Today is the 74^th anniversary of D-Day, and I sincerely question how many Americans, especially those under 50, will take time to reflect on the sacrifice of what many refer to as “The Greatest Generation,” as they fought to restore sanity on a continent so far away.

In the years preceding moving my family to Edgefield County — after becoming angry at an out of control Federal Government, while living in Spotsylvania County near Stafford, Prince William and Fairfax Counties — my wife and I invested a great deal of time walking the military gravesites from both the Revolutionary and Civil War eras.  As I began engaging in political campaigns and grassroots activism, every holiday there were opportunities to be at these war sites, memorials and graveyards.  During campaigns which were addressing free-markets vs. crony-capitalism, property rights vs. federal bureaucratic encroachment on those rights, the concept of private charity with accountability vs. mandatory increased dependency, I grieved as I walked these sites, thinking about the millions of families, not only the dead, but the families, who gave so much to bequeath to us the freest, most productive, most prosperous republic in the history of the world.

Again, today is the 74^th Anniversary of D-Day, and I sincerely question how many Americans, especially those under 50 will take the time to reflect on the sacrifice of what many refer to as “The Greatest Generation” to end tyranny on a continent so far away.  These were the descendants of those I mentioned in the paragraph above.  Like their forefathers, they were faced with a tyrannical force, and they rose to the occasion to fight for the principles which made our republic great.

Six years ago, I wrote again about my thoughts on D-Day Remembrance Day, its sixty-eighth anniversary.  I’d like to share them with you.  In it are provided two critically important speeches from D-Day morning, one from Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, the other from our Commander in Chief, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  My thoughts also compared the political climate of the continent we saved close to three generates removed, specifically France, to that day in 2012.  http://hscottcooper.com/the-68th-anniversary-of-d-day-my-thoughts/.

Last year, on Memorial Day, I didn’t specifically write about D-Day, but like I did in 2012, I referred to global trends, which I believe the current rising generation, descendants of both the D-Day Generation as well as the generations referred to in paragraph two above, will be required to address, whether we proactively choose to, or as is often the case, are forced to address it defensively.  I’d like to share that with you, which was in the print edition of The Edgefield Advertiser last year, http://hscottcooper.com/contrasting-three-events-on-memorial-day-ea-may-31-2017/.

We have a duty, indeed a moral obligation, to ensure our descendants are properly educated on all this critically important history, both what we remember on this D-Day Remembrance Day, and further back.  I pray each of us will take this civic duty seriously.

Here’s wishing you a productive week!