While the notion of freedom is a high and lofty ideal, exactly what it means and how it gets implemented demands thought prior to action.\u00a0 Otherwise, we may find ourselves defending a \u201cfreedom\u201d that is nothing other than a self-serving delusion and stuck in a quagmire while the body bag count goes up.\u00a0 Did anyone give us a \u201cfreedom handout\u201d when we wanted it?\u00a0 We wanted it bad enough to make great sacrifices.\u00a0 We had a resolve that included the vast majority of people in the colonies.\u00a0 We did not have to convince a lot of \u201ctraitors to humanity on the left\u201d (a convenient way of dismissing the majority without thought) to break away from England.\u00a0 We do not need to lose our idealism but we do need to get real.\u00a0\u00a0 If we try to fight every battle for freedom for every one we may end up losing the war and ourselves in the process.\u00a0 The resolve we had to implement our freedom did not depend on any \u201cfreedom handout\u201d.\u00a0 We would not have appreciated it if it had been given to us from another country.\u00a0 The call of freedom is the call for self-responsibility.\u00a0 Anytime someone is given something they did not earn they take it for granted.\u00a0 If it comes cheap it goes cheap.\u00a0 This does not mean we condone brutal, self-serving aggression when we see it.\u00a0 It does mean that we have a realistic understanding of what freedom means and how it has value.\u00a0 Knee-jerk reaction is not what makes freedom real.\u00a0 A \u201cfreedom handout\u201d does make freedom real.\u00a0\u00a0 To make freedom real a majority of people must thoughtfully resolve to make it their own no matter what the consequences.\u00a0\u00a0 Our resolve does not effortlessly apply to everyone, everywhere.\u00a0 This is magical thinking (or no thinking at all).\u00a0 Our anger and indignation does not create a resolve for freedom in other countries.\u00a0 It only gives us an occasion for own angry, narcissistic catharsis while we sacrifice our young and cheapen the value of freedom.<\/p>\n
Note: While I would not want to minimize the involvement of France, Spain and Holland in the Revolutionary War I would point out that the resolve of the colonies was already demonstrated and forged in the three years it took for France to get involved (four for Spain and Holland).\u00a0 Washington himself was totally surprised by the fortunate, \u201cDivine Providence\u201d of these countries involvement.\u00a0 In any case, I think if those countries had initially invaded England to give the colonies \u201cfreedom\u201d my point would have failed.\u00a0 As it is their involvement years later for their own reasons does not negate the patriots resolve.\u00a0 I might also add that \u201cfreedom\u201d in the case of the Revolutionary War may also have more meat on it than simply a lofty ideal (i.e., taxation without representation, etc.).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the notion of freedom is a high and lofty ideal, exactly what it means and how it gets implemented demands thought prior to action.\u00a0 Otherwise, we may find ourselves defending a \u201cfreedom\u201d that is nothing other than a self-serving delusion and stuck in a quagmire while the body bag count goes up.\u00a0 Did anyone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18,19],"tags":[93],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-republicans","category-war","tag-freedom-handout"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3940,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/3940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mixermuse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}