CLAY: Want to make sure we, as both big history buffs and American history enthusiasts, mention today, which is the 78th anniversary of D-Day.

Buck, I’ve talked about how incredible an experience it was to get to spend the day touring all of the D-Day beaches. There are still survivors who are over in Normandy today celebrating that historic occasion.

And I thought let’s listen, here’s General Eisenhower’s D-Day message to the troops, 78 years ago today.

GEN. EISENHOWER: Soldiers, sailors and airmen of the allied expeditionary force, you’re about to embark upon the great crusade towards which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

BUCK: It’s amazing, Clay. It’s a reminder of what those men at that time were facing. And I know I mentioned it to you off air, but for me, I guess I was in the eighth or ninth grade when “Saving Private Ryan” came out. That initial sequence, that D-Day sequence, I think had more of an impact on me than any other military recreation on the screen I’ve ever seen.

I still remember being in that theater at that time and seeing what our soldiers had to go through in that landing and what that meant at that time. It’s seared into my brain. And I know there’s still some actual D-Day survivors, veterans out there. We don’t have that many left.

CLAY: It’s wild to think about these 18- and 19-year-old kids, many of whom had never been outside of their state. And suddenly they are on their first airplane flights ever that crossed the Atlantic. And those troop transports, they dropped the door, basically, and you’re stepping right out into Nazi machine gunfire at 18 and 19 years old.

And the bravery of those guys and what they did. And then to think about the trajectory of where our country is today, where we’ve gone from that generation fighting actual Nazis, Buck, to where the current generation on social media calls people they disagree with on political-related issues Nazis.

BUCK: Yeah, we’ve debased courage in this culture to an extent. The left has debased courage to such an extent where they think that crying and screaming and yelling at people for not wanting to use make believe — not even whatever pronoun, but there’s a whole movement to have make-believe pronouns, call people XZ for Z — that’s the equivalent of storming the beaches at Normandy.

They actually think they’re the heroes of our society for taking no risk and actually being the oppressors within our society, which I think the right has increasingly woken up, that unless you stand up against these individuals they will immiserate you and think they’re good people for doing it. Not just with covid, with everything.

CLAY: And I think the other lesson here is, sooner or later, big words and talk matters. But sooner or later, people who are truly evil use violence. And you have to be willing to respond in kind violently; you can’t talk the Nazis out of evading. You can’t talk bad people out of the choices they make.

BUCK: There’s a portion of our society — obviously, you and I are both a part of the 911 generation, and I went into the CIA because of 911. And we have a few million veterans serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There’s a portion of our society that I think reject the idea that at some point your freedom as a society and as a people is relying upon men and women who are willing to get into the equivalent of a Higgins boat and brave machine gunfire and take the fight to the enemy.

CLAY: That actually is the final bulwark, the final defense against tyranny.

BUCK: And a lot of people in our country right now don’t accept that, don’t understand that, I think, unfortunately.

CLAY: How many 18- and 19-year-olds who think they’re so brave for sitting around on social media calling out people all day long would be willing — calling them Nazis — would be willing to step into a hail of gunfire to fight against actual Nazis?

BUCK: People that call folks who use the wrong pronoun Nazis, they would never actually show up to fight against real Nazis.

CLAY: Thank you all who did.