“And it shall come to pass afterward, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions…” Joel 2:28
The Spirit of Freedom will sparkle again on Monday. Our land will light up with firecrackers in celebration of a dream come true…Independence Day. It marks the 235th anniversary of the birth of America. But what exactly will we be celebrating?
Freedom, of course … fruit from the vision of courageous men, young and old. These pledged their lives and fortunes to fulfill the deepest dream of mankind…Liberty. The Declaration of Independence is the Word, the seed of that dream. Its words have become a living reality.
What is Freedom? A chimerical wish-list envisioned by idle daydreamers? Some romantic notion devised by Utopian idealists? Hardly. The poet, Gibran, writes, “(Vague) and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end…that which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined...and if you could hear the whispering of the dream, you would hear no other sound.” Thankfully, our ancestors heard that whisper.
From what compost pile is Freedom conceived? Often from the rotting detritus of oppression, enslavement, tyranny and brutality. It seethes in obscurity. It endures beneath the turf of tyrants, despots and dictators. When it can no longer be suppressed, its collective voice cries, “No more!” It then rises from darkness into a tsunami of unrestrained power.
All births are bloody messes. Travail precedes each. Ben Franklin and a friend once watched a hot air balloon exhibit. It rose from a field, floated over trees, and landed in a nearby field. Peasant farmers with pitchforks, ignorant and fearful, attacked it. The friend remarked, “What good was that experiment?” Franklin replied, “What good is any new-born baby?” Freedom begins as a baby. But it grows, changes, has dreams of its own destiny. America’s experiment with Freedom is now 235 years old. The baby’s growing up…and it’s changing.
How does Freedom consist, hold together? Is it by milquetoast methods of submission to the winds of fortune? Or is it by, as Churchill said in England’s dark hours of WW II, “…blood, toil, tears and sweat…?” All revolutions and preservations of Freedom are achieved not by slick rhetoric, but by the shedding of blood. America’s experiment with Freedom is no different.
Is our dream of Freedom in jeopardy? Has it become a faded billboard for rent, cheap? A fast-food court of entitlements, tawdry trinkets and handouts to appease the masses? A nation of ‘freeloaders’ and pilferers of the public treasury? Free everything…healthcare, food stamps, welfare checks mortgages, you-name-it? Are we like drunks, sucking the dregs of the Dream at the bottom of a bottle of debt, celebrity politics and self-gratification? Scary thoughts.
Again this year the fireworks extravaganzas will bring to remembrance Francis Scott Key’s words, “…and the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.” And that’s what we need…a constant reminder that the horror of darkness has not extinguished our flag, the symbol of enduring Freedom.
On Monday the Spirit of Liberty will blow softly in the breezes. Firecrackers, both real and metaphorical, will beat back the night for a little while longer. After the parades, picnics, BBQ, hot dogs, beer, watermelons and heartburn, we’ll sleep soundly, nurtured in the comfort of Freedom. But not all of us.
Somewhere on a desolate plain a soldier with a weapon will keep a night watch. Somewhere a baby will be born. Their lives will merge with old men who still dream dreams, and with young men who still see visions.
Every generation has the power to retain or forfeit the Dream of Freedom. Which will we choose?
But for today, The Dream lives on…God Bless America!
Bud Hearn
June 30, 2011
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