Freedom from Fear

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.                Thomas Paine, 1776

Today is Flag Day. It's not really an official federal holiday; it's kind of a non-holiday holiday. It commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of American's national flag, the Stars & Stripes, by resolution of the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. I met a woman last week who was from Russia. She was petite, blonde, in her mid-forties, and had a husband and three children in junior high and high school. I found out they had come to America just a few years ago, so I asked her what prompted her to move her family so far away from their homeland. "Too much fighting and civil unrest," she told me. She went on to explain how she and her family felt it was not safe to live there. They never knew who was in charge or who was going to come to their door and harass them for any reason whatsoever. She would not even let her kids go shopping alone for fear of what might happen to them. Simply being out in public felt unsafe. At one point she looked at me and said in earnest, "You Americans have no idea what it's like to live in that kind of fear. You don't know what it's like for us to come to America and have this feeling of being safe in our home and neighborhood." I was reminded of the Four Freedoms from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inaugural speech in 1941; the 4th freedom is Freedom from Fear. My new acquaintance from a country far different from ours reminded me of what that means--what it means to live under the American flag. When you think about it, "Old Glory" has gone through a lot. It's been booed, burned, stomped upon, spit at, mocked, torn apart in a public display of contempt, made into clothing, and God only knows what else--and that is at the hands of United States citizens. I don't think there is a single one of us who is not concerned about where our country is going and what it will be in the future, but if you drive by my house this Thursday you will see the American flag waving in my front yard. Land of the free...free from fear. Greg