Gloria Ferris

It is appropriate and right to write about freedom today because tomorrow is Independence Day.  A day that is all about freedom. A day to be thankful for the everyday people of this country who decided that enough was enough and they weren’t going to take it any more.  Let’s face it if there weren’t those people who began the rumblings of discontent there would have been no need for founding fathers or founding brothers as they are now called.  Because of those courageous individuals, today we have the freedoms we so enjoy but take for granted.  My particular favorites are freedom of speech and the right to vote.  Yours may be different from mine but just as important to you.  Another thing that those “radicals” so long ago gave us:the Right to disagree with civility. But, with that right to disagree comes a great obligation to come to an agreement that moves us forward.  And, therein lies the problem.

An even greater gift that  I believe we were given that day 230 240  years ago was this line that Thomas Jefferson wrote “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all”  Now over the years we have found that his definition needed to be broadened but we did it and we were a better nation because of it.  I think that what is important here is to qualify that our pursuit of happiness ends at our neighbor’s door.  It is necessary that we consider others in our pursuit of happiness, but today I am concerned with liberty.  And this is why. Five years ago, a terrible tragedy happened to our nation on a beautiful day in September.  I will never forget the beautiful brilliant blue sky in the background as I watched the horrific sights played before me.  I wondered at the time how such a horrible thing could happen on such a beautiful day in September.

Today, I see a country that has not banded together but that is being torn apart by these events.  We are in the midst of another unwinnable war because we don’t know who the enemy is.  You may be thinking that I refer to the War in Iraq , and I could be but I am not.  I am referring to the laws that have been broadened in the name of a “war on terrorism” but in actuality can and could be used against law abiding citizens that simply speak out in opposition to the status quo.  We have set the stage for squelching many voices in this country at a time when these voices will be needed more than ever.  We face many decisions that will change the fabric of how our country moves forward in the future and instead of having healthy debates and dialogues on how that future should look we have a selected few who have decided that they know what is best without the input of the people.  Remember, “of the people, by the people, and for the people”.  When I read the articles on the “net neutrality”, eminent domain, NSA eavesdropping, global warming doesn’t exist,  I shudder.

Recently, bloggers have been compared to Revolutionary War pamphleteers. I get the impression from these comparisons that in actuality they are not meant as a compliment because usually, this statement is attached–one issue platforms that go away when the opinion is no longer necessary.   My response to those who quote these passages is usually “I think that is pretty good company”, but with the approach of Independence Day I realized something.  We are the revolutionary war pamphleteers of the present day and maybe our “war” is not any less important than that first war so many years ago that formed our country.  But, I also realize that blogging is not enough.  Blogging serves the purpose of organizing our thoughts, inviting others to join the dialogue so that we can better hone our arguments, and to create a platform that we then must take out to a wider community than the one which writes and reads blogs.  It is necessary that we make sure that we have an aware public, an informed public that does not allow FREEDOM to become a word that we read about in history books rather than a living tenet of our country. 

Lately, the title of this post has been in many of the essays and books that I have read. In fact, I have seen it so often it has become rather cliched in my mind, but it shouldn’t have become that.  Early this morning, I realized that the early settlers in this county, lived every day like it was their last day because it could have been.  And so should I, and so should I.