were of nobler, sturdier stock than most alive today.
Those men were a different breed altogether. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting quite a few over the years, and one of the first things you notice about the warriors from that generation is that they have no interest in singing their own praises. They do not seek recognition — and certainly not adulation. Nor do they describe lightly what they witnessed. I think most would stop talking after merely acknowledging, “I was there.” I’ve always interpreted that soft declaration as a polite reminder that those who read about history do not know what history feels like when the blood of fallen friends suddenly streaks across one’s face. It is also, I think, part of an enduring promise to those friends who were lost: that their final moments will be reverently guarded and kept from prying eyes. The living witnesses remain on duty until their final breath.
It is a very different mentality to the one we often see today. Politicians who served in the military are particularly flashy while running for office. Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal told Connecticut voters that he had fought in the Vietnam War, when he had, in fact, never left U.S. soil as a Marine reservist. Maine’s Democrat senatorial candidate, Graham Platner, has such little respect for fellow warriors that he mocked Purple Heart recipient Ted Daniels for heroically shielding his squad during combat in Afghanistan by drawing enemy fire toward himself. Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton (whose father has been staging his run for the presidency since he was a freshman in college) likes to show pictures of himself holding a rifle in Iraq as some kind of quasi-patriotic proof that his desire to gut the Second Amendment and disarm American citizens should be taken seriously. These Democrats have nothing in common with the brave men who fought and died during WWII.
When important dates such as D-Day arrive on the calendar, I cannot help but think of the courage and sense of duty that inspired so many great men to lay down their lives in service to their country.
Politicians and government bureaucrats often call themselves “public servants.” I mean no disrespect to the good civil workers out there, but in my experience, those who are most eager to describe themselves as “servants” tend to behave more as masters. It’s not just the three Democrat politicians I’ve mentioned above, who have used their military service as a springboard for obtaining higher office (following the John Kerry guide to exploiting the courage of others for personal political gain).
Members of Congress, in general, cannot be confused for “public servants.” Public servants don’t become wealthy by using their insider knowledge from secret committee meetings to make stock trades. Public servants don’t force overpriced, subpar Obamacare on citizens while awarding themselves top-shelf medical insurance coverage. Public servants don’t authorize warrantless, unconstitutional electronic surveillance of all Americans while creating lucrative causes of action for themselves should the Intelligence Community decide to spy on lawmakers, as well as citizens. Public servants don’t vote on their salaries, perquisites, and retirement benefits while ordinary Americans struggle to make ends meet.
Likewise, the vast army of government bureaucrats don’t behave as public servants either. For several decades now, our “public servants” have been better paid than their counterparts in the private sector. Because of self-dealing public union agreements and quid-pro-quo collusion between lawmakers and bureaucrats, an arcane system of rules and regulations makes it incredibly difficult to fire even the most indolent and useless of government “workers.” Our bureaucratic “public servants” have better pensions and health benefits than the average American.
Taken together, would it not be more accurate to call a taxpaying American citizen in the private sector a “servant” of our public officials? After all, if somewhere between a third to half of your income is deducted from your paychecks in the form of local, state, and federal taxes, does that not indicate that you work for the government for four to six months each calendar year? Is that not just a non-violent and socially accepted form of modern slavery? However one sees this relationship from the average taxpayer’s point of view, our so-called “public servants” are beneficiaries of a generous transfer of wealth, prestige, power, and privilege from supposedly self-governing citizens to the self-described governing “experts” who laughably refer to this imbalanced arrangement as “our democracy.”
This insulting inversion of what it means to be a servant of the public is all the more vulgar when compared to the authentic sacrifice members of the military make for the American people. It seems to me that we would all be better off if some of the salary and benefits awarded to the average cubicle king in D.C. were siphoned off and rerouted to those warriors’ families still paying the personal price for their loved ones’ commitment to real public service.
To no one’s surprise, both veterans and active members of the armed forces do not tend to plume their own feathers or seek new government benefits. They struggle with the health effects from having been exposed to toxic agents during combat. They struggle with the loss of friends. They struggle with suicidal thoughts. Some struggle to keep a job and find a home. And if they were members of Congress, government bureaucrats, or part of just about any recognized “victim class” in American society, their stories would be front-page news. We would organize support groups and fundraisers. We would go street-by-street and door-by-door checking on those who put their lives on the line when it mattered most. We would invite them into our homes and make sure that they left with full bellies and warm coats.
The public servants most deserving of our attention, however, receive none of the rewards that our self-described “public servants” enjoy. In fact, members of Congress often work extra-hard to make sure that our veterans’ names are added to red-flag lists depriving them of their most basic right to self-defense — one of the unalienable personal rights that our veterans fought to preserve.
How does that make sense? It doesn’t. Unless you force yourself to step into the boots of the kind of man who clawed his way through the sands of Normandy to establish beachheads amidst chaos. That kind of man rarely asks for anything. Because when you survive hell, it’s difficult to recognize that hell has a way of following you home. It’s difficult to recognize invisible wounds when physical injuries claimed friends on the battlefield. It’s difficult to take someone else’s help when you are the one who usually offers it.
D-Day is an anniversary we should commemorate by honoring America’s true public servants every single day. (Image via Picryl.)
