Two hundred fifty years ago this summer, our Founding Fathers created a new nation, as President Abraham Lincoln put it, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” This Memorial Day, we should remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and made its unlikely existence possible.

America’s success wasn’t preordained. It was hard-fought by the patriots at Lexington and Concord, and no less by the 13 U.S. service members who recently died in the war to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.