I would like to salute my fellow veterans who have given so much in defense of the freedoms we enjoy as a unique nation in the world. However, many Americans are concerned about the growing crisis in our nation, our society and our institutions. Over the past 80 years, America has lost hundreds of thousands of lives and spent trillions of dollars of our national treasure fighting against totalitarian governments. We now seem to be on a path to allow the same divisive ideology to find a home inside our nation.

Most concerning is that this ideology is now infecting the two institutions that should be most protected: K-12 (the impressionable, not fully-developed minds of young children) and the military (whose members write us a blank check of service with their lives as collateral).

Veterans took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. All took their oath as a lifetime commitment.

Veterans and all Americans must now awaken to the domestic enemy that threatens our American way of life. Somehow, we have allowed it to happen. Have we been asleep at the switch? No, actually, in the words of Ronald Reagan, we trusted leadership to make the right decisions, but we failed to verify. We assumed leadership of our critical institutions had the best interests of our Constitution and republic in mind. That has proven to be a bad assumption. Finally, however, we are seeing a slow awakening to this threat, both in our schools and in our military. Our historical analogy is the unleashing of the sleeping bear. It is time for the bear to come out of hibernation!