Free As Air....
On July 4th 1776, the United States of America proclaimed its independence from England by signing the 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.”
Although Jefferson stated that all men are created equal and have the right to liberty, the enslaved were excluded. Eighty-nine years later, Slavery ended; one hundred forty-four years later, Women were given the right to vote; one hundred eighty-nine years later segregation ended and one year after that Black Americans were given the right to vote. Last month, Congress passed the Juneteenth National Independance Day Act formally adding June 19, the day in 1865 when slavery ended in Texas, to the roster of nationally recognized holidays.
We have certainly made progress toward real freedom, but what is freedom?
In 1941 Franklin Roosevelt wrote:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium.
It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941
Be the change that you want to see. Free As Air....
peace, Angela
