Freedom Is Not Free

I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze. 
A young Marine saluted it, 
And then he stood at ease. 

I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall so proud, 
With hair cut square and eyes alert. 
He'd stand out in any crowd. 

I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years. 
How many died on foreign soil? 
How many mothers's tears? 

How many pilots' planes shot down? 
How many died at sea? 
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves? 
No, freedom is not free. 

I heard the sound of taps one night, 
When everything was still. 
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill. 

I wondered how many times
That taps had meant "Amen",
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend. 

I thought of all the children, 
Of the mothers and the wives, 
Of fathers, sons, and husbands, 
With interrupted lives. 

I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington. 
No, freedom is not free. 

by Cadet Major Kelly Strong
Homestead Senior High School
Homestead, Florida
Class of '88 

Brad Pardee 
Editor

In mainland China, people run the risk of imprisonment, often at hard labor, if they dare to voice criticism of communism, or if they are Christians who do not align themselves with the state-run "church". Women who have had the government-alotted number of children are forced to undergo forced abortions and sterilization. They are not free. 

In the Sudan, a civil war is raging between a predominantly Christian south and a predominantly Muslim north, and the atrocities being visited upon the south are beyond the pale. Schools and hospitals are being targeted for bombing. Stories are rampant of Christians being enslaved and forced, upon pain of death, to "convert" to Islam. In other Islamic countries of the Middle East, Muslims who convert to Christianity are routinely murdered, and anyone who speaks of the truth of Christianity can be imprisoned for "blasphemy". They are not free. 

In Chechnya, Christian pastors and missionaries of various different denominations are being kidnapped, and in some instances, they are being beheaded and their body parts placed on public display. They are not free. 

In the United States, however, we have an epidemic of people and groups who believe that freedom means being allowed to do whatever they want to do without anybody saying they are wrong. 

Here in Lincoln, a law college student claimed that he was being denied freedom because the county attorney's office, which has a dress code, would not accept him for an internship if he would not cut his hair. Women are claiming that they are denied their freedom if they are not permitted to have the living and viable children in their wombs aborted in a method which can only be described as barbaric. Homosexuals are claiming that they are denied their freedom if society does not grant its sanction and approval of their relationships. 

None of these people are facing death or imprisonment. Nobody is denying them the right to voice their views. Nobody is preventing them from changing public policy through the democratic process as citizens at the ballot box. Their claims that their freedom is being somehow abridged ring hollow when placed in contrast to those around the world who would move heaven and earth if they could to have the kind of freedom we take for granted. 

The founding fathers did not die so we wouldn't have to have haircuts. They did not pledge their lives and their fortunes to defend the right to be free from any kind of criticism. The sacrifices they made were to give us the freedom to freely express ourselves, to freely worship according to the tenets of our faith, and to freely choose the leaders who would govern us. On this Fourth of July, let us celebrate the freedom that we have, a freedom that many around the world can only dream of, a freedom that, for over 200 years, has given hope to people the world over that they, too, might one day know what it means to be free.