EDITORIAL
Freedom ought to be pretty high on
the list of our nation’s achievements
Not long ago the fantastic director Ken Burns created an equally fantastic television series entitled “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”
It was, as always with Burns, a total triumph, the next best thing to visiting many of our country’s crown jewels, or completing a well-taught course on their history, philosophy and evolution.
It’s just, well, that title.
More than one observer, while praising the series, asked if creating a national park system was really our country’s best idea.
What about freedom?
That’s a pretty good idea, too.
You can’t argue that extended committee meeting in Philadelphia 243 years ago created freedom, but you can make a pretty compelling case it caused many, not just in America, to look at freedom in a different way.
The words we will celebrate on Thursday tell us freedom is not solely something to be bestowed upon one by another. It’s something already there, deep inside the human character, something worth fighting for, even dying for, to bring into full flower.
If “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” means anything at all, it means that.
Of course freedom for everyone on the planet—or for North America—didn’t happen in the 1770s. But it got refined a good bit. It was refined more in the 1860s, and the 1960s, and the 1980s and onward.
Has it been easy? No. Will it be easy in the future? No. Should we give up? You know the answer to that.
Icons of freedom from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King believed freedom is simply the way it’s supposed to be.
And when we fall short—as Jefferson did in the way he lived his non-public life—our own words can come back to remind us of the way we know it is supposed to be.
In certain circles this attitude would be dismissed as mere “flag waving.” It’s tempting to quote George M. Cohan: “Do you know of a better flag to wave?”
Since we’ve had it so long, in abundance, it may be difficult for Americans to actually notice freedom when it slaps us in the face. Try this. When we gather at Fair Park for fireworks, food and fun Thursday evening look around:
• Nobody told the Rockdale Chamber of Commerce they had to observe this date in any way.
• Nobody demanded fireworks or all the flags.
• Nobody made the Rockdale Volunteer Fire Department stand by to be sure everything would be safe and enjoyable.
• Nobody made the Communities in Concert Band show up to play all those patriotic songs.
Most importantly—Nobody made you go. Your nation didn’t say you had to go celebrate your nation. That happens in places, you know.
But not here. Because we’re free.
What was America’s greatest idea, again?
—M.B.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.