This I Believe

Freedom is not Free – This I Believe

In order to truly understand freedom, you must have had it and lost it. As with any great power, freedom is abused more than it’s embraced by American’s. We forget it’s our freedom that allows us to be the most powerful country on the Globe. We forget that freedom is not a right reserved for Americans, but for people of all nations. We forget that freedom is best used, not to advance a free nation, but to advance other nations to freedom.

After more than 22 years of defending freedom, I’m appalled at this Nation’s reluctance to provide liberty for Iraq. We quickly use our freedom for partisan politics, financial expansion, and even to be silent. Our enemy uses our freedom against us to divide us as they laugh at our ignorance. I’m tired of the media expending all their energy to find fault with this war, instead of concentrating on the freedom we are giving a fledgling democracy. The freedom of speech, religion, and equality are not reserved for a select group…and those who have it should be obligated to give it to those who do not.

Why should they want freedom when we flaunt it so casually as if it cost us nothing? Let us not forget our Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Freedom has always required the ultimate sacrifice, from the blood of the Revolutionary War to our blood spilled on the streets of Iraq. If America doesn’t believe that we have an obligation in Iraq, we will not hold onto the Freedom we wield so carelessly here. I would give my life, as my fallen brothers and sisters have, for anyone that would do the same to discover the freedoms I’ve enjoyed all my life – This I Believe.