By Cal Thomas
Thursday, July 04, 2013
"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present
generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it."
-- John Quincy Adams
Freedom is not the default position of humankind;
otherwise more would be free. In much of the world, dictatorship, religious
persecution and the suppression of women are the norm.
Freedom has a price. Its currency is the blood of those
who paid the bill. They can be found at Arlington, Normandy, and scores of other
places of rest where Americans died so that others might live in freedom.
If a nation is unwilling to pay the price for freedom,
freedom dies. As Ronald Reagan observed, "Freedom is never more than one
generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the
bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the
same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our
children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were
free."
Threats to freedom come not just from foreign powers or
domestic terrorists. Subtler enemies can enslave us. These come from a focus on
self: my rights, my pleasures, my money, to the exclusion of what benefits the
whole, or as the Founders put it, "promotes the general welfare."
Who in our increasingly fractured country speaks of the
general welfare? We are now mostly subsumed into groups. Identity politics is
replacing our national identity. We are hyphenated Americans, divided by
language, gender, race, class and orientation. Few are willing to stand up and
point the way to what should unify us by embracing what is objectively right
and good. Any political leader who attempts to define right and good can be
subjected to an attack ad and stereotyping.
We are hastily exchanging real freedom for license, which
is unfettered morality and as dangerous as setting sail without a rudder.
At best, freedom ought to be about doing good for one's
self, and especially for others. Sacrifice does not always require one to give
up something. It can also lead to an investment in the life of another person,
which collectively contributes to the health of the nation. It goes beyond
paying taxes. It is, as John F. Kennedy noted, asking what you can do for your country.
What does that mean? At the least it should reflect the
words from one of our great patriotic hymns: "Who more than self their
country loved."
Find one poor person who wants help and liberate them
from poverty. If you are pro-life, volunteer at a women's pregnancy help center
to save babies and help women, freeing them from the difficult circumstances
that cause many to seek an abortion. If you think government is too big, become
more responsible for yourself and rely less on Washington. This means living
within your means and investing wisely. It's called self-reliance, which is
one's own declaration of independence.
That which constrains us from being seduced by our lower
nature is what guarantees our freedom. For some it is Scripture. For all Americans
it should be the Constitution. In 1878, British statesman William Gladstone
called the U.S. Constitution, "the most wonderful work ever struck off at
a given time by the brain and purpose of man." That document flowed from
the Declaration of Independence, which presumed the existence of "our
Creator," the ultimate source of freedom and our rights. Abandoning these
threatens freedom.
On this, the 237th birthday of America, we would do well
to remember the meaning of freedom and why it must be renewed by every
generation if it is to endure.
No comments:
Post a Comment