ON FREEDOM
Have you ever thought about freedom? I mean really really thought about it, and about what it takes to create a society where dissent and differences are tolerated, even embraced (albeit not always happily), because they’re understood to ultimately facilitate and inform a more enlightened majority point of view. Have you ever thought about the personal sacrifices that have been made over time to sustain such a society – our society — imperfections and all?
Would you have had the guts to stand tall with the Patriots at Lexington and Concord or at Bunker Hill – a ragtag assembly of untrained, undisciplined farmers, craftsmen, artisans and the like – and face down the strongest, best trained and best equipped army in the world, risking life, income, everything – your world as you knew it? Would you have been willing to risk imprisonment by offering shelter, comfort, a slice of bread or a drink of water to an escaped slave who, with nowhere else to go, happened to knock at your farmhouse door in the dead of a wintry night? The many examples of such courage throughout the history of our great country go on and on, and the question remains the same. What would you have done? What would I have done?
I deeply fear that I wouldn’t have had the courage to rise to the occasion, to stand up at my own peril against injustice, in support of freedom and the supremacy of the rule of law. Yes, it’s easy to be principled when the risks are minimal. To stand up when the going gets tough, though, takes the kind of courage I can only dream of possessing. And while that disappoints me about my own moral fiber, it helps me to truly appreciate the strength of character and conviction of those who came before me, who put themselves in harm’s way in support of a belief, a principle, an idea, an abstraction – the concept of a society in which the people are imbued with certain rights and freedoms and the power to enforce their will through the government they establish.
And so, on this July 4 holiday, I urge you to take a moment to reflect on the sacrifices of those who have come before to bring us the many freedoms we enjoy, and to consider what personal sacrifices we as a people might be called on to make in order to sustain our freedoms for generations to come. Let us honor all those who have worked to create this powerful, wonderful, yet imperfect, legacy of American democracy