FREEDOM

Do people really comprehend what is involved in maintaining freedom? Do people really understand the sacrifices made to maintain freedom? Other than those heroic men and women who have honorably served in our Armed Forces defending America's freedom, I dare say anyone really does understand. Losing a limb, an eye, or even a life defending the just cause of freedom supersedes any notion that forty years in Washington, D.C. as a politician is worthy of any great praise. That is not serving freedom, that is serving yourself and the selfish desires and wants you have.

Our founding fathers sacrificed all they had, all they were and ever hoped to be for the cause of freedom. "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." (Ronald Reagan) Freedom is always just an instant away from elimination. As good is always in a battle with evil, freedom is always in a constant state of fighting battling with the threat of tyranny. "Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." (George Washington) "If you can't fly then run. If you can't run then walk. If you can't walk then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving Forward." (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

If we do not stop the onslaught that currently faces this country, then we the people risk losing everything that our predecessors laid out for their descendants, us, to enjoy. "Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into him and to lose himself in his ideas. The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force. Will is wish, and liberty is power." (Voltaire) It is up to each of us to defend freedom's cause for it is a just cause and a noble and honorable cause. "The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight." (Theodore Roosevelt) When those in government fail to follow the established laws but rather circumvent to pursue their own purposes then accountability is in order to sustain the actions of the corrupt. We each have faults but the wonton acts of disregarding the laws and the deceitful measures employed to manipulate the system are intentional acts and are criminal no matter the individual.

"There is a risk and cost to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction." (JFK) "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." (Abraham Lincoln) True leadership understands the importance we each have to ensure that freedom's torch is kept burning. Once it is extinguished, it might not ever be ignited again. Changes in life are unequivocal, but changes to freedom's cause is never a good thing. The surety that all people will have an equal seat at the table is always a priority for once government or a group of leaders start singling out and applying forced isolations of another then we all need to be concerned.

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official." (Theodore Roosevelt) The risk of sitting back and being complacent is great as John F. Kennedy stated. "Democracy is not simply a license to indulge individual whims and proclivities. It is also holding oneself accountable to some reasonable degree for the conditions of peace and chaos that impact the lives of those who inhabit one's beloved extended country." (Aberjhani) We as citizens must hold our elected officials accountable for their actions to include their inactions. For them to avoid their responsibilities means they never had a understanding of the responsibility that the people afforded to them. Their inability to perform their designated duty is the cancer that must be removed before it contaminants the rest of the body.

So, "The job facing each American in the days and years to come is determine which hearts, minds and souls command these qualities best, suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal wounds rather than to aggravate injuries, to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one on reactions based on unknown fears." (Aberjhani)