Eleven years ago, I stood upon the beaches of Normandy, France, and looked up one of the many hills our American soldiers climbed with heavy backpacks and under German artillery fire. They climbed the hill anyway. I wryly remarked that I did not think you could get 100,000 Americans to storm such a hill under such attack again.

The American soldier of the 1940's had something to fight for. Regardless of their situation, they all were able to share the American dream. They dreamed to come home, start a family, and perhaps a business as well. They would come home to an America where only their imagination would set the limits of what they could accomplish. Optimism was never higher.

The year is 2009. The place: United States of America. Today's soldiers are coming home to a very different United States. Their government is doing everything to limit their possibilities. Planning to start a business? Here's what you will pay the employees at minimum. Here's the insurance you must offer or face penalties. Here are the volumes of codes and laws you must comply with to run your business. If, when all of those rules and regulations are followed, and there is any profit left, we will tax that profit at rates their World War II counterparts would not believe.

Today's soldier may want to start a family. But that soldier will be told what shots their children are forced to have, including an HPV shot for the daughters, despite their objections. The schools will decide the course curriculum, even if the parents disagree with the content. And to remove their child from public schools for home schooling may find them in violation of the law.

And when that soldier needs to take a family member to the doctor, it will no longer be as simple as calling and making an appointment. They will find they must wait in a long line of patients, many who have not contributed to paying the costs with this “better” system, and find that a panel of bureaucrats will need to meet and decide their fate before his children can get the necessary medical tests needed to determine the best course of action. Mimicking what the liberals have always hated about capitalism, cost will be the only deciding factor.

“Best” has also been redefined. It now will mean in the “best interest of the state” rather than the “best interest of the patient”. Yet they will be told that this is a small sacrifice to make for the greater good. Those same politicians, will, of course, have their own medical plans that exempt them from the same systems you and I must utilize.

So when 2015 rolls around, and our nation has a threat that must be addressed, who will step up and fight for us? There will be little if anything that separates our nation from those we would never consider sacrificing ourselves for.

If Americans had no idealogical reasons to fight for Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Communist China or Russia, North Korea, or North Vietnam, and when our policies resemble the rule of those nations rather than the United States of the past, will we rise and defend it?

Or will there simply be nothing left to fight for?