Seventy years ago today, even after leaders knew the war was won, roughly 50,000 innocent people died instantly at the hands of the US military. In the following months, roughly 100,000 additional humans suffered prolonged, gruesome deaths in Hiroshima, and tens of thousands more would die similarly in Nagasaki.

If we are to consider our nation great – or more importantly, ourselves as decent people – we must regard the victims of our past atrocities as loudly as we applaud ourselves.