FREEDOM

Twenty six years ago, our country was engaged in a cold war with the soviet union--who suppressed human rights, elections, speech, and a free press. The soviet union collapsed under an oppressive economic system in which few prospered. Twenty six years ago, it was them--not us.

While we won the cold war, we've accepted too many of their failed economic policies and we are facing a corporate bailout of astronomical proportions. Before we leap into "owning" the failures of these companies, I hope we look back from where we came and look ahead to where we want to go. The idea of our government taking on the burden of these failed (private) corporations is chilling but its due to our government going where it never should have gone. We forced these businesses into taking these risks and never addressed how to handle the ramifications if they should fail. I don't know what the best course is now, but in the least, we should at least learn from our mistakes and prevent it from happening again.

While being historical in positive ways, in 2008 we also went where we never should have gone in others. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been pleased that 40 years after his "Dream" speech, an African American has been nominated by a major party for President of the United States. Eighty-eight years since the beginning of female suffrage, a woman has been nominated by the Republican party for Vice President. Three-hundred and four years since John Campbell first published the Boston News, the independent media has died.

As for me, 2008 will always be memorable because this was the year when we crossed several lines and started to become our own enemy. In 2008, we allowed elected officials to chose primary dates that would silence the votes of citizens. In 2008, we allowed our "free press" to thumb their noses at objectivity and attack a 17 year old daughter of a candidate. In 2008, the media chose a Presidential candidate and hid negatives from the public in an effort to get him elected. By 2008, we stopped paying too much attention to politics and assumed that freedom was a birthright and not a product of hard work and blood. I recall the wisdom of the words spoken by Ronald Reagan,

"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."

If you want to see how much things have changed in 26 years, read a few excerpts from President Ronald Reagan who was speaking to the House of Commons on June 8, 1982.
The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy, the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities, which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means."

This is not cultural imperialism; it is providing the means for genuine self-determination and protection for diversity. Democracy already flourishes in countries with very different cultures and historical experiences. It would be cultural condescension, or worse, to say that any people prefer dictatorship to democracy. Who would voluntarily choose not to have the right to vote, decide to purchase government propaganda handouts instead of independent newspapers, prefer government to worker-controlled unions, opt for land to be owned by the state instead of those who till it, want government repression of religious liberty, a single political party instead of a free choice, a rigid cultural orthodoxy instead of democratic tolerance and diversity.
Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.
Well, the task I've set forth will long outlive our own generation. But together, we too have come through the worst. Let us now begin a major effort to secure the best -- a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation. For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny."


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