Freedom no longer rings for me

The 4th of July is not the same as it used to be. Maybe it's because I'm older now. I remember fondly the parades in whatever town we were in at the time, putting crepe paper streamers in the spokes of my bike, dressing up, and riding through downtown. I remember it as a lazy, carefree, summer day, something to celebrate, fireworks, lemonade, bushels of fresh Jersey tomatoes and Silver Queen corn on the cob that we ate like candy. I wonder what happened to those old days? Maybe in small towns somewhere they still celebrate that way. I live in a small town now, here in West Virginia, and the 4th of July is just another day off. Oh, there are fireworks at night, some sanctioned by the city, others shot off by neighbors who celebrate several days before and weeks afterwards. No parades, no excited children hoping their bike wins the best decorated bike. No carnival atmosphere. No pie eating contests.

I don’t know exactly when I noticed it was not the same, years ago probably, but it never bothered me much until I had grandchildren. They have no idea what I'm talking about when I ask them if they decorated their bikes for the parade. "Parade? What parade? Why would we decorate out bikes? That is so lame!" They don’t even really have places to ride their bikes, they live in rural areas, gravel driveways and miles of dirt roads. I only just realized how much I miss those celebrations of our "freedom." This year I am especially sad to think that those days are gone.

I remember in the 1960s and 1970s when people proudly sported bumper stickers that said "America – love it or leave it." Having traveled to other countries and having seen how we behave on foreign soil, or misbehave is more appropriate, and how we became known as "ugly Americans" in other places, I often thought that those who spouted that phrase should leave America for a time, so that when they came back, they would be more aware of just what kind of freedoms we do have and how hard won they were.

These wars we have now, starting with Korea and up through Iraq – such a shame to kill all our young men and women for no real reason. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, none of those people asked us to "fix" their country, we just decided that we should. The soldiers who died in those "wars" – and no matter that they call them "police actions" or whatever, make no mistake they were wars - they are not buying or preserving our freedom with their lives. They are just dying needlessly. It makes me so very angry. Maybe that's why we no longer have parades or encourage our children to celebrate our freedom. Because we just accept what we have as our right to have it, not as a hard won benefit of living as an American.

I hope that someday we can truly own the freedom that our forefathers dreamed about back in 1776, but I'm afraid for that as long as we decide its "our way or the highway" so to speak, we will just keep believing our rights are "God given" and not won by human sacrifice by our forefathers, that is just not going to happen.


559 words